The Bush administration has rejected Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski's petition to amend its new roadless forests rule to give states greater certainty that logging can be kept out of undeveloped areas to protect clean water and wildlife habitat.
The petition filed last month asked the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to give states the option of adopting the 2001 roadless policy created under the Clinton administration, which barred commercial logging in large undeveloped blocks of national forests.
The petition was rejected, in part, because Oregon has joined California and New Mexico in suing the Bush administration over the new rule governing logging and other natural resources extraction in millions of undeveloped acres of national forests, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Dan Jiron from Washington, D.C.
A two-page letter sent last week by Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said adopting the 2001 Clinton administration rule, as Kulongoski suggested, would likely generate new legal challenges, because it had been overturned by a federal judge in Wyoming. He added that he thought the proposal would add time and cost to the process.
''It would be more constructive for Oregon to withdraw from the current legal proceedings and engage the department in a good faith discussion of protection for roadless area values in Oregon,'' Rey wrote. ''We are confident that such discussions would lead to a reasonable and ultimately successful outcome.''Associated Press via The Salt Lake Tribune
