U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge's attempt to dismantle roadless forest protection in Idaho and the West is under assault on two fronts.With luck, one challenge to Lodge's flawed decision will prevail.
Lodge granted an injunction against the Clinton administration's roadless forest initiative. The measure prohibits most road construction and commercial logging on 58.5 million acres. Helicopter logging can be approved, and some logging for fire prevention is allowed. The state of Idaho and Boise Cascade Corp. sought a court-ordered injunction against it.
On one front, the Idaho Conservation League, Idaho Rivers United and eight other groups are appealing Lodge's ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. They have strong arguments, but an uncertain legal posture. The defendant in the lawsuit, the federal government, did not appeal Lodge's ruling, despite U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's promise to defend the roadless initiative.
The environmental groups are only intervenors in the case. The 9th Circuit could throw them out of court on a technicality - that they lack standing to pursue the case.
The second front is Congress, where 174 House members are co-sponsoring legislation to codify the original roadless-forest regulation. But that's an uphill fight. The co-sponsors are still about 44 members short, and they face opposition from Western Republicans.
But the appellate court and Congress should consider these crucial points:
n Lodge assumed the public involvement in preparing the roadless-forest plan was "grossly inadequate." The judge was simply wrong. Backing up the rule were two decades of broad debate and three years of analysis and discussion. In the history of federal rule-making, there has never been more extensive public comment. The Forest Service added 24 days to the legally required 45-day comment period. The agency got a record 1.6 million responses.
People responded to the idea with overwhelming support.
While Idaho was suing to block the rule and the state's congressional delegation was declaring that the West opposed it, polls showed 81 percent support for it in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
n Lodge found the roadless rule caused "immediate irreparable harm" to the forests. But the "irreparable harm" comes from building roads, which damages soils, causes erosion and thereby pollutes streams. The science on the impact roads have on forests is well documented. During the mid-1990s, northern Idaho suffered one of its worst and most expensive floods - attributed largely to excessive logging on forests of that region. Lodge's ruling also did not acknowledge the rule's specific allowance for logging to reduce fire risks
n Lodge found that the Environmental Impact Statement for the roadless forest rule was incomplete and "flawed." But how much analysis is really necessary? This nation has built 380,000 miles of forest roads. The impacts of those roads have been documented sufficiently.
Whether Congress or the federal courts act, time is running
out for Idaho. Four timber sales are already proposed for roadless
forests in northern Idaho's Clearwater and Nez Perce national
forests. Once those roads go in, the damage will be irreparable.
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