Post
Monday, May 9, 2005; A22

ON ITS OWN, the Bush administration's rationale for radically amending the "roadless rule" sounds reasonable. The rule, a Clinton administration regulation designed to prevent logging, mineral extraction or road construction of any kind within some 56.5 million acres of pristine national forestland, has been contested by several states and has been overturned by two federal judges. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who is responsible for the Forest Service, says he wants to eliminate the one-size-fits-all federal rule in favor of a "state by state process." Mr. Rey says that this would give governors more say in how the rule is applied and therefore reduce the amount of "ill will" that the rule created.

That argument is fine, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it overlooks the bigger picture. It overlooks the fact that one of the court decisions against the rule has been successfully overturned by a higher court, and another appeal is pending: Surely that means that it's at least possible for the government to keep the legal process going. It overlooks the fact that the rule is supported not only by public opinion -- millions of people have signed petitions in its favor -- but by scientific evidence. Some 60 million Americans get their clean drinking water from pristine forest areas; there is evidence that building roads in forests contributes to the speed with which catastrophic wildfires can spread; uncut forest is also more likely to support a wider range of animal and plant species. There are, in other words, solid economic and environmental reasons to support the preservation of this relatively small patch of pristine wilderness.

More to the point, the change to the roadless rule is part of a series of broader changes that the administration has made to forestry policy since taking office. In December the Forest Service published a new set of forest management rules, rewriting them so as to weaken or dilute environmental and endangered-species protections. The administration has also pushed Congress to pass its "Healthy Forest" bill, which will make it easier for loggers to get permits as well. For that reason, it is hard to feel reassured when Mr. Rey says that there are plenty of rules in place to protect the forests in the absence of the straightforward roadless decree.

Finally, it is disturbing to note that this change in forest management is being accompanied by hints that in the upcoming Interior Department spending bills there may be fat subsidies for timber companies, at least for those that want to engage in uneconomic logging of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, one of the largest pristine wilderness areas. And that is the dirty little secret at the heart of this whole controversy: For all of the effort being put into making it possible, much of the logging activity, at least, isn't even particularly profitable. A big chunk of the timber industry exists only because federally owned forests are handed over to companies that receive federal subsidies. Given that, it's hard to feel that a change making more such transactions possible is a change for the better.