The White House has told the Justice Department to figure out a legal way to cast aside former President Clinton’s plan to ban road-building and logging on 58.5 million acres of national forestland, reports the Washington Post. The Bush administration has until the end of next week to file a brief in an Idaho federal court announcing whether it will support the plan. Some Western Republicans and administration officials say the roadless rule was approved hurriedly before President Clinton left office, but enviros note that the rule was more than a year in the making, during which time the U.S. Forest Service collected 1.6 million public comments on the plan.
