US Forest Service

Deal to shrink roadless areas in Idaho approved by Bush admin

An Idaho-specific plan meant to replace President Clinton’s national roadless rule in the state was agreed to Friday by the Bush administration, timber interests, and a few environmental groups. If approved by the Secretary of Agriculture after a public-comment period, the revised rule would protect just 3.3 million acres of forestlands in the state, down […]

Roadless rule shot down, again

The Clinton-era “roadless rule” has been declared invalid by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer. The rule, which prohibits development on 58.5 million acres of national forest, has had a long and rocky past. Brimmer first put the kibosh on it in 2003, and while an appeal was pending, the Bush administration switched it out for […]

Enviros not fond of new forest management rules

The U.S. Forest Service has released new regulations for forest management that are remarkably similar to regulations that a federal judge struck down last year. Under the new rules, species’ sustainability will not be evaluated individually; instead, the focus will be on overall habitat. A coalition of green groups have sued, saying the rules loosen […]

California sues Forest Service over road building, drilling plans

California sued the U.S. Forest Service this week, claiming that it violated federal environmental laws and ignored state policies prohibiting road building in roadless areas of national forests. At stake are over 500,000 acres in four national forests in the state that the Bush administration plans to open up to road building, as well as […]

U.S. forest official will not be jailed over fish-killing flame retardant

The U.S. Forest Service turned in a court-ordered environmental analysis of a fish-killing flame retardant 2 1/2 years late, and only after the agency’s top official was threatened with incarceration for contempt of court. But the USFS did ultimately conduct the environmental review of ammonium phosphate — which was dropped on an Oregon fire in […]

Forest Service official threatened with jail time over fish-killing fire retardant

Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, has been threatened with jail time or house arrest for his agency’s attempts to continue using a flame retardant on forest fires that’s toxic to fish. In 2002, fire retardant was dropped on a blaze in central Oregon, killing about 20,000 fish. […]

Bush admin backs off appeal of nixed forest-management rules, to release new ones

The Bush administration has backed off of an appeal of a March 2007 ruling that overturned controversial management rules for national forests. The struck-down rules allowed national forest managers to approve logging, mining, cell-phone towers, and other commercial projects without undergoing environmental reviews and were found to violate the Endangered Species Act. The Bush administration […]

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Keep It Pretty Much the Same

U.S. Forest Service re-revises forest-management rules In March, a federal judge put the kibosh on the U.S. Forest Service’s revision of forest-management rules that had directed local managers to give economic concerns as high a priority as ecological health and removed requirements that managers ensure viable populations of native wildlife. Having not succeeded, the agency […]

Forest Eviction

Judge tosses out Bush administration’s forest-management rules Heads-up to the Bush administration: You can’t always get what you want. (As always, the Rolling Stones know best.) On Friday, a federal judge tossed out the administration’s revised forest-management rules, issued in 2005, which allowed national forest managers to approve logging, mining, cell-phone towers, and other commercial […]