Free Republic

A devastating Wyoming wildfire season got its start more than 20 years ago with a disastrous Bill Clinton roadless rule, Harriet Hageman said Wednesday. Those in the path of the fires can thank the feds and their “bad policies.”. Wyoming’s lone member of Congress said she’s heartbroken over the devastating wildfires that have burned more than 600,000 acres across the Cowboy State this fire season. That includes her family’s Hartville homestead that burned in the 29,000-acre Pleasant Valley Fire. Now with the volatile and obstinate Elk and Pack Trail fires that are making national headlines, having burned about 180,000 combined,...

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

The Trump administration will propose dumping the Clinton and Obama administrations’ “Roadless Rule” to open logging in the Los Padres National Forest to prevent big wildfires. The U.S. Forest Service is moving to open up the Los Padres Forest north of Los Angeles to commercial logging for the first time in 21 years to reduce the risk of massive size wildfires, according to reports by KTLA.

Industry blasts suggestion as harmful to the country. A conservation group that has succeeded in dealing recent legal setbacks to western Colorado coal mines called Thursday for a phase-out of federal coal leasing to help combat climate change. “It’s time for the Interior Department to shut it down,” Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a news release. The group outlined a plan for ending the federal coal program over 10 to 25 years through a moratorium on leasing publicly owned coal, retiring existing leases that aren’t producing, honestly reporting the climate impacts of the...

The federal judge who overturned the Bush administration’s Roadless Rule declared Wednesday that energy companies can’t set up their drill rigs on any undeveloped oil and gas lease issued since 2001 within a roadless area. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. LaPorte ruled in September that President Bill Clinton’s 2001 Roadless Rule be reinstated, protecting 4.4 million acres of roadless areas in Colorado national forests and more than 58 million acres nationwide. Her ruling Wednesday prevents the U.S. Forest Service from approving or allowing any surface disturbance of a mineral lease issued after Jan. 12, 2001, on which drilling or development...

Environmentalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to overturn the Bush administration's rules for managing the country's 155 national forests, arguing that the regulations illegally weaken protections for wilderness and wildlife. Issued in December 2004, the rules represented a major shift in how the government balanced conservation and commercial interests in its 192 million acres of forest land. The management plan gave regional forest managers more discretion to approve logging, drilling and other projects without lengthy environmental studies. Wednesday's hearing in federal court in San Francisco was the first since a coalition of environmental groups sued the Bush administration over the...

A federal judge on Wednesday reinstated the "Roadless Rule," a Clinton-era ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before making changes that allowed states to decide how to manage individual national forests. The 2001 rule prohibits logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico, but the Bush administration replaced it in May 2005 with a process that required governors to petition the federal government to protect national forests in their states. Laporte sided...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Reacting to a California court ruling on roadless areas in national forests, Wyoming will seek to resurrect a lawsuit in which a federal judge struck down the Clinton-era ban on logging and other development in roadless areas. "We had a case that threw out the Clinton rule," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Tuesday in announcing the state will file a motion over the next week to revive its lawsuit. A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday reinstated the Clinton administration ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests, including 3.2 million acres in Wyoming....

SAN FRANCISCO A federal judge on Wednesday overturned the Bush administration's rules on road construction in untouched areas of national forests and reinstated a Clinton-era ban on new roads in nearly a third of federal forests. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte sided with states and environmentalists who sued the U.S. Forest Service after it reversed Clinton's "Roadless Rule" that prohibited logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres of forest land in 38 states and Puerto Rico. In May 2005, the Bush administration replaced the Clinton rule with a voluntary state-by-state petition process that the plaintiffs claimed violated federal...

A federal judge said Tuesday that the Bush administration had the right to overturn a ban on road construction in untouched parts of the national forests but questioned whether it could do so without weighing the possible environmental effects. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte said the Forest Service appeared to be "on solid ground" last year when it reversed a Clinton administration rule banning new roads on nearly a third of federal forests. But she questioned whether the agency violated federal law by skipping environmental studies - the heart of two lawsuits brought by 20 environmental groups and the states...

SAN FRANCISCO - California, New Mexico and Oregon sued the Bush administration over the government's decision to allow road building, logging and other commercial ventures on more than 90,000 square miles of the nation's remaining pristine forests. In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, attorneys general for the three states challenged the U.S. Forest Service's repeal of the Clinton administration's "roadless rule" that banned development on 58.5 million acres of national forest land, mostly in western states. "The Bush administration is putting at risk some of the last, most pristine portions of America's national forests," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. "Road...

Finally, more than four years after its hideous birth, the Clinton "Roadless Rule" is dead. The Bush administration and the Forest Service just announced a final rule that effectively undoes Clinton's reckless decree. Dying with the "Roadless Rule" are the following: - threats of catastrophic wildfire - threats of forest infestation and disease - lack of public access to public lands - improper resource management - unhealthy forests - top-down federal overreach Recall that Bill Clinton, just eight days before he left office, in the dark of night, penned his infamous, unilateral, executive order that locked up over 58 million...

Your readers may be confused by your Jan. 5 editorial, "Timber giveaway." The Bush administration takes protection of this nation's forests seriously. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska is home to centuries-old trees, bears, eagles, wolves and five different kinds of wild salmon. And, after nearly 100 years of multi-use management of these forests for fisheries, timber, minerals, recreation and subsistence activity, they are healthy, vibrant forests with no listed threatened or endangered species. The state of Alaska challenged the roadless rule in court, claiming it violated a number of laws, including a national law that applies specifically to Alaska....

"This is really some country," says my friend Arnie Erickson. He, his young son and I make our way down a steep slope toward Otter Lake, through a grove of centuries-old spruce, some of them with trunks 4 and 5 feet thick. We're scouting for spring steelhead fishing and next fall's deer in a rugged corner of Alaska's Tongass, our country's largest national forest, which encompasses nearly 17 million acres. The pristine landscape seems serene and timeless. But as things stand now, this place is doomed. Late last month, the Bush administration announced it would exempt the Tongass National Forest...

A federal judge Monday struck down a ban on road building in one-third of America's national forests, saying the Clinton administration rule illegally created wilderness areas a power reserved for Congress. It was the second injunction issued by a federal judge against the ban. The first, on behalf of Idaho in 2001, was overturned in December by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. Monday's decision sends the case, brought on behalf of Wyoming, to the more conservative 10th Circuit in Denver. If the two appeals courts issue opposing rulings, the case could go to the...

<p>A federal judge Monday struck down a ban on road building in a third of America's national forests, saying the Clinton administration rule illegally designated wilderness areas.</p> <p>It was the second injunction issued by a federal judge against the so-called roadless rule. The first, in 2001, was overturned in December by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco.</p>

Deseret News, Saturday, June 14, 2003Leavitt is considering 'roadless rule' detourStates can apply for exemption to banBy Donna Kemp SpanglerDeseret Morning NewsGov. Mike Leavitt has never been a fan of the Clinton administration's so-called roadless rule that bans road building in 4 million acres of national forests in Utah.But now the Bush administration is giving states a way out, and Leavitt isn't saying what he plans to do. At least not yet. But he expressed his dislike for the rule. "We will review the policy and respond," Leavitt told the Deseret Morning News this week. "I had a lot of...

<p>Washington -- The Bush administration proposed on Monday relaxing a Clinton-era rule that barred road-building and logging on 58 million acres of federal forests, giving governors broad new discretion to determine what lands should be set aside as wilderness.</p> <p>The proposal would allow Western governors, many of whom opposed the so- called roadless rule, to petition the Forest Service to exempt federal lands in their state from wilderness designation. The agency also plans to eliminate the ban on road building in millions of acres in two national forests in Alaska.</p>

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.WASHINGTON, June 9 — The Bush administration said today that it would reinstate a Clinton-era rule that prohibits building roads in 58.5 million acres of protected national forests. But the administration wants to allow governors to seek exemptions from the rule, which environmental groups said would open the way for logging and drilling on millions of acres. The administration also said that this month, as part of a legal settlement, the federal government would seek an exemption from the so-called roadless rule in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, North America's only...

Bush administration to allow roadless rule to stand Washington-AP) -- The Bush administration says it will stand by a Clinton-era rule blocking development on 58 million acres of federal land. Environmentalists hailed the announcement, saying that the so-called "roadless rule" will finally have teeth. But a spokesman for the timber industry played down the decision, noting that even under the interim rule, no new roads have been built in national forests. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey says the administration will soon develop a permanent set of guidelines for roadless areas. The ban on road-building and development had been challenged in...