If the game is pretending to protect national forests while at the same time making it easier for loggers to chop down more trees, then the Bush administration plays the game very well.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman recently announced that her department will finally, after 21/2 years of delay, support a rule prohibiting road building for commercial purposes in 58-million acres of pristine forest. Then came the exceptions.
In Alaska, Tongass (the nation's largest) and Chugach national forests will be exempted from the protection. So 300,000 acres in the heart of Tongass could be sheared to the ground, destroying centuries-old trees that protect wildlife and sparkling salmon streams.
That isn't the only gap the Agriculture Department plans to write into the rule. Governors from any of the lower 48 states could seek exemptions as well. All they would have to do is claim an "exceptional circumstance," including vague purposes such as protecting human health or reducing hazardous fuels. In other words, governors in Western states dominated by logging interests could claim roads had to built in national forests for timber companies under the guise of preventing forest fires. That could open up millions of acres of protected wilderness.
The Bush administration got what it wanted: headlines saying the Agriculture Department supports the roadless rule. One had to read further to see that the national forests in Alaska and, potentially, any state could be exempted.
So the Agriculture Department didn't really adopt the rule, which was written by the Clinton administration after 600 public hearings and 1.6-million public comments, 95 percent of which favored protecting roadless areas. Instead, it pretended to adopt the rule while filling it full of holes large enough to drive a lumber truck through. And that is how the Bush administration plays the game of protecting national forests.
