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WASHINGTON - Reversing a Clinton-era policy, the Bush administration opened 300,000 more acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest on Tuesday to possible logging or other development.
The decision allows 3 percent of the forest's 9.3-million acres, which were put off-limits to road-building by the Clinton administration, to have roads built on them and perhaps to be opened to use by the timber industry.
"The people of Alaska benefit," said Bill Bradshaw of the U.S. Forest Service, part of the Agriculture Department.
John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA, accused the administration of "gutting the last pristine temperate rain forest" in the United States.
Agriculture Department officials, with approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget, decided to exempt the acreage from the so-called roadless rule, an often-challenged Clinton-era policy. Imposed during President Clinton's final days in office, the rule had sought to block development of 58.5-million acres, or nearly one-third of the national forests.
A federal district judge in Wyoming struck it down in July and it is now before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Forest Service officials said their decision "maintains the balance for roadless area protection" while "providing opportunities for sustainable economic development" in the 16.8-million-acre Tongass National Forest.
"People in 32 communities within the Tongass National Forest depend on the forest for subsistence and social and economic health," officials said in a statement. "Most communities lack road and utility connections to other communities."
In August, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski said the roadless rule, which effectively has locked away portions of the Tongass and Chugach national forests from major timber development, was "unlawful and unwise."
The Republican governor, a former senator, demanded the Forest Service exempt Alaska from the roadless rule on grounds it violates the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act.