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<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=5>Judge Suspends Administration Rules For Managing
Forests<BR></FONT></STRONG>
<P><FONT size=-1>By Juliet Eilperin<BR>Washington Post Staff Writer<BR>Saturday,
March 31, 2007; A02<BR></FONT></P>
<P></P>
<P>A federal district judge ruled yesterday that the Bush administration
illegally rewrote the rules for managing 192 million acres of federally owned
forests and grasslands in 2005 and must consider the environmental impact of its
plan before offering another policy blueprint.</P>
<P>The ruling by Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton of the U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of California suspends the forest rules the administration
adopted on Jan. 5, 2005. Hamilton said the government did not adequately assess
the policy's impact on wildlife and the environment and did not give sufficient
public notice of the "paradigm shift" that the rule put in place.</P>
<P>The judge ordered the Forest Service to suspend its 2005 rule and subject it
to a new round of analysis, taking into account the environmental protections
and public participation requirements in the National Environmental Policy Act,
the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.</P>
<P>The battle between environmental groups and the administration over the
forest rules has raged for several years. It centers on changes to environmental
protections that had been in place since the Reagan administration. Under the
old policy, the government had to maintain viable populations of native wildlife
in forests and monitor some populations regularly, while limiting logging and
drilling for oil and gas.</P>
<P>The new rule -- which gave economic activities as high a priority as
maintaining the forest's ecological health -- made it easier to conduct drilling
and logging in national forests while weakening protections for native fish and
wildlife. It also accelerated the process for approving forest management plans,
which can drag on for as long as seven years, thereby cutting planning
costs.</P>
<P>Environmental groups hailed yesterday's decision as a major victory. They
said it will force the Bush administration to rethink the way it oversees
forests and grasslands, which make up 8 percent of the country's land.</P>
<P>"The national forest planning rules are like the Constitution for our
national forests, and the Bush administration tried to throw out the Bill of
Rights," said Earthjustice lawyer Trent Orr, who argued the case before the
court on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra
Club and the Vermont Natural Resources Council.</P>
<P>Forest Service spokeswoman Allison Stewart said the agency has not decided
whether to appeal the decision. She noted that "presented with similar
circumstances" in unrelated cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th
Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama recently
ruled that the administration had met its obligations under the Endangered
Species Act and Environmental Policy Act, respectively.</P>
<P>"The federal government is carefully reviewing today's decision," she
said.</P>
<P>Defenders of Wildlife staff attorney Mike Leahy, who worked on yesterday's
case, said the decisions in the 10th Circuit and in Alabama did not address
whether the 2005 rule was legal.</P>
<P>"You can't toss out decades of protections for wildlife and natural resources
without considering the consequences, and you can't spring major changes in how
public lands will be managed on the public without giving people a chance to
provide input," Leahy said. "That is what the Bush administration did, and the
court ruled it was illegal."</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>