President Bush Proposes Rule Opening Millions of Acres of Protected Forest to Logging

Governors Will Have to Petition to Protect Their States’ Forests

“This President apparently sees no value in our national forests 
other than potential corporate profits.”  

Washington , DC – The Bush administration today proposed a rule that will effectively repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in the lower 48 states, opening tens of millions of acres of America ’s last remaining wild forests to road-building, logging, mining and drilling projects.  An earlier Bush anti-conservation proposal would have allowed governors to request opening protected areas in their states; today’s proposed rule worsens that already bad idea by opening roadless national forest land and requiring governors to go begging to the federal government if they want to protect them.  Even then, there is no assurance that their request for protection will be granted.   

“This plan amounts to selling off our last legacy of wild national forests to the timber industry, even though they’d yield less than a quarter of a percent of U.S. timber production.  It’s a raw deal for everyone but the President’s big campaign contributors who get open access to our nation’s last remnants of wild forest land,” said Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife. 

On January 5, 2001 , the federal government adopted the Roadless Rule protecting the remaining public forests in the United States that have not had roads built through them. This move came after decades of debate over the fate of roadless forests in America, after numerous attempts to end massive taxpayer subsidies for logging roads, and after 3 years of planning and public process that included 600 public meetings around the country and more than 2.3 million of public comments, over 90 percent of them urging protection of America’s last wild forests.  On January 20, 2001 , his first day in office, President Bush withdrew this rule in order for his administration to review it.  He then appointed former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey to be his administration’s principal overseer of our national forests.

“Where most Americans see a priceless legacy of wild forests, this president sees only two-by-fours.  He apparently sees no value in our national forests other than potential corporate profits.  From day one, he has focused on tearing down forest protections and opening up our lands to the timber industry,” said Schlickeisen.  “The president’s single-minded obsession with cutting down trees threatens all the other things these wild forests give us, like clean water, recreation, safe haven for imperiled wildlife and the conservation legacy we will leave to our children.  It’s also bad news for states and private land owners, because without our national forests offering haven to imperiled species, more of them get into trouble and the burden for protecting endangered species increasingly gets placed onto non-federal lands.”

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Defenders of Wildlife is one of the nation's most progressive advocates for wildlife and habitat, and was named as one of America's Top 100 Charities by Worth magazine. With more than 480,000 members and supporters, Defenders is an effective voice for wildlife and habitat. To learn more about Defenders of Wildlife, please visit www.defenders.org.

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