DENVER—Colorado state officials are traveling to Washington this week, hoping to persuade federal officials to accept their plan to protect 4.1 million acres of roadless national forest land even as some push for stronger safeguards.
State natural resources chief Harris Sherman and deputy director Mike King were set to present Colorado’s petition to a federal advisory panel Wednesday and Thursday.
The two-day hearing by the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee is being held amid legal battles over a 2001 ban on development on the roadless areas and a Bush administration policy that opened those lands to potential development in 2005.
A federal judge in San Francisco last November overturned Bush’s policy, which potentially opened about a third of the 58.5 million acres of roadless areas nationwide to development. The policy allowed states to petition the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, to protect the areas.
Colorado’s petition, written by a state task force and approved by former Gov. Bill Owens late last year, won broad support. The support started waning after the Bush administration’s rule was overturned and the 2001 rule by the Clinton administration was reinstated.
Last week’s failure by Wyoming to revive a ruling by federal judge that threw out the Clinton-era roadless rule in 2003 has intensified calls for Gov. Bill Ritter to withdraw Colorado’s petition and let the 2001 road-building ban apply in the state.
“We support complete protection of all of America’s roadless areas. The best way is the 2001 rule to continue to be the law of the land,” said Robert Vandermark, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign, run by a national coalition of environment groups.
Fifteen Colorado and national conservation groups sent a letter Tuesday to the federal advisory panel to express concerns about Colorado’s petition and urge members to reject it.
The panel will recommend whether Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns should approve the plan.
Even some members of the Colorado task force say Ritter should withdraw the state plan because it’s weaker than the Clinton-era policy.
“The task force worked hard, but at the end of the process, the compromise recommendations are a significant downgrade from the protections offered under the 2001 rule,” said David Petersen of Durango, a task force member and staffer with the conservation group Trout Unlimited.
Ritter, who courted hunters and anglers in last year’s election, modified the petition submitted by his predecessor and sent it to Washington. He has said the petition protects Colorado because pending appeals could result in the 2001 rule being tossed out again.
The state of Wyoming plans to ask the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to reconsider an appeal that was dismissed when the Bush administration issued a new roadless rule. An appeal is also pending of the San Francisco judge’s decision reinstating the 2001 road-building ban.
“Regardless of what happens in the courts, Gov. Ritter’s plan will be an effective insurance policy that protects millions of acres of roadless areas in Colorado,” said Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
But task force member Petersen and other critics have assailed parts of the plan, including one that would remove about 10,000 acres of forest land leased by ski areas from the inventory of roadless areas. Another would lift restrictions on 80,000 acres used by the North Fork Valley Mine in western Colorado for the life of the mine.
Petersen said other sections on grazing rights and the use of logging and other methods to fight bark beetles and wildfires are so broad that too much land could be opened to new roads.
Others, though, have stressed that the task force, appointed by the Legislature and governor, included a broad spectrum of viewpoints and developed the plan after several months of public hearings and study.
The 2001 road-building ban was passed in the waning days of the Clinton administration after more than two years of public hearings and 1.6 million comments. About a third of the country’s 192 million acres of national forest lands was affected.
Some of the areas protected as roadless have trails and roads, but generally are prized for their pristine qualities and are considered important as wildlife habitat, watersheds, scenic and recreation areas.
