The Incredible Shrinking Backcountry

“...or just get used to motorized "fun".

Administration to announce new 'roadless' rule
By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Governors are being given 18 months to change the Bush administration's plan to open up to 58.5 million acres of remote national forestland to road building, timbering and other commercial activity.

In one of its biggest environmental decisions, the administration will let governors petition for more or fewer restrictions against developing nearly a third of the 191 million acres of national forests, according to briefing documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.S. Forest Service planned to announce the new "roadless" rule later Thursday. It replaces one that former President Clinton had put in place little more than a week before leaving office in January 2001. Clinton's regulation blocked road construction as a way to prevent logging, mining and other industry activities in the backcountry.

The Forest Service, which will review and have final say over the petitions, calls the new process voluntary. "If a governor does not want to propose changes ... then no petition need be submitted," the agency says in the documents.

As much as 34.3 million acres could be immediately opened to road construction if governors submit no petitions or they are rejected, the Forest Service estimates.

The other 24.2 million acres currently are off-limits to road building under existing forest management plans. But environmentalists say the new rule would let the administration rewrite those plans to lift restrictions against development on most of that forestland.”

“The "environmental president" in action.”

“Charlie don't surf and Dubya don't hike...”

“I think this quote addresses this well:

"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."

Theodore Roosevelt,A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open, 1916”

“Probably won't help, but we should all write a letter to our governors asking them to petition. How long of a period of time are we talking?”

“thats a real nice quote zac”

“No tree left behind.”

“TR was way ahead of his time. Thanks TR.”