FORESTS: Court decision preserves national roadless rule
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
E&E PM: Monday, March 25, 2013
A federal court today rejected Alaska's challenge to a 2001 rule that prohibited most logging and roadbuilding on about 58 million acres of federal forests, effectively shielding the Clinton-era rule from future legal challenges.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today decided that Alaska's lawsuit challenging the roadless rule in June 2011 was filed too late.
It was a major victory for the Obama administration and conservationists who have defended the law in multiple courts for years.
"This is a complete victory for the roadless rule," said Tom Waldo, an attorney for Earthjustice. "What this means is -- assuming it is upheld on appeal, if it is appealed -- that the roadless rule is the law of the land and beyond further legal challenges."
Alaska's lawsuit claimed that the Clinton rule is illegally restricting timber supplies, new mining jobs and development in Alaska (Greenwire, June 20, 2011). "Applying the roadless rule to national forest lands in Alaska diminishes jobs and hurts families, and removes local and regional management of the forests from the state, communities, residents and foresters," Gov. Sean Parnell (R) said in a statement at the time.
The state in 2011 also appealed an Anchorage district court's decision to invalidate the George W. Bush administration's decision to exempt Alaska's 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest from the national roadless rule (E&ENews PM, March 7, 2011). That case is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Today's ruling comes months after the Supreme Court said it would not review a separate decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in fall 2011 to uphold the Clinton rule (Greenwire, Oct. 1, 2012). The 10th Circuit had reversed U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer's finding that the nationwide rule had created de facto wilderness and violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
