White House seeks to scuttle Clinton ban on logging, roads

WASHINGTON -- The White House has instructed the Justice Department to research ways to scuttle a Clinton administration regulation protecting 60 million acres of national forests from logging and road-building, sources said Wednesday. The move is the clearest sign yet that President Bush will oppose the measure.

The administration has until late next week to file a brief with U.S. District Court in Boise, Idaho, declaring whether it intends to support the U.S. Forest Service regulation that was announced by President Bill Clinton on Jan. 5. It was among scores of Clinton rules and orders that Bush put on hold after taking office and is the subject of a federal suit brought by the timber industry and the states of Idaho, Utah and Alaska.

According to the sources, high-ranking White House policy officials instructed Justice Department lawyers to find a way to set aside the regulation until the administration can produce either a less restrictive proposal or eliminate the rule entirely. The lawyers were asked "to see if they can make this work legally," explained one administration source.

White House spokewoman Claire Buchan said that "we have not finalized our decision" but that the administration "is committed to providing protection in roadless areas" of national forests.

Kevin Herglotz, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said the department was still conferring with industry and environmental groups in attempting to reach a final decision. "It's important to note that we are still in the process of listening," he said.

The regulation was one of the most far reaching of Clinton's environmental initiatives and would protect more than a quarter of federal forests -- including large tracts of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the largest temperate rain forest in the United States -- from most commercial logging and new road construction.

Environmental groups hailed the rule as a major breakthrough in preserving wildnerness covering an area more than seven times the size of Maryland.

However, a timber industry spokesman said the rule would discourage proper forest management needed to avert a repeat of last summer's devastating wildfires in the Northwest. Alaska lawmakers charged that Clinton broke a promise to exclude the Tongass forest from the edict.

Some Bush administration and state officials, as well as the timber industry, contend that Clinton rushed to put the regulation in place before leaving office. Environmental groups note, however, that the Forest Service held extensive public hearings for well over a year on the proposal in which it recorded 1.6 million public comments.

"At the same time they contend the process didn't have enough public input, they're working to torpedo the rule in the backroom," said Niel Lawrence of the Natural Resources Defense Council.