FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Conservation Groups Battling New Roadless Rollback

Ruling would open 650,000 acres on White River National Forest

In a move with national implications, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth directed the agency to roll back protections for roadless areas and fragile alpine tundra on the White River National Forest because they conflict with potential expansion plans by the ski industry. Local and regional conservation groups are fighting to reverse the directive.

Local and regional conservation groups are fighting to reverse a Bush-administration directive to scrap protections for roadless areas and fragile alpine tundra on the White River National Forest.

In a move with national implications, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth has directed the Forest to roll back the forest-wide guidelines because they conflict with potential expansion plans by the ski industry.

Last week the White River National Forest closed a 15-day "scoping" period in which it sought public comments on how to implement Bosworth’s order.

In their official comments, the groups, led by the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, urge the Forest Service to simply modify the roadless and alpine protections to avoid conflicts with ski areas, rather than eliminating them across the board.

"The Chief's solution is way out of proportion to the supposed problem," said Wilderness Workshop executive director Sloan Shoemaker. "It’s a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water."

He noted that Bosworth is proposing to do away with roadless guidelines on nearly 650,000 acres – the entire White River National Forest – in order to fix a minor policy inconsistency that affects only about 3,725 acres adjacent to a few ski areas.

The Sierra Club called it a discrete problem deserving of a discrete solution. "Once again the Bush administration’s top forest officials are using a sledgehammer when all they need is a scalpel," said Adriana Raudzens, the Sierra Club’s Colorado representative.

Bosworth's ruling is part of a growing trend of anti-environmental interventions by the Bush administration and its political appointees on behalf of industry.

In February, Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary David Tenny created a furor when he ordered the White River National Forest to eliminate protections for lynx habitat, an action that was widely seen as having been at the behest of the ski industry.

And in May, the Bush administration severely weakened the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the policy that governs the development of 59 million roadless acres nationwide.

Bosworth issued this latest ruling, which affects only the White River National Forest, in response to an appeal to the Forest’s 2002 Revised Management Plan filed by Vail Associates, Copper Mountain and Colorado Ski Country USA.

The 2002 plan established the roadless-area guidelines, which state that the Forest "should emphasize long-term maintenance of roadless characteristics" in those areas to preserve wildlife habitat and promote healthy ecosystems.

"People love that roadless lands on the White River National Forest are wild and healthy," observed Jacob Smith, Executive Director of Center for Native Ecosystems. "We have a responsibility to protect these special lands."

Bosworth's ruling, while arcane, could have national implications. Citizen organizations are concerned that it would further embolden political appointees to gut broad conservation policies anytime they conflict with localized development interests.

Joining the Wilderness Workshop in opposing the proposed changes are Colorado Wild, Center for Native Ecosystems, the Colorado Mountain Club, the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, the White River Conservation Project and the regional offices of the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club.

The groups also expressed dismay that the public had been given only 15 days in which to respond.

"In light of all the work Coloradans put in on the development of the White River Forest Plan, it's a disservice and undemocratic to give them only two weeks to make sense of this proposal," Shoemaker noted.

"The Forest Service shouldn’t be dismantling important protections that the public clamored for in the Forest Plan in the first place – and certainly shouldn’t be doing it with without providing the public ample time to weigh the implications."

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