Sacramento Bee - Editorial
A victory for forests: Court sends planning back to square one
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Every 15 years, the U.S. Forest Service prepares a long-term plan for each national forest. It's no easy task.
Each long-term plan must balance numerous economic and environmental factors: recreation, timber, grazing, protection of rivers and streams, wildlife habitat, wilderness and other uses. Any particular project proposed for a national forest is governed by the forest's long-term plan.
Since bipartisan passage of the National Forest Management Act in 1976, forest plans have been prepared with public participation and environmental review. The Bush administration, however, rewrote the rules in 2005 to weaken or eliminate these important elements.
California, which has 18 national forests, and environmental groups objected to the Bush rules. They took the issue to federal court, where they won an important victory last Friday. A federal judge ruled that the Bush administration illegally changed forest planning rules without required environmental reviews or public comment.
The Bush rules are kaput, and the effect is immediate. About half of the nation's forests had begun or were about to begin revising their forest plans. In the Sierra Nevada, for example, Lake Tahoe Basin had just gotten started. Friday's decision means these planning efforts will have to be put on hold -- or the Forest Service will have to go back to pre-Bush rules, which would be a good thing.
To avoid confusion over what forest planning rules should apply now, Congress should pass legislation directing the Forest Service to return to Reagan-era rules from 1982. That gives President Bush, or the next president, time to do the update process right. Though Reagan's 1982 rules certainly need updating, they're a whole lot better than the Bush rules just overturned by the federal court.