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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 8, 2007
Contact:
Paul Hughes, (415) 974-4201; paul@forestsforever.org
Marc Lecard, (415) 974-4202; marc@forestsforever.org
Final
judgment issued in roadless lawsuit
Federal court restores the original roadless rule
San Francisco – Federal District Court Judge Elizabeth
Laporte yesterday issued her final injunction order and judgment
in the lawsuit to overturn the repeal of the roadless rule. This
confirms her earlier order reinstating the original Roadless Area
Conservation Rule.
The judge’s ruling declares the May 2005 repeal of the roadless
rule to be illegal, and halts the state petition process instituted
by the Bush administration.
This ruling means that the original roadless rule is now the law
of the land. The U.S. Forest Service may not authorize any projects
in roadless areas that would have been forbidden by the original
rule.
The final ruling also marks the start of the appeals period. The
Forest Service now has 60 days to file an appeal. Attorneys in the
case expect that the administration will appeal the ruling.
“Even though the fight to restore the roadless rule is not
over,” said Paul Hughes, executive director of Forests Forever,
“this ruling has given us the relief we sought– the
restoration of the original rule that protects nearly 60 million
acres of roadless federal forest.”
(The Tongass amendment to the roadless rule, however, was upheld
by the ruling, which means that Alaska’s Tongass National
Forest is still subject to logging and roadbuilding in its roadless
areas.)
Twenty
conservation groups, including Forests Forever, filed a lawsuit
last October seeking to overturn the Bush administration’s
repeal of the original Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Earlier,
in August 2005, the attorneys general of California, New Mexico
and Oregon had filed a similar lawsuit. Both suits asked the court
to reinstate the original roadless rule.
In September, Judge Laporte ruled that the Forest Service had acted
illegally by repealing the original roadless rule without conducting
an environmental review as required by the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA), and for failing to consult with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service,
as required under the Endangered Species Act.
Laporte’s final injunction applies from the roadless rule's
effective date of January 12, 2001.
The Forest Service had argued that drilling on oil and gas leases
that had been granted on federal land in Idaho should be allowed
to proceed, since the leases were issued before the court’s
reinstatement of the original rule. Laporte’s final ruling
means that no drilling or roadbuilding can take place on these projects.
The injunction also specifically halted a road-building project
in Salmon-Challis National Forest, Idaho, that had been approved
prior to Laporte’s earlier ruling.
“Forests Forever has fought to restore the roadless rule for
three years,” Hughes said. “Now that the original, protective
rule is back in force, we intend to see that it stays that way.”
For more information on the Roadless Rule and its repeal, please
visit www.earthjustice.org/campaign/display.html?ID=4.
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