NYT: Administration Overhauls Rules for U.S. Forests

[Osamasux]

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: December 23, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 -The Bush administration issued broad new rules Wednesday overhauling the guidelines for managing the nation's 155 national forests and making it easier for regional forest managers to decide whether to allow logging, drilling or off-road vehicles.

The long-awaited rules relax longstanding provisions on environmental reviews and the protection of wildlife on 191 million acres of national forest and grasslands. They also cut back on requirements for public participation in forest planning decisions.

SNIP

Environmental groups charged that the new rules pare down protection for native animals and plants to the point of irrelevance. These protections were a hallmark of the 1976 National Forest Management Act.

"The new planning regulations offer little in the way of planning and nothing in the way of regulation," the conservation group Trout Unlimited said in a prepared statement.

Martin Hayden, a lawyer with Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm affiliated with the Sierra Club, accused the administration of watering down protections "that are about fish and wildlife, that are about public participation, or about forcing the agency to do anything other than what the agency wants to do. What you are left with is things that are geared toward getting the sticks out."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/politics/23forest.html?hp&ex=1103778000&en=5915843dc4fea9cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[roguevalley]

1. I wish God would come down here with a big shoe.

[rodeodance]

2. and maybe the forest faire can sprinkle some "dust" on these people

[DeepModem Mom]

3. This is a page-one story of enormous significance --

it is this kind of irreversible action by the Bush cabal that is the most disturbing.

[maddezmom]

4. duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1092069&mesg_id=1092069