Opportunity knocks us out

The Shrub team, jumping on an opportunity provided by a 2003 decision in a federal district court in Wyoming,

moved Thursday to open up nearly a third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures[, AP said on Thursday].

The 58.5 million acres involved, mainly in Alaska and in western states, had been put off limits to development by former President Clinton, eight days before he left office in January 2001.

The Clinton-era rule was overturned in that 2003 decision. That, the Forest Service claims, is what prompted the new rule, which it says "helps us to move forward with a policy that is not clouded by legal uncertainty." A single district court ruling, now under appeal to the 10th Circuit Court, hardly constitutes a "cloud of legal uncertainty," particularly since an earlier challenge in Idaho was shot down by the 9th Circuit Court. Moreover, it's unlikely to be coincidence that the proposed new rule was announced the day after the 10th Circuit Court heard arguments on the case.

"[T]his is an effort to rush this rule through before the 10th Circuit can reverse that Wyoming judge, just like the 9th Circuit did before," [Jim Angell, an attorney with the Denver-based Earthjustice law firm,] said. "It's incredibly cynical of them to use that judge's ruling as an excuse."

Cynicism, of course, is one quality that has never been in short supply among the Bushites. I'll leave the last word to Robert Vandermark, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign.

"Yesterday, nearly 60 million acres of national forests were protected and today as a result of deliberate action by the administration they are not. ... The Bush administration plan is a 'leave no tree behind' policy that paves the way for increased logging, drilling and mining in some of our last wild areas."

"I know he'd be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly" over "green, dark forest too silent to be real."