The Wilderness Society and four other environmental groups filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court challenging the Idaho Roadless Rule.

The groups say the Forest Service violated laws to remove protection for 400,000 acres of Idaho roadless lands and to weaken protection for an additional 5 million acres of pristine Idaho lands. The rule, drafted by Idaho and championed by then governor now Sen. Jim Risch had support from Trout Unlimited and the Idaho Conservation League.

“Idaho should not be the only state in the lower 48 to have roadless forest protection downgraded by the Bush Administration, ” said Craig Gehrke, regional director in Idaho for The Wilderness Society. “The people we represent who care about public land want all of Idaho’s best forests to get the same protection as the rest of the country, and they want environmental laws to be followed.”

The Idaho rule designates 250 roadless areas and establishes five management themes that guide road construction, timber cutting and mineral development. It supersedes the 2001 roadless rule that has spawned 10 lawsuits. The most recent decision by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer, tossed the Clinton rule for the second time except in the 9th Circuit area that includes Idaho, the coast, Alaska, Montana Nevada and Arizona.

The lawsuit presents a new challenge for the incoming Obama Administration. Bill Ritter, the Democratic governor of Colorado, is working on his own roadless plan based on the same legal view the Idaho rule was approved with. There are almost no new road projects planned by the Forest Service into roadless areas.

Idaho Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick called Risch this morning to assure him he supports the plan as he did throughout his campaign. Minnick used to be on the governing board of the Wilderness Society but has long supported collaborative efforts to resolve land conflicts.

What is also ironic is the Gehrke was the leading environmentalist pushing the Owyhee Canyonlands collaborative effort that result in Sen. Mike Crapo's bill that passed the Senate Thursday. Gehrke stood up courageously to stand by ranchers and Owyhee County residents when other environmentalists sought to kill the bill.

Now I advise him to avoid Senator Risch's office for a while.

Idaho has more roadless national forest lands than any other state, except Alaska. The final Idaho rule went into effect Oct. 16, 2008. Only Idaho adopted a state roadless plan during the Bush administration. The suit was filed by The Wilderness Society, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and The Lands Council. The groups are represented by EarthJustice.

The Idaho rule replaced President Bill Clinton’s 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, adopted to protect more than 58 million acres in 39 states.
The lawsuit takes the same throw everything at the wall approach that the state of Idaho used when tried unsuccessfully to stop the Clinton rule in 2001. The groups suing claim the U.S. Forest Service broke a variety of laws by:

--Removing protection on 400,000 roadless acres, to allow logging, phosphate mining and road building, without specific environmental effects analysis – to examine effects on water quality, wildlife and other resources – under the National Environmental Policy Act;

--Overriding local forest plans drafted under the National Forest Management Act, to remove protections on 13,000 acres recommended for wilderness and to prohibit any additional, future recommendations for wilderness in forest plans;

--Weakening protections for woodland caribou, salmon, steelhead, bull trout and grizzly bears listed under the Endangered Species Act, and putting sensitive species such as Yellowstone and Bonneville cutthroat trout at high risk.

--Creating additional exceptions to allow road building and logging within the 5 million acres to be classified as “backcountry.”