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Bush delays roadless ban two months Declaration buoys local timber group Staff and wire reports The Bush administration on Monday delayed for two months a controversial ban on road-building into inventoried roadless areas of national forests. Timber and mining industries opposed the ban, which President Clinton announced Jan. 4. Environmental activists applauded it. The delay is in line with an order President Bush made on taking office last month to halt or slow down a series of regulations and rules that the Clinton administration issued in its final days. The forest restrictions were published in the Federal Register before Bush took office, so he can�t block or alter them without going through a new rule-making process. Monday�s action changes the plan�s effective date from March 13 to May 12. Under the plan, the U.S. Forest Service would ban road-building in 58.5 million acres of federal forests where no roads currently exist, including 9.3 million acres in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. In Oregon, nearly 2 million acres of inventoried roadless areas would be protected. That includes 81,417 acres in the 631,000-acre Rogue River forest and 287,063 acres in the 1.1 million-acre Siskiyou forest. The chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, has appealed to Bush to work with Congress on rolling back the plan. Several senators who are opposed to the plan have said they will use a never-invoked 1996 law that allows Congress to rescind a regulation within 60 days. But 2nd District Congressman Greg Walden, R-Hood River, a member of the Resource Committee, remains convinced it will be "politically difficult" for Congress to make those changes, said Jeff Eager, Walden�s press secretary. However, that doesn�t preclude President Bush from making those changes, albeit he would go through a lengthy administrative process, Eager observed. Meanwhile, the delay is good news to the timber industry, said Dave Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "We would encourage Representative Hansen to investigate opportunities for modifying or withdrawing the roadless proposal," he said. "We�ve felt all along that it was excessive in nature. It�s not in the best interest of sustainable management and healthy forests in Southern Oregon and the Pacific Northwest." In addition to the roadless package, the industry has also been concerned about an administrative directive Clinton signed into law on Jan. 19 � the day before he left office. The directive requires firms to get a permit from either the National Marine Fisheries Service or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when using roads on federal lands to reach a logging operation on private land � if there is any potential impact on endangered species, Hill said. "The road access issue has a more direct impact, but the roadless initiative is a timber supply issue as well as an environmental concern relative to wildlife and disease in the forest," he said. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.