For years, the Bush administration has been trying to change fundamentally the way our nation's public forests are managed, by promoting more logging and clear cutting and less protection for wildlife and water resources and by trying to minimize public participation and prevent analysis of harmful environmental impacts in the forest planning process. In 2005, the administration published new regulations that would seriously weaken safeguards for our national forests, places that millions of Americans treasure and enjoy.

The changes gutted the intent of the National Forest Management Act, the primary law that governs and protects our 191-million-acre National Forest System. As Earthjustice attorney Trent Orr has said, "The national forest planning rules are like the Constitution for our national forests, and the Bush administration tried to throw out the Bill of Rights."

These changes were not only a step backward for our public forests, they were also illegal. In March of this year, a federal judge agreed with Earthjustice and found that the administration bypassed legally required environmental reviews, endangered species protections, and public involvement requirements when making the rule change. The court said the Forest Service had to go back to the drawing board, and issue a new rule in compliance with the law.

That "new" rule was announced in August -- but it's no different. Rather than proposing an improved rule, the Forest Service has essentially proposed the inadequate 2005 regulations all over again. Like the old version, this rule would eliminate mandatory protections for wildlife and clean water and restraints on clear-cutting and unfairly limit public participation in the planning process. Once again, the administration has chosen to ignore the public, the courts, and the law and is trying to undermine much needed protections for our national forests. Specifically, it seeks to:

• Completely scrap a key requirement to maintain viable wildlife populations in the national forests, a protection that has been in place since the Reagan administration;
• Remove important protections that limit clear cutting, one of the central goals of the original 1976 National Forest Management Act;
• Eliminate critical safeguards for water quality and watersheds from timber harvesting, road-building, and other activities that can damage aquatic habitats and community water supplies; and
• Make it more difficult for the public to participate meaningfully in planning about the future of our national forests, which belong to all Americans.
• Prevent the negative impacts of forest plan revisions from being publicly analyzed and reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act by categorically excluding those plans from this bedrock environmental law.

This is the Bush administration's latest attempt to undermine environmental protections of the National Forest System, and open federal lands to more logging and other extractive activities. Instead of removing protections for our public forest system, the Forest Service should listen to the courts and the public and continue to implement the regulations published back in 1982, which successfully guided forest management on federal lands for over two decades.

This could be our last chance to ask the Forest Service not to finalize this weak and dangerous regulation, and instead to embrace the 1982 regulations that have been protecting forests, wildlife, and clean water for so long. We need to let the agency know that the public will not accept this standardless excuse for a forest management rule!

The deadline for comments is October 22.

If you would like to send your comments by mail, please send them to:

Planning Rule Comments
P.O. Box 162969
Sacramento, CA 95816-2969