WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, September 20, 2006
District Court Ruling on State Petitions for Inventoried Roadless Area Management Rule

A California District Judge has ruled that the State Petitions Rule, which the Bush administration used to replace the landmark Roadless Area Conservation Rule, was adopted without the necessary environmental analysis
Contact: US District Court

A California District Judge ruled that the State Petitions Rule, which the Bush administration used to replace the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, was adopted without environmental analysis under NEPA or consultation under ESA about potentially affected endangered or threatened species. The StatePetitions Rule eliminated the uniform national protections of roadless areas from road construction and reconstruction and timber harvesting, reverting to the prior regime of forest-by-forest plans, but adding an optional state-by-state petitioning process to alter the level of protection of roadless areaswithin individual state borders from that afforded by the forest plans.

Plaintiffs’ primary arguments are that the State Petitions Rule effected a substantive repeal of the nationwide protections of the Roadless Rule, replacing the Roadless Rule with a less environmentally protective, more localized approach, thereby triggering the requirement for environmental analysis under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and consultation under the Endangered Species Act. Plaintiffs argue that the Forest Service was required to engage in a programmatic NEPA analysis and ESA consultation to validly promulgate the State Petitions Rule, and cannot postpone that analysis for the two to three years or more that it has and will take for some states to petition and, if their petitions are accepted, go through the process of rulemaking. Further, Plaintiffs point out that the forest plans will continue to govern in lieu of the Roadless Rule’s protections for those states which choose not to petition, so there will never be any programmatic analysis under NEPA or ESA of the impact in some states of the shift from the protections of the Roadless Rule and the moratorium on road construction and timber harvesting which preceded it, to individual forest plans. Plaintiffs contend that because some states seek to restore those protections while others do not, as shown by the opposing positions of states involved in this litigation, the outcome of the lengthy petitioning process will be a more fragmented, less protective regime for roadless areas than the nationwide approach in the Roadless Rule. Plaintiffs also argue that the Forest Service failed to provide a reasoned explanation for revoking the old rule in favor of the new one as required under the Administrative Procedures Act.

View the court's ruling (PDF)