Colorado’s revised state-specific roadless proposal, which the state filed with the Agriculture Department’s U.S. Forest Service earlier this month, would not block new oil and natural gas leasing in national forests of Colorado, but it would prohibit the construction of new roads to carry out these activities in the state’s national forests, according to a spokesman with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

“Industry did not indicate that roadless areas were a high priority for them,” said the DNR’s Theo Stein. Moreover, he said a lot of the Colorado areas rich with natural gas tend to be in the basins and not the national forests, which would be subject to the revised roadless proposal.

So far approximately 81 leases have been let on the Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre-Gunnison National Forest area, which takes up about 3.2 million acres on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, according to Stein.

The state’s proposed roadless rule also would allow the coal industry to build temporary and long-term temporary roads for mining facilities to vent methane in 20,000 acres of the 4.2 million acres of roadless national forest in Colorado.

In addition, Colorado proposes to set aside 8,250 acres for road building associated with the expansions of 11 ski slope areas, which intersect with parts of the state’s existing roadless inventory in the national forests.

“I believe our petition sets forth a management regime that is better for Colorado and better for our roadless areas than the 2001 Roadless Areas Conservation Rule and thus serves the national interest,” wrote Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The 2001 plan, promulgated by the Clinton administration, placed 58 million acres of public lands across the country off-limits to road building for economic activities, such as oil and gas drilling. The 2001 rule has been the target of a number of legal challenges (see Daily GPI, Aug. 14, 2008), with the latest coming from the Obama administration in August 2009. The case still is pending before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Wyoming.

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