A group of environmental organizations has filed an appeal challenging a federal judge’s ruling against the Clinton administration-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule (RACR), saying it does not believe RACR was illegally promulgated. If it stands, the decision could open millions of acres of western land to development.

In an appeal in the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, the Wyoming Outdoor Council, The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Pacific Rivers Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Audubon Society and Defenders of Wildlife asked for a prohibition on road building and other development in RACR-covered areas while the issue works its way through the courts.

In a 102-page opinion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, Judge Clarence A. Brimmer wrote that the U.S. Forest Service promulgated RACR “in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Wilderness Act (see Daily GPI, Aug. 14).

In January the state of Wyoming challenged the Forest Service’s 2001 adoption of RACR, a nationwide prohibition on road construction and timber harvesting in federal roadless areas. In his decision Brimmer agreed with the state’s argument that RACR would increase the risk of environmental harm to thousands of acres of state forest land adjacent to or intermingled with federal lands protected by RACR.

It was Wyoming’s second successful court challenge to the adoption of RACR. The state filed a similar complaint in the same court in May 2001; two years later the court ruled that RACR was promulgated in violation of NEPA and the Wilderness Act, and ordered RACR permanently enjoined. An appeals court later held that case moot because the Forest Service had adopted the State Petitions Rule, which superseded RACR. In October 2006 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found the State Petitions Rule was itself in violation of NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act and “surreptitiously reinstituted” RACR, Brimmer wrote in his opinion.

To protect Forest Service roadless areas and restrict swaths of land from development, the Clinton administration enacted the RACR, which created de facto wilderness by prohibiting road building, logging and other development activities — such as oil and natural gas drilling — on about one-third of Forest Service lands. The rule was enacted in 66 Code of Federal Regulations 3244 in early 2001.

In 2005 the Bush administration finalized the RACR, adding language that allowed individual states to petition the Forest Service regarding the nature of development to occur on inventoried roadless areas, a necessary prerequisite for energy development and other commercial activities. That move faced a barrage of legal challenges. In response to one lawsuit filed by four states and about 20 groups, a federal judge in San Francisco in 2006 voided the Bush administration’s petition process and restored the Clinton-era RACR (see Daily GPI, Sept. 21, 2006).

In June a federal appeals court issued a temporary injunction to halt construction of the 25.5-mile Bull Mountain Pipeline in western Colorado by SG Interests after a coalition of conservation groups challenged the pipeline and the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) decision to allow it — a decision the coalition said violated RACR (see Daily GPI, June 10; March 7). Later that month the same court lifted the injunction (see Daily GPI, June 23).

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