A decade after the federal government proposed a ban on new roads on millions of acres of public land across the country, the future of those lands — including those in the White River National Forest — remain in question. Environmentalists worry rules proposed by the state to safeguard those landscapes could backfire and give them second-class protection.

The federal regulations that ban new roads are under fire in the courts. The state’s alternative is in the works, and although it was submitted by the former governor, Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration is largely standing behind it. And with the clock ticking on the Bush administration, a new president could enter the Oval Office with very different ideas about protecting roadless lands.

“The original roadless rule is the one that offers the appropriate protection for Colorado’s roadless areas,” said Pete Kolbenschlag, coordinator for Colorado’s Forest Legacy, a conservation group. “We’re concerned because now only Colorado and Idaho are going to have standards that are weaker than the standards on all other national forests across the country. Even though the overwhelming sentiment in public comments was for strong roadless protection, if the rulemaking goes through we’ll end up with weaker protection.”

The Clinton administration announced its plans to ban new roads in roadless areas in January 1998, but the rules didn’t go into effect until the last days of the administration in January 2001.

When President Bush took office, he stripped away those rules, offering instead to allow states to petition to establish their own rules for protecting roadless lands in their boundaries.

Colorado, like states across the West with sizable tracts of roadless lands, embarked on public hearings to determine what kind of protection residents wanted for these lands. Coloradans weighed strongly in favor of roadless protections, and a task force comprised of industry and environmental groups came to broad agreement. Then-Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, offered a proposal that called for broad roadless protections, with some key exceptions for uses like grazing, ski areas and coal mines.

“At the time that the task force convened and the governor offered the recommendations, it was the only option,” said Steve Smith, assistant regional director for the Wilderness Society. “It was the only means the citizens or the state could get protections on roadless areas.”

That plan largely has been backed by Ritter, a Democrat, and it’s in the midst of a federal rulemaking process. A scoping period ends Feb. 25. Federal officials hope to finish the process by the end of the year, before a new administration takes office.

After the plan was proposed, though, a federal court in California ruled the Bush administration’s removal of the 2001 roadless protections violated environmental laws, and it reinstated them. They’re being challenged in federal court in Wyoming, but in the meantime, they’re the law of the land.

Enviros wishing
That has environmentalists wishing the Ritter administration would drop its petition to institute its own rules, which are weaker than the federal ones, or change it to mirror the 2001 rules.

“The language in the petition is so full of loopholes and vagueness that there’s a lot of room for mischief,” said Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop.

Among the 58.5 million acres of roadless lands across the country are some 4.4 million acres in Colorado and 700,000 acres on the White River National Forest. Those include some of the most prized landscapes in the forest not protected as wilderness, including Hay Park, along the flanks of Mount Sopris; Grizzly Creek, which provides Glenwood Springs’ water supply; the gorge of Deep Creek in the Flat Tops and massive acreage surrounding Thompson Creek, west of Carbondale. It includes popular playgrounds like Smuggler Mountain and Basalt Mountain, sweeping aspen groves, vast wildlife habitat and critical migration corridors.

Some of those lands, especially those around Thompson Creek, are threatened by burgeoning oil and gas development and pipelines. Shoemaker worries the state rules are too vague to bar new roads to oil and gas wells, and that other measures make it easier to cut roads into untracked territory. According to the state proposal, roads would be allowed within ski area boundaries, and it would be easier to build them for grazing, timber, mining and other uses.

“It weakens roadless area protection and it makes Colorado a second-tier state to the rest of the nation,” he said.

Most states
While most states backed off their own calls for roadless protections when the 2001 rules were reinstated, Colorado and Idaho went forward with theirs. When Ritter took office, he continued Colorado’s petition.

“This is an insurance policy for the state, should the rule be overturned,” said Paul Orbuch, assistant director of the state Department of Natural Resources.

Ritter has made some changes to the petition, Orbuch said. Rather than removing acreage from the roadless inventory for ski areas and mining operations, Ritter has asked to give the state a role in evaluating the appropriateness of those operations.

Ritter has expressed support for roadless protections. He has sought to keep the state’s alternative in place, Orbuch said, in case the federal rules are stripped away again.

“Right now the Clinton rule is in effect, which is pretty restrictive, so those prohibitions are on the books right now,” he said. “Should that rule get overturned, which could happen anytime the way things go, the state would have to give its permission for any activities in roadless areas.”

Environmentalists worry that when the state’s rules go into effect, though, rules meant to safeguard roadless lands will instead leave them more vulnerable.
“The outcome we’d like to see is protected roadless areas,” Shoemaker said. “Right now, the best way to do that is the 2001 rule.”

dfrey@aspendailynews.com