California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Patricia Madrid, Attorney General of New Mexico joined Oregon Governor Ted Kulongsoki in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California against the U.S. Forest Service to restore protection for wild forests in their states.

Several national environmental groups are supporting the move, and Outdoor Industry Association has been active in fighting the repeal if the original roadless rule. Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director stated, “These states recognize that under the administration’s 2005 Roadless Rule, the Federal government is shirking its responsibility to protect America's few remaining roadless areas. These are areas of national significance and they deserve a single, nation-wide policy to protect them–not a piecemeal state-by-state approach.

The original Roadless Rule was the product of exhaustive studies and scientific, economic and public input, including 600 public meetings. Unprecedented in its overwhelming popularity, the rule garnered 10 times more public comments than any federal rule in history.”

On May 13, 2005, the Bush administration repealed the roadless rule, a wide-ranging regulation issued under President Clinton that prohibits road-building and logging in large, currently roadless areas of the National Forest System. The Bush administration replaced Clinton’s rule with a controversial regulation that requires states to work with the U.S. Forest Service to determine the fate of individual forests rather than managing forests as a whole.

The California attorney general made it clear that he sees more value in recreation than extractive industries. “Road-building simply paves the way for logging, mining and other kinds of resource extraction. Far too much of our national forests have been trammeled and overlogged because of the maze of logging roads that have been bulldozed over the years by timber companies,” said Lockyer. “I am filing this lawsuit because the Bush Administration is putting at risk some of the last, most pristine portions of America’s national forests.”

In the complaint, the attorneys general point out that the original rule was designed to protect the remaining roadless areas in the U.S. These areas only account for 2% of the Nation’s current landmass. The suit also points out that the roadless rule was originally implemented following an extensive public comment process and environmental analysis required under the National Environmental Protection Act. The repeal of the roadless rule was conducted without any NEPA-required analysis.