To the delight of all Muirists, a federal appeals court ruled on October 20th that, in effect, it should stay that way.The row dates from 2001 when Bill Clinton, during his last days in office, signed an order banning road-building in the area, which represents a third of America's total national forest land.
Then his secretary of agriculture, Ann M. Veneman, suspended a regulation banning roads in many roadless areas of our national forests.
The city will ban road construction in Midtown from Aug. 16 to Sept. 3.
The rules would ban road building and most timber cutting in the areas, but in practice their effect would reach much further, effectively barring most off-road vehicles and new oil, gas and mining operations.
Why do so many people still want to come here?" Under the president's plan, the Forest Service would ban road building in areas of the national forests where there are currently no roads.
They have also urged that Mr. Clinton's plan to ban road building in virtually all of the unprotected roadless areas of the national forests, about 43 million acres, be put on hold.
Among major rulings still being reviewed by the White House six weeks into Mr. Bush's term is one that would permanently ban road building on about 60 million acres of national forest land, a move supported by environmentalists as a barrier to development of about one-third of forest land.
And didn't the house add an amendment to the Act in 2007 to specifically ban road construction in the Tongass forest?
The rule banned road-building in nearly 60 million acres of national forest, about the land mass of New York and Pennsylvania combined.
By the fall of 2001, Bush had moved to reverse Clinton policies that banned road-building in national forests, limited mining on public lands, closed off wetlands to developers, and increased energy-efficiency standards.
