Udall seeks lower timber sale rates on federal lands to save struggling Colorado sawmills

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., on Tuesday urged the head of the U.S. Forest Service and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to rework timber sale contracts for logging on federal lands so that three financially struggling Colorado sawmills can stay afloat.

Roads required for battling beetle kill epidemic, but is it worth it?

One of the biggest loopholes conservationists want closed in Colorado’s revised roadless rule released by the state Monday is an exception for logging roads up to 1.5 miles into the national forest around communities threatened by wildfire in the wake…

Roadless rule hurtling down Bush fast-track

The Bush administration appears to be charging even harder down the road to a new Colorado roadless rule despite a meeting of a U.S. Forest Service advisory group in Washington earlier this month that revealed numerous problems with the plan.

This is the Bush administration’s last chance to implement its vision of how to administer pristine forest and park land. While in the Senate, President-elect Obama opposed the Bush administration’s plans for roadless areas.

Roadless areas come under threat in Bush’s waning days

The battle over management of Colorado’s 4.4 million acres has abruptly intensified, after years of federal intervention, state resistance and legal wrangling dating back to the final days of the Clinton administration.

At stake, according to a coalition of environmental groups fighting to protect roadless areas, is whether wide swaths of relatively unscathed national forest will be made more accessible to motorized vehicles, allowing incursion by logging companies, oil and gas drilling, construction of water pipelines and power transmission lines, and expansion by the state’s ski industry.