Earthjustice attorney Jim Angell told the Colorado Independent that last week’s decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting a 2008 Wyoming federal court decision and backing the Clinton rule undermines Colorado’s contention that it needs its own rule because of legal uncertainty.

“Really, for all intents and purposes this is the certainty we’re going to get in this region, and what’s really going on is the state [of Colorado] wants its rule and is using alleged legal uncertainty as an excuse for its continued support for it,” Angell said.

The proposed Colorado Roadless Rule, first floated in 2005 when the Bush administration set aside the Clinton rule and later allowed individual state rules for the management of roadless federal lands, contains too many road-building exemptions for logging, coal mining and oil and gas development, conservation groups contend. But Colorado has stayed the course because of various legal challenges to the 2001 Clinton rule.

“This ruling does not preclude further litigation, which could continue to create uncertainty,” Colorado Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Mike King said after last week’s appeals court decision. “As a result, we will continue working to finalize the Colorado rule so we can provide clear and appropriate direction on the management and protection of national forest roadless areas in Colorado.”

But Angell said very few legal options remain open.

“I suppose the other side can ask the entire court to take the case en banc or they can seek [U.S.} Supreme Court review, but given this opinion and the fact that it aligns perfectly with the Ninth Circuit review [in 2009], both of those are extreme long-shots,” Angell said. “But if that is really the certainty they wanted, then it would only be a short wait to resolve that process.”

There are 4.2 million acres of roadless federal lands in Colorado, and King says the Colorado rule is based in large part on the 2001 rule – with some key differences.

“Starting in 2005, Colorado has been engaged in an extensive public involvement process to develop consensus on a rule that makes sense for the various needs and uses of our forests while also finding ways to provide strong protection of these lands,” King said.

“That process has benefitted from updated backcountry inventories for true roadless characteristics, the identification of high-value fish and wildlife habitat, and developing narrowly-tailored accommodation of activities critical to local economies that also includes wildfire protection for mountain communities.”

The only other state to petition the federal government for a state-specific rulemaking process was Idaho. The Idaho rule has been finalized and put into place for management purposes but is being challenged on appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court.

Just under the wire, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., got her official comments in on the controversial Colorado Roadless Rule Thursday, sending them to the U.S. Forest Service in a letter copied to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell.

Rep. Diana DeGette

The Colorado Roadless Rule process, which began during the administration of Republican Gov. Bill Owens and the presidential administration of George Bush, has taken nearly six years. It’s meant as a state-specific alternative to the 2001 Clinton administration national roadless rule, which Bush set aside soon after taking office. The national rule has been tied up in various federal courts ever since.

The Colorado Roadless Rules dictates the management of approximately 4.2 million acres of inventoried roadless areas of federal land throughout Colorado. The latest draft, released in April, was immediately blasted by conservation groups for still containing too many road building exemptions for oil and gas drilling, coal mining, logging and ski area expansion. The 90-day comment window on the latest draft (pdf) is now closing.

The Colorado Deserves More campaign studied the latest draft and found that only 13 percent of Colorado’s roadless areas would receive “top-tier” protection compared to 30 percent in Idaho, the only other state to engage in the Bush administration’s state-specific roadless rule process for its federal lands.

Here’s DeGette’s entire comment letter:

July 14, 2011

Colorado Roadless Area Review Team

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service

Re: Submission of Comments on Proposed Colorado Roadless Rule and Revised Draft

Dear Colorado Roadless Area Review Team:

As a Member of the Colorado Congressional delegation with a particular interest in natural resources, I write to submit my comments on the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule. The Rule would impact 4.2 million acres of roadless national forest land in Colorado. These are our last remaining undeveloped forest lands which we depend on for critical wildlife habitat, clean air and recreational opportunities. Wildlife viewing and hunting and fishing are vital for Colorado’s tourism, one of our strongest economic engines.

As has consistently been my position, I do not believe Colorado needs a separate state-specific roadless rule since the 2001 Roadless Rule received unprecedented public comment and great support, here in Colorado and across the country. Since these are federal lands, they should be managed as other federal lands, with a consistency that gives certainty to all who use and enjoy them. Our Colorado forest lands also deserve the same level of protection as those across the country. Additionally, since there are local protections and flexibility built into the 2001 Roadless Rule, the Colorado plan is unnecessary.

The proposed alternative of the Colorado Roadless Rule falls short in several ways. It provides ‘upper tier’ protection to only 13% of Inventoried Roadless Areas even though over 65% of these areas are identified in the various alternatives for the ‘upper tier’ category. Also, the 13% of roadless lands in Alternative 2 are those that generally already enjoy the same protection under their current forest plan. It seems disingenuous to declare them ‘upper tier’ which does not add additional protection but only changes the administrative mechanism by which those protections can be changed. The ‘upper tier’ protections should be afforded to all the 2.8 million acres identified in the various alternatives.

In addition, it would allow oil and gas surface occupancy and linear construction zones even in the ‘upper tier’ lands. I urge you to prohibit both surface occupancy and linear construction zones in these critical areas. The majority of the Inventoried Roadless Areas (87%) face these threats as well as many other exceptions for special interests, such as oil and gas leasing and coal mining. These lands are vulnerable to development, road building and extraction.

Lastly, I am concerned about some of the proposed regulations that permit road building far from the nearest community for fuel reduction. We have limited dollars to deal with the threats of forest fire around these areas. Those limited dollars should be targeted to the areas closest to those communities rather than far into the backcountry.

I strongly urge you to provide Colorado roadless areas with the highest level of protection possible. Without strong rules to protect our fragile forest ecosystem it will be more vulnerable to threats such as climate change and insect and disease outbreaks. In 2010, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack pledged that the Colorado rule would be as protective or more protective than the 2001 Roadless Rule, the current proposal does not offer that level of protection.

Sincerely,

Diana DeGette

Member of Congress

Cc: USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack

USFS Chief Tom Tidwell

Wildfire season in Colorado’s super-saturated high country seems so far off, but the debate over thinning beetle-killed forests to reduce fire risk around mountain towns remains at the forefront of an ongoing campaign to further revise the Colorado Roadless Rule.

Colorado Deserves More, launched last week by a cadre of Colorado conservation groups, is aimed at getting the Obama administration to dramatically increase the amount of U.S. Forest Service land in Colorado that would receive “top-tier” roadless protection under the proposed Colorado rule, which would replace the Clinton administration’s 2001 Roadless Rule.

An analysis (pdf) by Colorado Deserves More – spearheaded by the Colorado Environmental Coalition, Colorado Wildlife Federation and Colorado Mountain Club – found that less than 13 percent (560,000 acres) of the state’s inventoried roadless Forest Service acreage would receive so-called “top-tier” protection. That’s compared to about 30 percent under a new roadless plan in Idaho.

The groups are worried there are too many road building exemptions for logging, energy infrastructure such as pipelines and power lines, ski area expansion and coal mining. They fear Colorado’s roadless federal lands will be less protected under the new Colorado rule than they would be under the old Clinton rule from 2001 and that the state’s $10 billion outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing and tourism industries will suffer as a result.

“Many of Colorado’s roadless areas contain world class climbing routes, hiking and biking trails, rivers, and backcountry ski and snowshoe destinations,” Bryan Martin of the Colorado Mountain Club said in a release. “The availability of high quality outdoor recreation opportunities is a major contributing factor to the quality of life in our state. Simply put, many of our members live and work in Colorado because of these recreational opportunities.”

The latest version of the rule (pdf), released last month, allows for temporary roads to be built up to a half mile into the national forest to thin beetle-kill stands around mountain communities. Thinning by crews on foot can then occur another mile into the forest. Critics say that’s way too far and completely unnecessary.

Dr. Barry Noon, a professor of wildlife biology at Colorado State University, participated in last week’s announcement of the Colorado Deserves More campaign. In past interviews with the Colorado Independent he’s argued against road-building exemptions for fuels mitigation so deep into the national forest.

“Localized treatment of bug-infested stands makes sense to me,” Noon said in an earlier interview. “What doesn’t make sense to us is the proposals to harvest bug-infested stands or thin them at broad spatial scales, and particularly if doing that requires the building of new roads. There is an extensive scientific literature documenting the negative effects of roads on ecosystems.”

Vail Fire Chief Mark Miller recently told the Colorado Independent that for the past five years he has had a crew thinning a 200 yards of “defensible space” around the ski town to give firefighters a place to battle any future wildfires. His crews have completed about 75 percent of that project using existing roads and never having to build any new roads to get to stands of dead trees.

“If there were roads dotted all over back in there, would that help us get in and help us access it? Certainly it would,” Miller said. “Do I think that’s a reason to have roads back in there? The answer is no, quite honestly.”

Miller, however, says he can see the argument from both sides.

“From a fire protection standpoint, if loggers can get in there and thin the forest, I think that is certainly a good reason to have the roads,” Miller said. “But I also know that with roads – and I’m not advocating recreational use or not in the forest – I’m just saying when you have roads, you have more people typically, which means susceptibility to fires, camp fires and that type of thing.”

Colorado Deserves More is hosting several events around the state even as the Forest Service is conducting open houses on the Colorado Roadless Rule. Tonight from 6-8 p.m. there will be a Denver Gallery Show photo exhibit at the American Mountaineering Museum in Golden.

Also tonight is a U.S. Forest Service open house from 6 to 8 p.m. in Steamboat Springs, followed by another Forest Service open house in Fort Collins from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday. The Forest Service is accepting public comments on the new draft of the Colorado Roadless Rule until July 14.

The State of Colorado and the U.S. Forest Service today announced yet another draft version of the controversial Colorado Roadless Rule (pdf) that has been hotly debated for nearly six years. Already environmental groups indicated the new draft rule falls short of protecting some of the state’s 4.2 million acres of roadless national forest land.

The release of today’s draft plan and draft environmental impact statement (pdf) starts the clock ticking on what may be the final 90-day public comment period after nearly five and a half years and more than 200,000 public comments. The Obama administration hopes to finalize the Colorado Rule by January of next year.

“We’re one step closer to actually having roadless protection in this state,” regional forester Rick Cables said on a conference call with reporters. “[This rule] provides for durable and contemporary roadless protection in Colorado and it allows for certain multiple uses and certain exemptions.”

Beetle kill trees near Breckenridge. (Hustvedt/Wikimedia Commons)

Cables said “a lot’s changed in the ensuing decade” since the Clinton administration introduced a national roadless rule designating higher levels of protection for 58 million acres of national forest in the United States. In Colorado, the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic has killed millions of acres of lodgepole pines in the state’s national forests. The Colorado Rule would allow temporary road building a half mile out and fuel mitigation (thinning) up to a mile and a half from threatened communities.

But conservation groups argue the Clinton Rule provides a higher level of protection and that pending litigation should be decided before the Obama administration moves forward with the Colorado Rule.

“The 2001 national roadless rule is the gold standard, and protects Colorado roadless areas now,” said Ted Zukoski, a Denver-based attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice.”The Obama administration promised the Colorado Rule would protect our remaining roadless forests as well as or better than the national rule. It doesn’t.”

The road building exemption to vent methane from expanded coal mines in the North Fork of the Gunnison area was defended by Cables as an important economic use that will sustain approximately 2,200 mining jobs in the state. Zukoski blasted that decision.

“The proposed Colorado Roadless Rule has damaging loopholes,” Zukoski said. “It will allow 20,000 acres of our state’s remaining wild forests to be scarred with bulldozers for coal mining, a dirty energy source. And it doesn’t end the threat of oil and gas leasing on leases pushed through by the Forest Service after 2001.”

The Bush administration quickly threw out the Clinton Roadless Rule early in 2001 and later set up a process whereby states could petition for individual roadless rules on federal lands. Only Idaho and Colorado, under then-Gov. Bill Owens, went down that road, starting a bipartisan task force process that resulted in the first Colorado Rule under Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration in 2008.

Meanwhile, various legal challenges to the Clinton Rule have been tied up in U.S. district courts for years, but the Forest Service allowed a number of oil and gas leases to go through after the Clinton Rule was thrown out. Mike King, head of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, said the fate of those leases is in the hands of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering a ruling by a Wyoming district court invalidating the 2001 Clinton Rule.

“We’ve been waiting on a decision from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Judge Bremmer’s decision out of Wyoming for quite some time … ,” King said, “and that really will determine what the status is of the [oil and gas] gap leases. Right now they’re just very much in limbo.”

All the more reason for the Obama administration to hold off, said Zukoski, who has been involved in litigation defending the national Clinton Rule in courtrooms around the western U.S.

“The Obama administration should not put forward a watered-down roadless rule for Colorado when the 10th Circuit could uphold the national rule here any day. We shouldn’t have to accept weaker protections for our roadless areas.”

However, King and Cables argued the Colorado Rule actually provides better protections for the state than the national rule, which is in legal limbo. This new draft includes so-called “upper tier” protections for more than 562,000 acres of the state’s overall 4.2-million acres of roadless inventory. Critics point out, however, that that’s a much lower percentage than the Idaho Rule, which has been approved and is in effect.

“Colorado’s national forest lands support some of the largest mule deer and elk herds in the nation, and we can’t afford to sell these backcountry areas short,” Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership field representative Nick Payne said in a release.

“Hunters and anglers urge the administration to carefully review the successful conservation outcome attained in the Idaho Roadless Rule, including the expansion of upper-tier roadless acreages valuable to big-game populations and fisheries, with the goal of reaching a similar conclusion in Colorado.”

Idaho designated about 30 percent of its roadless areas as upper tier, or upper theme, meaning they have higher levels of protections from future exemptions written into the rule. Colorado is proposing about 11 percent as upper tier.

“Idaho started from a different place,” King said. “Colorado has a long history of taking roadless areas and considering them for congressional designation as wilderness. Idaho has not done that, and so they had more raw inventory from which to begin work and that’s why, from a percentage basis, more of the most special places within roadless were eligible and probably appropriate for that upper tier, or their higher theme as they called it in Idaho.”

Jane Danowitz, director of the U.S. public lands program for the Pew Environment Group said her organization will work hard to make the current draft much better ahead of a final decision.

“The Obama administration has made some important improvements to the state’s initial plan but falls short in carrying out its commitment to protect all of Colorado’s national forests with a policy as strong as the 2001 Roadless Rule,” Danowitz said. “The plan protects a fraction of the forests in Colorado, leaving some of the state’s best backcountry vulnerable to increased road-building, expanded coal mining and new oil and gas development.”

“While the courts continue to wrestle with roadless policy, I will continue to work with the USDA Forest Service to ensure we protect roadless areas on our National Forests,” Vilsack said in a release. “Renewing this interim directive reflects President Obama’s commitment to protecting our forests by ensuring that all projects in roadless areas receive a higher level of scrutiny.”

Tom Vilsack

The roadless debate has been waged in courtrooms across the country virtually from the moment President Bill Clinton ordered sweeping protections for inventoried roadless areas toward the end of his administration. The Bush administration quickly tossed out the Clinton Roadless Rule and allowed states to petition for their own roadless rules.

Only Colorado and Idaho followed that path, with former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens initiating the Colorado Roadless Rule petition and current Gov. Bill Ritter continuing a course of action that actually protects more acreage than the original Clinton rule but, according to critics, allows too many exemptions for logging, coal mining and ski area expansion. Vilsack is currently considering the controversial Colorado Roadless Rule.

Vilsack first imposed a moratorium on road building last year, but earlier this month exempted 21 projects, including the Elk Creek coal mine near Paonia. By re-imposing the so-called “time out” on road building, it appears the West Elk coal mine, also on the North Fork of the Gunnison River near Paonia, will not receive an exemption to build roads for methane venting needed to expand operations – at least for another year. A West Elk representative could not provide comment Friday because of the upcoming holiday weekend.

Environmentalists, displeased with Vilsack’s recent road-building exemptions, were happy with his decision on Friday:

“The renewal of the time out directive is good news,” said Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Environment Group’s U.S. public lands program. “Today’s announcement is a welcome reaffirmation of a national policy that helps protect America’s most pristine forests.

“It also reflects the reality that the 1872 Mining Law leaves roadless forests and western water sources threatened by gold, uranium and other mining operations. Reform of the mining law is long overdue, and the Obama administration and Congress should make it a high priority.”

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The original petition was first drafted in 2006 and then analyzed in focus groups and meetings with stakeholders around the state for more than two years. Based on that input, a draft of how Colorado wants more than 4 million acres of largely roadless federal lands managed was released in August of last year.

Revisions since August include an “upper tier” of protection for more than 257,000 acres of particularly high-value public lands; a restriction of fuel-reduction projects around communities endangered by the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic to a half mile radius; a prohibition against road building for oil and gas leases; and a requirement that public land managers must consider impacts to native cutthroat trout when reviewing projects on more than 100,000 acres of roadless land.

“Gov. Bill Ritter made several key changes from the initial December 2006 petition and the August 2009 draft that make this proposal a good approach for our forests, and one that Environment Colorado supports,” Matt Garrington, program advocate with Environment Colorado, said in a release.

The Ritter administration opted to continue the petition process launched by Gov. Bill Owens when the Bush administration threw out the 2001 Clinton roadless rule and allowed states to draft their own rules. Idaho was the only other state that submitted a petition, and the “upper tier” concept was borrowed from that plan.

“This is simply a better rule for Colorado,” Ritter said in a release. “Our roadless areas will get stronger protections and we will get the targeted flexibility we need to address Colorado’s unique circumstances, such as the pine beetle epidemic, the ski industry and Western Slope coal mines.”

The Ritter administration also proceeded because of still-pending legal challenges to the original Clinton rule, which could leave Colorado with no protection at all. However, some scientists and conservationists still oppose the level of road-building exceptions that remain in the Colorado rule.

Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Environment Group’s U.S. public lands program, cited scientific support for the Clinton rule and expressed disappointment in the Obama administration’s support of the Colorado rule, particularly because of road-building exceptions for expansion of coal mines along the North Fork of the Gunnison.

“Governor Ritter’s proposal would allow major new mining and drilling activity in Colorado’s backcountry, threatening water quality, fish and wildlife habitat and sustainable economic growth,” she said in a release. “We hope the administration will reconsider this direction.”

The Pew Environment Group favors an overarching Clinton-style national rule to patchwork state regulation.

Even Garrington admitted the Colorado plan is unclear on the issue of so-called “gap leases” for oil and gas drilling that were approved in the period after the Clinton rule was tossed out by the Bush administration.

“The Colorado roadless rule is silent on the issue of leases issued between 2001 and the adoption of this rule,” Garrington said. “While we believe these leases to be illegal, the ability for the Ritter administration to address the gap leases within the context of a state petition is unclear.”

Environment Colorado wants Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to protect the roadless areas in those “gap leases” from road building activity.

Arguing against the Clinton rules is the state of Wyoming and several logging and mining industry representatives. They are defending a case they won in 2008 against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where Judge Clarence Brimmer of the U.S. District Court for Wyoming enjoined the Clinton rules.

“The court showed pretty strong skepticism for Wyoming’s claims, and every member of the court seemed to appreciate that there were significant differences between wilderness area management and management under the roadless rule,” Earthjustice attorney Jim Angell said.

“That undercuts Wyoming’s claim that this was a de facto wilderness designation, and the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] claims didn’t seem to capture the court’s attention either.”

The NEPA process provides for project-by-project public input during a federal review of logging, mining and other industrial uses on public lands. Wyoming officials claim that process is adequate to protect roadless areas from undue industrialization.

Soon after the Clinton rule went into effect in 2001, the Bush administration set it aside and later allowed for a state-by-state petition process, which only Idaho and Colorado engaged in.

Conservationists claim the Colorado rule, which is still being revised by Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration, allows far too many exceptions for logging, coal mining and ski-area expansion. They want the Obama administration to institute a comprehensive national rule like the Clinton rule that would override the pending Colorado rule.

Colorado officials want more say in how deeply into the national forest roads can be built for fuel-mitigation projects around mountain communities. The Colorado rule would allow such activity up to 1.5 miles into the forest to clear defensible space to fight wildfires in the wake of the ongoing mountain pine bark beetle epidemic.

“One of the judges had questions about the ability to which the Forest Service could fight beetle infestation under the rule, but there is an exception for that [already in the Clinton rule],” Angell said.

“Even to the extent that [the judges] have misgivings about the substance of the [Clinton] rule, it also seemed like they were appreciating that those are really largely the policy prerogatives of the administration and that that’s what we have elections for, and it’s not up to judge’s to throw out rules with which they might disagree.”

Earthjustice is representing 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.

The judges took all of Wednesday’s testimony under advisement and will issue a final decision sometime in the coming months. Earthjustice has promised to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if Brimmer’s decision is not overturned by the appeals court.

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“The Hidden Gems Wilderness Proposal would counteract the increasing pressures of extractive development and motorized use,” Ralston said Monday at a fly fishing outfitter in this mountain town at the base of Beaver Creek ski area. “It would protect our last remaining unspoiled places, while still permitting development and motors in places where they are appropriate.”

Proponents of Hidden Gems, which would protect as wilderness more than 400,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service and BLM land, point to Forest Service statistics they say show non-motorized users far outnumber motorized users in the state’s increasingly popular White River National Forest. Wilderness designation prohibits motorized and wheeled uses such as mountain biking, motorcycles, ATVs and snowmobiles.

Hikers, backpackers, climbers, kayakers, cross-country skiers and snowshoers outnumber motorized users by a 4-to-1 margin, according to 2007 user statistics compiled by the Forest Service. Downhill skiing and snowboarding at developed ski resorts, which are not in designated or proposed wilderness areas, are by far the most popular uses in the White River, but Hidden Gems backers exclude those statistics.

A political battle is shaping up over the proposal, which backers are shopping for congressional support. A group calling itself the White River Forest Alliance, comprised of motorized users, claims to have collected more than 700 signatures from people opposing the proposal, and a group called the Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association also opposes the plan, although it doesn’t want to be associated with motorized users.

According to the Aspen Times, the White River Forest Alliance backs the Forest Service finding that approximately 82,000 acres of the White River are suitable for wilderness designation. Representatives also say they would be more supportive if proponents were merely looking to block extractive industries such as mining and logging rather than broadly prohibit motorized recreation as well.

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Mountain bikers, snowmobilers, dirt bikers and other off-road enthusiasts have rallied to defeat or dramatically scale back the so-called Hidden Gems plan, which, if it can find a sponsor in Congress, could designate between 400,000 and 450,000 acres of the White River and Gunnison national forests as wilderness area. That designation prohibits all mechanized travel.

In an excellent primer on the topic in the Aspen Times today, veteran reporter Scott Condon spells out what’s at stake and who all the players are. The lead environmental group is the Aspen-based Wilderness Workshop, although several others are involved.

Opposition is coming from a group of off-road users called the White River Forest Alliance, and from a mountain-biking group called the Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association.

Impacted counties include Pitkin, Eagle, Garfield, Summit and Gunnison, and U.S. Rep. John Salazar, whose 3rd District includes Gunnison, Garfield and Pitkin counties, has said he needs to see broad-based local support from town councils and boards of county commissioners before he’ll considering sponsoring a bill. U.S. Rep. Jared Polis represents the 2nd District, which includes Eagle and Summit Counties.

While the U.S. Forest Service has previously identified 82,000 acres of the 2.3 million acre White River National Forest that should be protected as wilderness, Wilderness Workshop wants to see nearly five times the amount of acreage protected. Currently about 750,000 acres of the White River are designated wilderness.

President Obama, as both an Illinois senator and candidate for president in 2008, indicated he supported the highly protective roadless rule put in place by the Clinton administration but quickly tossed aside by the Bush administration in 2001.

But since taking the White House, Obama has yet to indicate whether he supports fully reinstating the Clinton rule, which placed widespread restrictions on road building and development on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land nationwide (including 4.4 million in Colorado).

“The administration’s move [Thursday] to join conservationists in defending the roadless rule marks an important step toward resolving the conflicts and patchwork approach that have hindered forest management for decades,” Jane Danowitz, Director of Pew Environment Group’s Public Lands Program, said in a release.

“We hope the action taken in federal court [Thursday] signals that the Obama administration intends to move quickly toward fulfilling its pledge to reinstate the roadless rule as the best policy to preserve pristine forestlands across the country, including Colorado.”

Colorado has been on its own path since Bush allowed states to petition for their own rule, but that lengthy process has been controversial in recent years, with conservationists charging the plan to protect 4.2 million acres of the state’s public lands contains too many exceptions for logging, energy development and ski-area expansion. The state maintains it needs the exceptions to reduce wildfire danger in the wake of a massive beetle-kill epidemic and to sustain certain industries key to Colorado’s economic future.

Just last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor of the 2001 roadless rule, but two previous rulings by the 10th Circuit Court found the rule violated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Now the Obama administration is poised to contest that finding.

And Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who in Denver Monday stopped short of endorsing the 2001 rule or criticizing the Colorado rule, made a major policy speech on national forests today in Washington State.

Vilsack reportedly did confirm the administration’s support for a strong national roadless rule in that speech.