The Bush Administration rewrote the rules and regulations that implement the laws that tell how national forest plans are to be done. The new regulations exempted the formation of new forest plans from NEPA (the most important forest decisions were regarded as not important enough to merit an environmental impact statement). The new rules reduced public participation and they also downgraded the standards for protecting wildlife.
Most folks I knew thought the new regs were clearly in conflict with the law, and a judge has set them aside. However, this leaves forest planning in kind of a limbo — another Bush Administration mess-up (can I say sort of like the Iraq failure, but applied to the national forests?).
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is President of the Western Watersheds Project.
