The New York Times
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Nearing a Forest Legacy

January 8, 2001

President Clinton is moving briskly in his final weeks to add to his already admirable record as an environmentalist. On Friday came what may be his biggest conservation achievement, an order putting nearly one-third of the nation's forest land permanently off limits to road-building and logging.

The plan has provoked angry criticism from the timber, oil and gas interests and their reliable allies in Congress and the Western statehouses — the same people who have challenged most of Mr. Clinton's wilderness initiatives over the last eight years. These interests have regularly been on the losing end, and for all their bluster, they must still navigate a formidable coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans on this and every other environmental issue. But because these same interests will soon have a friend in the White House, the environmentalists must gird for prolonged battle.

Under Mr. Clinton's plan, which was revealed in broad outline in November, 58.5 million acres of the national forests would be protected from new road-building and commercial logging — including 9.3 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, much prized by environmentalists for its old- growth trees. The big difference between the earlier plan and the final version concerns the Tongass, which is also coveted by loggers.

The original plan would have shut down new road-building in all other national forests in two months, but would have allowed new roads to be built in the Tongass until 2004. Alaska's Congressional delegation argued that a delay was needed to give southeast Alaska's economy time to adjust to lower levels of logging. Environmentalists argued that delay would encourage furious road-building and compromise the biological integrity of the forest. On this crucial point, Mr. Clinton sided with the environmentalists.

The plan cannot become law for 60 days. This gives its opponents a window of opportunity. President-elect George W. Bush has complained that the new rules were devised without adequate consultation with the American people. This will be a hard case to make in Congress and the courts. The administration appears to have gone strictly by the book, holding a year of public hearings and taking 1.5 million written comments. Opponents will also argue that the rule will cripple the timber, oil and gas companies. That will be an even harder case to make. The designated roadless areas contain less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the nation's timber, and a tinier fraction of its oil and gas reserves.

The forest plan could have implications for another important conservation decision — also involving Alaska — confronting the president. That is whether to issue a last-minute order declaring the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a national monument. Mr. Bush has said that he wants to open the plain to oil drilling. Environmentalists argue that by giving the area monument status, Mr. Clinton would also be giving it an extra layer of protection.

But some senior officials are unconvinced that monument designation is necessary or tactically sound. For one thing, it would not enhance the legal protection the refuge already has. Under a 1980 law, drilling cannot occur in the refuge without explicit Congressional approval. But just as Congress can choose to open the refuge to drilling, so too can it overturn a monument designation.

Moreover, even though there is substantial opposition to drilling in the refuge among moderate Republicans, a last-minute designation could persuade Republican leaders to insist on party discipline to rebuke an outgoing president for a perceived attempt to tie the hands of an incoming president. No less a friend of the refuge than Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who once said that drilling in the refuge would be as grave an insult to nature as building hydroelectric dams in the Grand Canyon, worries that monument designation at this stage could invite a backlash against other vital elements of Mr. Clinton's conservation strategy — including the new forest plan.

This page opposed drilling in the refuge when Mr. Bush's father proposed it in 1989. It would destroy a pristine area that nurtures a breathtaking variety of wildlife while yielding only six months' worth of economically recoverable oil. But for tactical reasons, Mr. Clinton may be justified in not pushing for monument status, however attractive as a matter of principle. In any case, Americans are simply not going to endorse a plan that spoils the refuge to obtain a trivial amount of oil.