"The U.S. Forest Service announced it will try to reinstate the exemption to Colorado’s roadless rule that allows coal mines to build roads in protected areas of Western Colorado. The exemption was struck down last summer by a federal court because the government failed to assess the impact of that future coal mining on climate change."
"A federal appeals court sided with the state of Alaska on Wednesday in a ruling that could open a large portion of the Tongass National Forest to road building and logging."
"SALT LAKE CITY -- Environmentalists are celebrating the Monday decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand the federal 'roadless rule' that leaves protections in place for 45 million acres of national forest lands, including those in Utah."
"DENVER — A road into the piney woods can be fraught with consequences. That was the premise, more than a decade ago, behind a Clinton administration rule that restricted road building on millions of acres of national forests in the West. The so-called roadless rule, fought over in court from the start, was validated last year by a federal appeals panel, setting off a wave of euphoria among supporters and consternation among critics. But there is a big wrinkle here in Colorado, which was one of only two states — Idaho was the other — that at the urging of the Bush administration developed their own rules about roads in the wild."
"DENVER — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law prohibiting roads on nearly 50 million acres of land in national forests across the United States, a ruling hailed by environmentalists as one of the most significant in decades.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule after lawyers for the state of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association contended it was a violation of the law.
"The federal rule protecting the nation's last remaining stretches of roadless wilderness will apply now to the largest and grandest of the national forests under a court ruling in Alaska, which threw out the exemption granted to the Tongass National Forest."
"Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today renewed for another year a policy giving himself sole power to approve logging or road projects on tens of millions of forested acres while the Obama administration decides how to handle the controversial Clinton-era roadless rule."
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