Forest Service boss calls for penalties for roadless states

RENO, Nev. — California and other states that want to ban road-building in large swaths of national forests should have to pay for the resulting increased costs of fighting wildfires on those federal lands, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Thursday.

Rey, the undersecretary for natural resources and the environment in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, said the Bush administration has encouraged states and local governments to offer input in the management of federal lands.

But he told a Wildland Urban Interface conference that one of the unintended consequences is that state-imposed moratoriums on development in roadless areas boost the cost of fighting fires because of reduced access to housing subdivisions that sprout up on the edge of those forests.

“In a number of cases, most recently in the state of California, the states have weighed in with a profound desire not to see any roadless area incurred as a broad matter of environmental priorities. And I frankly don’t have any quarrel with that as a statement of environmental policy,” Rey said.

The state of California filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service last month for adopting a management plan that would allow for the construction of roads and oil drilling in California’s largest national forests.

The lawsuit filed in federal court claims the plan ignores a state moratorium on road construction in pristine areas of national forests and asks for an injunction.