President Reagan decided in 1982 that U.S. Forest Service rules should be expanded to help protect more than 400 wildlife species, and that the process of protecting those creatures and their habitat should require a full and public environmental review.

Those rules held up for more than two decades - until the Bush administration decided the national forests were better suited for oil exploration and timber harvesting. Forest Service officials followed their boss' orders and invalidated the rules set up by Reagan.

And thus opened another chapter in the Bush administration's miserable record of stewardship of the environment.

When the Reagan rules were trumped, Forest Service officials said the object was to “streamline the process” by reducing time-consuming paperwork, and eliminating the public's input so the agency could “respond quickly to evolving forest conditions ...”

That's all code for turning pristine forest habitat over to various industrial interests.

Not so fast, said a federal judge in San Francisco last month. She ruled that the Forest Service can't ignore mandated environmental impact reviews, nor can the department arbitrarily shut out public comment on changes in the law that are “clearly controversial.”

Forest Service officials are still weighing their options concerning an appeal of the judge's ruling. Meanwhile all Americans, not just environmentalists, should be counting the days until the next presidential election. The 192 million acres in the national forest system can't stand too much more of the Bush administration's “streamlining.”

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April 20, 2007