ANCHORAGE -- Sen. Ted Stevens has included in a spending bill a measure that would prevent environmentalists from appealing a pending Forest Service decision about development in the Tongass National Forest.
"It looks like we're just basically being headed off at the pass by Senator Stevens," groused Tim Bristol, director of the Alaska Coalition, an environmental group.
At issue is whether more of the 16.8 million-acre national forest in Southeast should be put off-limits to development.
Environmentalists are suing the Forest Service over a 5-year-old Tongass management plan, saying the agency ignored the possibility of designating new wilderness areas, where logging and road building are generally prohibited.
A judge agreed in April 2001, and ordered the Forest Service to review 9.7 million roadless acres and decide whether Congress should consider creating new wilderness areas.
Last May, the agency issued a draft decision, saying no to new Tongass wilderness. The agency said it would issue its final decision early this year.
Stevens, R-Alaska, is the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The intent of the sentence that he stuck in the spending bill is to allow the Forest Service's decision to stand.
It says that the agency's Tongass wilderness decision ``shall not be reviewed under any Forest Service administrative appeal process and its adequacy shall not be subject to judicial review by any court of the United States."
Frank Murkowski, when he was in the Senate last fall, originally proposed the rider. Murkowski, now Alaska's governor, said then he wanted to make sure that the money and time spent creating the 1997 Tongass management plan "will result in some degree of certainty for harvesting small portions of the forest to sustain the industry that's there today."
