Thursday, July 13, 2000 | 9:15 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig on Wednesday backed off a threatened amendment that would have delayed President Clinton's plan to ban roads and other development in 43 million acres of roadless federal forests.
The Clinton administration and environmentalists declared victory.
"Sen. Craig knows there's tremendous popular support for the (roadless) proposal," said Jim Lyons, the Agriculture Department undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service. "Sen. Craig is on the wrong side of the issue."
Debbie Sease, legislative director for the Sierra Club, said Craig's Republican colleagues likely persuaded him to pull back the proposal because there was too much support for Clinton's plan.
But Craig said he received no pressure to scuttle his amendment. He said he believes he would have had 56 votes for his proposal on the Senate floor.
He said he withdrew it to allow the courts to decide whether the Clinton administration violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act in crafting the roadless plan. The alleged violation is one of the main reasons Craig planned to offer his proposal.
There are two pending court cases - one in Idaho and the one in Washington, D.C. - on whether private meetings between Clinton officials and environmentalists before the plan was announced amounted to a violation of the act.
"Several interests asked me not to jeopardize the court activity," Craig said.
Clinton is trying to use administrative rulemaking to prevent road building and other development on more than one-fifth of all federal forests.
His draft plan, announced in May, sets broad criteria for logging, grazing and recreational activities, and leaves it up to local foresters to decide whether roads should be banned on parcels of 5,000 acres or less.
Environmentalists call the effort a crowning achievement of the Clinton presidency and one of the most important conservation moves of the last century.
Craig's proposal would have delayed Clinton's plan until after a panel reviewed the effort and made recommendations to improve it. Environmentalists said Craig was trying to put off the plan until Clinton leaves office, with the hope that Republican George W. Bush is elected and scraps the initiative.
Craig initially offered the amendment on the Senate floor to a $15.5 billion Interior Department appropriations bill, calling the roadless plan the "most slipshod rulemaking effort that I've seen and the worst example in the last 20 years by any federally elected officials."
But Craig then allowed Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to replace the amendment with a separate, less controversial proposal to reduce fire risk near fast-growing metropolitan areas - especially areas of the West such as Santa Fe, N.M.
The Domenici proposal, co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., grants $240 million to the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to use existing authority and cooperative agreements to remove timber and brush on public land that are the greatest threat of catching fire.
The replacement amendment passed on a unanimous voice vote.
A final vote on the interior bill was expected as early as Thursday.
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