Even as Idaho Gov. Jim Risch was unveiling his proposal to turn over 7 million acres of roadless public lands to loggers, Federal District Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco was condemning planned nationwide giveaways orchestrated by President Bush as illegal and ordered them halted.
The Bush White House, she ruled, gave hardly any attention to the environmental impact of opening roadless areas and allowing untouched forests to become virtual feeding frenzies for lumber companies.
And there's no indication either that Gov. Risch gave a second thought to environmental damage, as he was prepared to recommend removing protections of chunks of Idaho twice the size of the state of Connecticut.
So, for now, President Bush's 2005 order reversing President Clinton's order protecting 58 million acres of U.S. land from incursions of roads has been rejected.
No doubt, promoters of unleashing lumbering machines on virgin woodlands will be appealed. President Bush's lawyers presumably will argue that what one president can giveth, another president can taketh, environmental ruin notwithstanding.
However, the Bush administration shouldn't count on appeals courts as being any more charitable.
Brutal disregard of America's public lands and air and water by Bush's Interior department and Environmental Protection Agency has been given repeated comeuppance in federal courts throughout the country recently.
In a string of orders just in the past month, from coast to coast, federal courts have rebuked the Interior department and EPA for shirking their duties toward the public's well-being and property.
● On Aug. 5, a District of Columbia federal court called the EPA's supposed enforcement of air quality "grossly negligent."
● On Aug. 22, a California federal court ruled that President Bush's decision to allow logging of centuries-old trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument was "illegal."
● On Aug. 24, a federal judge in Seattle restored tough pesticide rules that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abandoned under pressure from the chemical industry.
● On Sept. 7, a federal judge in Colorado ordered Fish and Wildlife Service to provide more protection to cutthroat trout.
● And also on Sept. 7, a federal judge in Alaska halted the Interior department's attempt to allow drilling for gas and oil at Teshekpuk Lake, ruling it would be destructive of the environment.
Taken together, this spate of rulings hint at a growing revulsion in the courts, as well as in the public body, toward President Bush's reckless laissez faire unleashing of industry on the public's assets.
