California Gives Nod To Bush Forest Plan

A U.S. Forest Service logging road outside Thunder Ridge Wilderness in Virginia. Environmental groups contend that many more such roads will be built under a loosening of logging restrictions proposed by the Bush administration.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signaled his support of a Bush administration plan that will relax Clinton-era restrictions on logging and road construction and let individual states decide the level of intrusion allowed on undeveloped lands.

The switch, proposed by the Bush administration last summer, would reverse the strictest conservation rule of the previous president's terms. The Clinton-sponsored legislation effectively blocked logging, mining and road building on 58.5 million acres of national forests and public land.

In backing the Bush plan, Gov. Schwarzenegger lined up with other Republican governors in Western states-where most of the roadless land sits and where logging and mining corporations have called for a loosening of the Clinton-era rules.