In late December, the Bush Administration announced a new set of rules that will likely expand logging, mining, and oil drilling in the nation’s 192 million acres of national forests. The new rules give economic activity equal priority with preserving the ecological health of the forests in making management decisions.

The new plan contains two major revisions to forest planning regulations. The first drops the 25-year-old requirement that managers prepare environmental impact statements when they develop or revise management plans for individual national forests. The second change drastically reduces public input in national forest planning.

“They’ve completely re-written the rules for managing our national forests,” says Ray Vaughan, an attorney with WildLaw. “They’ve taken a chainsaw to something that only needed pruning shears.”

The Administration claims the new rules will streamline the forest planning process, saving time and money. Environmental groups are planning legal challenges to the new rules.

-Will Harlan