Federal government won't appeal roadless ruling

The federal government will not appeal a court ruling that struck down a Clinton-era ban on building roads in a third of the country's national forests, state Attorney General Pat Crank said.
According to Crank, the U.S. Department of Justice has decided not to appeal the ruling this summer by U.S. District Court Judge Clarence A. Brimmer in Cheyenne.
The roadless rule, issued in the final days of the Clinton administration, limits timber harvesting and other development on 58 million acres of remote forest land controlled by the Forest Service.
The ruling by Brimmer would open the land to oil, gas and mineral exploration. He issued a decision in July concluding the rule illegally created wilderness areas and should be overturned.
Now that the federal government has decided it won't appeal, the only parties in the case who might try to keep the lawsuit alive are eight conservation groups that intervened in the litigation.
The environmentalists, however, might not be able to appeal the ruling because they were not original parties to the lawsuit, Crank said.
''We will argue vociferously that they don't have standing,'' he said...