Let us know how that works out for you this election year, Gov. Asshat, OK?
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will announce today his plan to petition the Bush administration to protect all 4.4 million acres of roadless areas in California's national forests, which could offer permanent protection for more than one-fifth of the state's forested public land. The plan must still go through a federal rulemaking process and could be changed before being approved by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, but Forest Service officials said Tuesday they are likely to accept most, if not all, of the governor's proposal.
Schwarzenegger plans to make the announcement today as part of a carefully choreographed strategy to polish his green credentials and appeal to the state's environmentally oriented electorate to win re-election in November. The move earned lavish praise from environmentalists, who have battled the administration in court over its effort to rewrite President Clinton's 2001 roadless rule, which set aside 58.5 million acres of forests nationwide. California will become the fifth state, after Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and New Mexico, to ask for all its roadless lands to be protected.
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Mark Rey, the agriculture undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service, said his agency would be looking at whether the governor's petition and the forest management plans for the four Southern California forests will provide firefighters with emergency access to wild lands close to homes or subdivisions.
"I can't imagine that people in those subdivisions will want us to change a management decision that could leave them exposed to a higher risk of catastrophic wildfire," he said.
ED. - Or, to put Mark Rey's remarks in a simpler context, "Boo! Fire!
EDIT
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/12/BAGT1JTETF1.DTL
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