Greenies Aim to Stop Bush's Alaska Plan

Greenies are hoping to stop President Bush from opening Alaskan woodland to logging and road construction, the Washington Post reports. Bush unveiled plans yesterday to let developers tackle 2.4 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest national woodland. But angry environmentalists and the Alaska Forest Association have vowed to block the scheme in court, the AP reports.

Bush says he wants to revive the state’s flagging timber industry, but one green advocate says “there is just no demand for this timber"; he calls the plan a last-ditch effort to overturn Bill Clinton's disputed “roadless rule,” which nixed development in nearly a third of national forests. Alaska's regional forester countered that the plan will spark "an integrated timber industry" and allow the current logging biz to "stabilize." (More Tongass National Forest stories.)