On Thursday, the Bush administration announced a new set of rules to govern the management of the country’s 192 million acres of forest that will open up the public forests to more logging as well as gas and oil development. The new rules give economic activity equal priority with preserving the ecological health of the forests in making management decisions. The plan was quickly attacked by environmentalists and former public officials including Jim Lyons, who oversaw the Forest Service as Agriculture undersecretary during the Clinton administration. Lyons said, “This is the most dramatic change in national forest management policy since passage of the ¹⁹⁷⁶ National Forest Management Act. It is really a clandestine effort in my mind to subvert much of what the national forests stand for.” According to the Los Angeles Times, 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 drops what is widely considered to be the Forest Services’ most important wildlife protection–it is a mandate to preserve the natural fish and wildlife habitat in national forests. Mike Anderson of the Wilderness Society said, “I’m very fearful that we’ve just lost the foundation for the protection of old-growth forests and wildlife that has protected the national forests for the last 20 years.”