WASHINGTON — As a candidate for president, Barack Obama wooed environmentalists with a promise to "support and defend" pristine national forest land from road building and other development that had been pushed by the George W. Bush administration.
But five months into Obama's presidency, the new administration is actively opposing those protections on about 60 million acres of federal woodlands in a case being considered by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The roadless issue is one of several instances of the administration defending in court environmental policies that it once vowed to end.
Its position has been a disappointment to environmentalists who had hoped for decisive action in rolling back Bush-era policies.
Administration officials say that in some cases, they are defending the policies to prevent the courts from settling the issues -- a prospect that would restrict the government's ability to set the environmental agenda. They say the task of setting policy is better left to government agencies and legislators.
"We have set out on a very clear path toward improving our nation's environmental laws and policies so they balance America's need for a strong, sustainable economy and a healthy environment," said Christine Glunz, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "That means taking short- and sometimes longer-term action."
Still, the strategy has puzzled some environmentalists because the administration has used the courts to backpedal from Bush policies in some areas, including spotted owl protection, energy efficiency standards and hazardous-waste burning.
Most prominently, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson dropped an appeal to the Supreme Court in a case that struck down Bush-era limits on mercury pollution from coal power plants, which environmentalists called too lax.
Whatever the overall strategy, the result has been a series of cases in which President Obama appears to be taking positions in court that run counter to his stated goals.
The Interior Department this spring, for example, defended a Bush plan to lease western Colorado's picturesque Roan Plateau for oil and gas drilling.
When the Bush administration announced the plan in 2008, then-Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado called it "the unsound product of an administration that has lost sight of the balance" between developing and conserving public lands.
