WASHINGTON - As the deadline for public comment expired, Democrats and environmentalists Monday called on the Bush administration to withdraw a proposed rule change to ease a Clinton-era ban on road building in remote national forests.

"There's not a mandate for the Bush administration to open up the nation's roadless areas," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. "And there's no reason the Forest Service needs to create a convoluted … process for protecting these areas. This ruse that the governors can make a decision is wrong and it's an excuse."

The administration's plan, to be completed early next year, would require governors to decide by 2006 whether to petition the Forest Service to block road-building in about 58 million acres of national forests where it is now prohibited.

Richardson and other critics called that a cop-out and said forest policy should be made at the federal level, not by states. He said the roadless rule was a factor in close presidential races in several Western states, and dropping the change would be "a way to heal the wounds in the West."

Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, dismissed Richardson's comments as partisan.

"To think a governor wouldn't want to have direct input in how lands are managed in his state is hypocritical," West said.

And he said the notion the rule was a factor in the presidential race was ridiculous: "Anybody who looks at the polling pre-election and post-election knows the environment was so far down the list it didn't have an impact."

Environmentalists call the so-called "roadless rule" an important protection, but the timber industry and some GOP lawmakers criticize it as overly intrusive and even dangerous, saying it has left millions of acres exposed to catastrophic wildfire.

West said the Bush plan was more flexible than the current ban, and more responsive to local needs.

"Here's an opportunity for a governor to have an open public process to really look at this and come up with a plan to benefit all his citizens, not only of his state but of the nation," West said.

Heidi Valetkevitch, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service, declined to comment Monday.

The Right Rev. William Gregg, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Oregon, said his rural congregation opposed the rule change.

"Simply to open everything up and not maintain our last bit of forests untouched is not consistent with our sense of good stewardship of our land and our resources and our forests," he said.