Wyoming officials thought their legal challenge of a Clinton administration rule banning road construction on nearly 50 million acres of national forest land across the country was rendered moot by the Bush administration.

But a California judge's ruling Wednesday to overturn the Bush administration plan - which could have cleared the way for more commercial activity in national forests - could mean a return to the courtroom for Wyoming officials.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal said the state would seek to revive a lawsuit that led a federal judge in Cheyenne to strike down the Clinton rule in 2003. That ruling had been rendered moot when the Bush administration issued its own rule. But U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte in California has now ruled that the Bush rule is illegal as well.

"Obviously, this decision in a federal district court in California tends to resurrect an issue which had been deemed moot," Freudenthal said Wednesday.

Laporte sided with other states and environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service after it reversed President Clinton's "Roadless Rule" prohibiting commercial logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres of national forest in 38 states and Puerto Rico.

After a series of legal battles in California and Wyoming, the Bush administration last year replaced the Clinton rule with a process requiring states to petition the federal government to block new roads.

Laporte found that the administration violated federal law when it reversed Clinton's road ban without conducting the necessary environmental studies. Administration lawyers had argued that an environmental review was not required because the change did not directly impact the land.

"This is fantastic news for millions of Americans who have consistently told the Forest Service that they want these last wild areas of public land protected," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, which represented a coalition of 20 environmental groups and California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

Laporte did not, however, reinstate a ban on road construction and logging on 9.3 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which President Bush exempted from the Roadless Rule in 2003.

Bush administration attorneys were reviewing the ruling to decide whether to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Dave Tenny, deputy undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.

"We're disappointed that the very good work we've been doing with the states in good faith has been disrupted," Tenny said, noting that a number of states had already submitted petitions to ban new roads. Wyoming is not among those states.

Representatives of the timber industry denounced the decision, saying it would leave roadless areas vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires because firefighters could not access blazes in remote forests.

Chris West, vice president of the Portland-based American Forest Industry Council, said states should be allowed to decide how to best manage and protect their forests.

"The states were given a level playing field and equal partnership in the decision-making process," West said. "This lawsuit and this decision is all about politics."

After holding 600 public meetings over three years and receiving 1 million public comments urging forest protection, Clinton issued the Roadless Area Conservation Rule just days before he left office in January 2001. The rule protected nearly a third of the country's 192 million acres of national forest land. About 97 percent of that land is in 12 western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Wyoming challenged the Clinton rule in federal court, and U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Cheyenne ruled that the Clinton administration had overstepped its authority by effectively creating wilderness areas on U.S. Forest Service lands.

The Wyoming Outdoor Council and seven other environmental groups appealed, and on May 5, 2005, the day after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard oral arguments, the Forest Service issued a new roadless rule to replace the one that had been overturned. That's the rule that has now been overturned by Judge Laporte of the federal 9th Circuit in California.

Conservation groups in Wyoming praised Wednesday's ruling.

Brian Sybert of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition said the people of Wyoming know roadless areas provide the best hunting and fishing and provide clean water.

"(The decision) will keep those qualities of the backcountry in place," he said. "It will maintain those essential characteristics of the backcountry, and Wyoming citizens like it the way it is."

Erik Molvar of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance said that roadless areas on the Bridger-Teton and Shoshone national forests now will be withdrawn from oil and gas leasing, and roadless lands on the Bighorn National Forest will now be given full protection.