Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) has not yet decided how to handle petitions for roadless preservation in the state, and continues to have questions about exactly how much weight a governor's request carries.

"His questions center on how much influence the state's petitions would have, how they would be judge and prioritized and who would pay for the environmental analyses of the petitions' contents," his press secretary Lara Azar said Tuesday. "Under the new rule, final authority doesn't rest with the states. These things would still go back through the forest-planning process. Before committing state resources to developing these petitions, Gov. Freudenthal wants to know how much weight they will carry."

The governor made his comments the day a federal appeals court dismissed an attempt by environmental groups to restore a Clinton-era ban on logging in roadless national forests. The court said their appeal became irrelevant when the Bush administration adopted a replacement rule.

"Adoption of the new rule has rendered the appeal moot," a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday.

Wyoming's federal judge Clarence Brimmer struck down the Clinton administration's ban in 2003, ruling in a lawsuit filed by the state of Wyoming that the executive branch had overstepped its authority in effectively creating wilderness areas on U.S. Forest Service lands.

The Wyoming Outdoor Council and seven other environmental groups appealed. But on May 5, the day after the 10th Circuit heard oral arguments, the Forest Service issued a new roadless rule to replace the one that had been overturned.

The Clinton administration's rule put 58.5 million acres of roadless forest off-limits to logging and other development. Under the new rule, those lands, most of which are in the West, are open to possible logging, mining and other commercial uses.

Attorney Jim Angell of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund said the appeals court decision does not end the fight but only "clears the decks" for battles over the new Bush administration rule.

"We'll be looking at that and no doubt there'll be litigation of that rule, to challenge it to try to reinstate the Clinton rule," he said.

"Failing that, I think we're going to be back in the bad old days of slugging it out roadless area by roadless area, so every time there's a proposed new project that would ruin a roadless area by logging it or by allowing a mine to be built or some other industrial development, there'll be battles over that," Angell said.

Forest Service spokesman Dan Jiron said the agency looks forward to working with governors on roadless areas.

State governors have until late 2006 to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture - which oversees the Forest Service - to either stop or allow road building.

Colorado has created a task force to examine public land that had been covered by the Clinton ban. Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne has said he would wait until next year to ask the Forest Service to open millions of acres of forest.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has said he would let the Forest Service take the lead on roadless issues.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, criticized the new rule, saying the Forest Service should provide staff to help states handle the huge amount of work required to examine federal lands.

Schweitzer has said Montana will probably make requests to the Forest Service about roadless areas but said the federal agency will have the final say.

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