From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — Originally published Tuesday, Jan. 6

America’s national forests are criss-crossed by dirt roads built to enable logging crews to reach secluded timber stands. Just 14 days before leaving office, the Bush administration is changing federal rules to allow those roads to be paved.

… The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the new rule could have national implications: Other private landowners could ask the federal government to pave logging roads through other national forests so they could develop more land, even if paving those roads could damage public lands and threaten endangered species. …

Under the Bush administration, public policy often has been manipulated for the benefit of private companies. Perhaps nowhere has the trend been more apparent than in the Interior Department, which oversees America’s national forests and most of its public land.

… Restoring the integrity of the Interior Department as the protector of public lands will be a huge job for Congress and the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama. Congress should block the new rule and investigate other last-minute changes that benefit politically connected insiders at the expense of the public interest.