On January 16, 2009 The Lands Council, along with The Wilderness Society, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Sierra Club, and Natural Resources Defense Council filed a Complaint against the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. District Court of Idaho challenging the Idaho Roadless Rule. Attorney Timothy Preso of Earthjustice is representing us.

The Forest Service wrote the Idaho Roadless Rule to replace the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule for those roadless lands in the state of Idaho. Our claims are that the Forest Service did not follow laws by:

• Removing Roadless Area Conservation Rule protections on 400,000 acres, which would allow logging, phosphate mining and road building without full environmental effects analysis normally required under the National Environmental Policy Act. This could ease authorization of logging and road building in roadless areas of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, within woodland caribou and grizzly bear habitat.

• Overriding forest plans drafted under the National Forest Management Act, to remove protections on 13,000 acres previously recommended for wilderness and to prohibit any future recommendations for wilderness in forest plans;

• Creating additional loopholes under a new "backcountry" designation that would allow road building and logging within 5 million acres of roadless wildlands.