The Obama administration announced on Thursday that it is delaying a decision on policy that guides the construction of new roads and other development in areas of national forests for one year. An interim directive will guide land use in roadless areas in the meantime.

Delayed gratification for roadless advocates. The new directive, issued by Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, will require his approval for any U.S. Forest Service projects on public lands that have been declared off-limits for development under the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The administration will hold off on long-term decisions on the policy until 2010.

The so-called "Roadless Rule," which the Clinton administration put in place during its final days in office in 2000, prohibited new roads on 58.5 million acres of national forest land. This essentially meant all logging, mining, and other commercial activity were also off-limits. But on his first day in office, George Bush temporarily froze work on implementing the rule; he repeatedly attempted to throw it out over the course of the next 8 years and undermined it by exempting large areas of land from its protections. The rule has been caught up in legal wrangling ever since.

"This interim directive will provide consistency and clarity that will help protect our national forests until a long-term roadless policy reflecting President Obama's commitment is developed," said Vilsack in a statement announcing the temporary directive.

Vilsack will still be able to approve projects if he and the Forest Service determine them to be necessary. And if the administration does not reach a long-term decision on the rule within the next year, the temporary directive can be extended for another year. Today's announcement also doesn't include public lands in Idaho, which has instated its own version of the rule.

On the campaign trail, Obama promised to uphold the law, so today's news comes as a first step in fulfilling that promise, though most enviros would like to see the rule reinstated entirely.

"Secretary Vilsack's directive is a critical interim measure to ensure that we safeguard the diverse values of our national forests as the Obama administration considers more permanent protections," said Sierra Club Public Lands Protection Program director Athan Manuel in a statement.

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A bill that would protect millions of acres of public land is being put on hold until the new year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act passed out of committee with bipartisan support, but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has threatened to filibuster over concerns that it will stymie oil and gas development. Congress doesn't have the time to deal with Coburn's shenanigans this month, says Reid, but the bill will be top priority next year.

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Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) is set to announce Tuesday that his state is modifying a deal struck this summer to buy out a massive sugar company in the Everglades and turn the company's land back into wetlands. The retooled deal will likely cost the state about $400 million less than the original plan and would not include purchase of some of the company's expensive assets like a sugar-processing plant and railroad lines.

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Here's some steamy action: The Department of Interior on Wednesday announced plans to open 97 million acres of public land in 12 states to geothermal energy development. The plan could more than quadruple the U.S.'s current output of underground-heat power, potentially generating enough electricity to power 5.5 million homes by 2015 and 12 million by 2025. Some national forestland could be leased under the plan, though national parks, including geyser-full Yellowstone, are off-limits. Kempthorne praised geothermal energy as "a renewable resource that generates electricity with minimal carbon emissions ... [and] reduces the need for conventional energy sources." Indeed, you'll note that geothermal energy needs no qualifier, unlike "clean coal" and "safe, clean nuclear power."

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The Bush administration has put a moratorium on new solar projects on public land pending large-scale study of their environmental impacts, a process which could take about two years. Since 2005, over 130 solar-plant proposals have been filed for large-scale solar projects that together would cover some 1 million acres of BLM land, if approved. Officials at the Interior Department have said that temporarily halting the cascade of solar power projects will give them time to develop criteria to apply to future projects, thereby potentially speeding the permitting process down the road. Many in the solar industry are incensed about the sudden solar-project stoppage, which, together with the unsure future of the renewable-energy tax credit, could slow industry growth. "It doesn't make any sense," said a solar-company exec. In contrast, the leasing process for oil and gas development on public lands has sped up significantly in recent years, with the number of permits now far outpacing the industry's drilling capacity.

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