The Bush administration has authored a proposal that will, for the first time, give Western governors authority to formally propose development in our wildest public lands. This overturns President Clinton’s decision to set aside 40 million acres of National Forest as roadless areas.

Although the initiative was criticized as part of the Clinton administration’s “War on the West,” fiscal conservatives and the vast majority of Westerners applauded the decision, even those who abhorred both Clinton and his process.

Our remaining roadless areas are undisturbed for a reason. Most are in rugged terrain where the economic and environmental costs of development are excessive. Aside from energy development, most resource extraction on these lands requires implicit or explicit subsidies.

President Bush believes transferring decisions involving roadless areas to states is good politics. He should be careful what he wishes for. For example, in Montana, this may tilt the outcome of the gubernatorial race to the Democratic candidate. Ecological values and economic rationality will be sacrificed to opportunistic politics and public ethics will be further degraded.

Reform is long overdue -- but not this one. Federal lands are political lands and heavy subsidies are the norm. The full costs of exploitation have been ignored, discounted, and obscured. Economically wasteful and ecologically destructive projects, e.g., below-cost timber sales and subsidized irrigation schemes, demonstrate the perverse incentives that drive federal management. Here’s an insider’s view.

Jack Ward Thomas is a wildlife biologist who holds the Boone and Crockett Chair at the University of Montana. He served as Chief of the Forest Service during the Clinton administration

Jack is a man I respect and admire. His evaluation of the Forest Service he reveres is honest, but critical. He decries the incoherence of a Forest Service whose plans are “constructed on sands that are ever shifting economically, technically, socially, politically, and legally.”

National forest management has its roots in the Progressive Era philosophy of good government through neutral science. The founders of the Forest Service believed they could employ science to manage with efficiency and justice. Today, that agency’s once-stellar reputation is sullied. Since the 1960s the Forest Service has been unable to adapt to changing social values, new ecological science, and an amenity-based Western economy. Those in this once-esteemed bureaucracy seem incapacitated, paralyzed, and frustrated. The science that should drive policy has become hostage to politics. Forestry disputes are increasingly resolved by executive fiat, Congress, or the courts -- the process Jack decries.

Here’s a timeless truth: Centralized bureaucracies are ill-suited to either commodity or amenity production. Politics, perverse incentives, and poor information derail worthy goals. New institutional arrangements are required for progress. For example, forest trusts hold great promise.

Trusts successfully manage independent schools, nonprofit hospitals, and museums. Conservation organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy own and manage multiple-use lands. The boards of national forest trusts would have a fiduciary responsibility to manage for the land’s highest values: wildlife, clean water, recreation, scenery. And, yes, in some cases timber. In fact, in some forests the sensitive harvest of trees improves habitat and reduces fire danger.

Citizens of the New West demand better polices and management of federal lands. The most beneficial opportunities for resource extraction have long been exhausted. Further, the nation has become immensely wealthy. And here is the cultural law that Republicans ignore at their peril: With wealth and education comes heightened environmental sensitivity.

Traditionally, well-educated, wealthy people are the natural constituency for the Republican Party. They often value the environment very highly. By gratuitously alienating these voters, the Republican Party demonstrates a death wish.

It is a sorry strategy to cater to a core constituency based on extraction. Loggers and miners will vote Republican regardless. The party sacrifices swing votes. There are hosts of people, generally inclined to be Republican, who share Green concerns.

GOP leaders are either ignorant of the fallout from catering to special interests or are too cowardly to stand up against flamboyant, Green-baiting politicians. Predictably, well-off, well-educated voters are ever more disenchanted with Republicans’ environmental policies. When Republicans foster prosperity, they also create environmentalists. A greener outlook follows a rise in education and income. They ignore these forces at great peril.