Appropriate use of the enormous tracts of federally owned lands in the western United States has been a subject of constant dispute over the years. The protracted battle between proponents of resource development and those more concerned with the preservation of natural values over the vast acreage in Alaska is but a current example.¹ In addition, the "sagebrush rebellion" is generating increasing friction in the West as well as in Washington.² Another recent conflict has ensnarled the Forest Service, which controls a quarter of the nation's 755 million acres of federal lands.³ In January 1979, the Service completed its second roadless area review and evaluation (RARE II), an inventory of the third of its lands most suitable for wilderness, to determine which areas should be congressionally designated as wilderness and which could be opened for development. As a result of RARE II, President Carter submitted a major proposal to Congress recommending that certain areas be formally set aside as wilderness. The Service then decided that those areas not covered by the RARE II recommendations would be released for development consistent with its multiple-use management policies.

Last January, the federal district court for the Eastern District of California ruled⁴ that the environmental impact statement (EIS) prepared by the Forest Service in support of its RARE II classifications violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).⁵ The court enjoined the Service from taking any action regarding 46 tracts in California designated as nonwilderness until an EIS is prepared that adequately considers the impact of such designations on the lands' wilderness characteristics. In California v. Bergland, Judge Karlton conducted a thorough and scholarly exposition of NEPA principles and was especially insightful in his application of the requirements for programmatic EISs. The direct impact of the decision, however, is limited to the designated nonwilderness areas in California, comprising little more than a million acres, and no other litigation is pending in which Judge Karlton's conclusions might be applied to RARE II lands in other states. Meanwhile, a battle is shaping up in Congress over proposals that lands not set aside as wilderness be legislatively decreed as open for resource development.