If ever officials could be accused of not seeing the forest for the trees, it is members of the Bush administration. They have looked at protected national forests -- environmental refuges for wildlife, green lungs for an increasingly urbanized America -- and have seen only an opportunity for future logging, mining and drilling.

The key to such commercial activity is building roads. In the dying days of the Clinton administration, a rule was enacted that put 58 million acres of national forest off-limits to road building -- and thus development. This included 24 million acres previously protected.

Although the rule was promulgated after a lengthy series of public hearings, President Clinton can be faulted for not moving earlier. However, what was belatedly done was well done.

To be sure, the rule was highly controversial and led to nine lawsuits involving seven states, but it was much admired by environmental groups and others with an appreciation of America's unspoiled places. It did, after all, offer the chance of permanent protection to nature's last redoubts.

That all changed last week when the Forest Service announced a new rule for its roadless areas. Talked up as a better way, one that will be better informed by site-specific information, the rule overthrows the blanket protection and puts in place a system that will inevitably lead to roads being built where they will bring short-term gain to commercial interests at long-term cost to the environment.

It is true that road building will not be general (the 24 million acres protected before 2001 will remain protected) and it may be that the wisdom of conservation will continue to hold sway in many areas. The Allegheny National Forest is the only area in Pennsylvania that might be affected by the rule change -- and only 23,150 acres out 513,000 acres at that -- but Gov. Ed Rendell has promised to protect the area.

Under the new roadless rule, state governors have 18 months to send petitions for roadless areas to the U.S. secretary of agriculture. But there's no guarantee that their wishes will prevail. Although it is designed to be a collaborative process between the federal government and the states, this is federal land subject to federal authority.

Unfortunately, as seen in the current push in Congress to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Bush administration can be trusted to see environmental issues only through business-friendly lenses. It hardly inspires confidence that Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary who directs forest policy and who will help review state petitions, is a former timber industry lobbyist.

Effectively dismantling the old roadless rule was a mistake, and Americans who love the environment are justified in fearing that one new road has already been built and paved -- the road to ruin.