That controversial Colorado roadless rule is one major step closer to being official and at least one coalition of sportsmen’s groups isn’t happy about it.

A coalition of Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership claims the proposed roadless plan is being rammed through Congress by a Bush administration eager to open more land for energy leasing and development before it leaves office.

Additionally, the groups says the plan ignores sportsmen who seek more protection for backcountry wildlife habitat.

Friday, the Forest Service published Colorado’s proposed roadless area petition in the Federal Register and announced a statewide series of meetings to discuss the plan.

This opens the door for the Forest Service to begin the Environmental Impact Statement portion of the ruling, a tedious process that itself has the half-life of a whale.

But if the Bush administration adopts the proposed plan as currently presented, the state would have the least-protective regulations of any western state, according to the coalition.

These groups, and a lot of sportsmen philosophically aligned with them, want Gov. Bill Ritter to back off a bit, do more study of the roadless policy and govern according to the wishes of the majority of the state’s citizens.

“In excess of 90 percent of the people who commented during the task force hearings asked for maximum roadless protection,” said Dave Petersen, Colorado field director for Trout Unlimited’s public lands initiative and co-chair of Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “And 100 percent of the Division of Wildlife field personnel who commented asked for 100 percent protection for roadless areas.”

The roadless plan, modified somewhat by the Ritter administration from the original plan coming out of a series of roadless task force meetings beginning in 2005, affords protection to about 4.1 million acres of backcountry acres.

However, loopholes open at least 87,000 acres to exploration and development, says a report issued Wednesday by the Pew Charitable Trust public land program. Additional acreage may be lost around ski areas and coal-mining areas such as the North Fork Valley.

“Colorado’s national forests could end up as the country’s least-protected national forests and become the target for drilling and other development,” said Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Environmental Group public lands program.

The roadless-area protection process started in 2005 under ex-Gov. Bill Owens and the proposed regulations have been under fire since revealed in August of 2006.

Originally the plan looked at 4.4 million undeveloped backcountry acres that were identified under the 2001 federal roadless protection plan, but as more national forests revise their operational forest plans, some of the areas have been dropped while other areas have been protected as wilderness.

In 2003, a Wyoming judge tossed out the 2001 rule in favor of a Bush administration plan that offered states the opportunity to petition for roadless protection. That plan, however, was overruled in 2006 and the 2001 rule reinstated.

During the period when the Bush plan was in effect, Colorado went ahead to design its own roadless-area protection plan. That petition would over-ride the 2001 federal roadless plan and open the door for oil and gas development in areas currently protected under the 2001 roadless rule, said Joel Webster of the TRCP.

Petersen said the state plan cries out for overhaul.

“Everything has changed and the product we produced is deeply flawed,” said Petersen, a member of the state’s 13-person Roadless Task Force. He said the plan as published Friday “is weaker and vaguer than the original petition.”

The apparent eagerness of federal land-management agencies to open development on the Roan Plateau and in Piceance Basin shows “little commitment to Colorado’s involvement in land planning and resource development,” Petersen said.

Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer said the governor stands behind the proposed roadless rule.

“We by and large are supportive of the protection the task force recommended,” Dreyer said. “Our entire approach has been one of balance.”

Ritter made a few minor changes to the task force’s original plan in an attempt to provide “an insurance policy” in the face of some uncertainties of what exactly was protected, Dreyer said.

“The governor felt it important to provide some additional assurance that the vast majority of the 4.4 million acres will remain protected,” Dreyer said.

Petersen isn’t so sure.

“Right now, the future of the outdoor activities and sporting heritage that Coloradans treasure is in jeopardy,” he said.

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E-mail Dave Buchanan at Dave.Buchanan@gjsentinel.com.