BOISE - The state's attempt to apply the brakes on the Clinton administration's bid to preserve millions of acres of roadless forest nationwide was rejected by a federal judge who ruled the process of public review has not gone far enough to challenge it in court.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge on Friday sided with the U.S. Forest Service's motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Idaho Attorney General Al Lance. Lodge said the Forest Service has not wound its way through the National Environmental Policy Act process of draft and final environmental studies and more "scoping" or public comment.

"The court was unable to find a single case wherein a challenge to the scoping process was considered ripe for judicial review," he wrote. But he admonished the Forest Service to keep the far-reaching case open to public scrutiny.

"When the areas contemplated to be roadless are not defined or shown by way of maps or otherwise illustrated, one does not have to be learned in the law to determine the public's participation will hardly be 'meaningful,' " Lodge wrote.

"The sheer magnitude of this governmental action involving 40 to 60 million acres nationwide that precipitated 500,000 comments in 60 days is the best evidence the Forest Service should proceed with caution. Time is not of the essence on an issue that has been studied for over 30 years."

Conservationists who intervened for the Forest Service in the case said there are decades of documentation and maps on which acres the government is considering for protection.

"The policy has been 12 years in the making," said Mike Medberry, state representative for the American Lands Alliance, adding the ruling hinged on whether the judicial process had progressed to the point of a challenge, not on specific roadless boundaries.

Lawyers for the Forest Service on Feb. 8 told Lodge the public will have ample opportunity to comment about setting aside those acres nationwide, with more than 8 million in Idaho.

State attorneys countered the agency is trying to push through the roadless plan while Clinton remains in office. Lance called for an extra 120 days to comment following a 60-day period which has elapsed.

Lance had said his chief complaint is not knowing what roadless Idaho property the Forest Service is contemplating and how it could affect state forest land interspersed within those tracts. Lodge's hands were tied by a "rather absurd federal statute," Lance said Friday.

"The law says the Forest Service must facilitate the 'active participation' of states and tribes. But apparently, the same law precludes the courts from intervening until the decision is made and the damage has been done."

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho said he backs the state's litigation and plans to showcase the issue next week in the Senate Forests and Public Land Management Subcommittee he chairs. Fellow Idaho Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth heads up the House counterpart of Craig's subcommittee.

Craig learned about Lodge's ruling just minutes after touting the case's importance to the Idaho House and Senate and charging that federal land-management policies were as much to blame as the struggling agricultural economy for the problems facing rural Idaho.

"Ultimately, I think the state will have strong grounds for its lawsuit," Craig said. "This is an issue that will not go away. This was clearly a behind-closed-doors, secretive kind of creation."

"Idaho needs leadership from our congressional delegation rather than putting their head in the sand," Medberry said. "Larry Craig has the unbelievable audacity to say the state should continue filing lawsuits while in the same breath saying we should have a collaborative process."

The Idaho State Snowmobile Association and the Kootenai Tribe had intervened for the state. The Kootenais worry the Forest Service's lack of specifics could endanger their use of the national forest for gathering berries, medicinal herbs and wood.