Oregon's Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski is proving to be quite the environmentalist these days. Just this week the "Big Kulongoski" helped enact tougher emission standards for Oregon's cars. Now, as The Oregonian's Michael Millstein reports, the Governor is getting ready to go to the mat against the Bush administration over logging.

Pushing back hard at the Bush administration, Gov. Ted Kulongoski sued the U.S. government Tuesday for abandoning protections that had barred roads and logging in nearly 2 million acres of remote Oregon national forests.

He argued that building roads in the isolated reaches that have escaped development so far would undermine the state's water quality and wildlife, including troubled salmon runs.

Kulongoski, a Democrat, joined with the Democratic attorneys general of California and New Mexico in the lawsuit. It asks a federal court to reinstate safeguards the Clinton administration had applied to 58.5 million roadless acres nationally just before leaving office in 2001.

The state lawsuit is a blow to the Bush administration, which had billed its approach as friendly to the states. In place of the Clinton safeguards, Bush officials want governors to submit individual petitions within 18 months specifying which lands in their states should be protected.

So much for those who don't believe Kulongoski can show a progressive streak from time to time.