, California and Mexico have filed challenging the legality of the administration's overhaul of protections of the 58.5 million acres of undeveloped areas in national forests known as roadless areas.

"Opening this particular roadless area to salvage logging now — when we are in the process of preparing a petition to the federal government on the proper management of those areas — contradicts the assurances the Bush Administration has made that the governors' opinions on such issues will be respected," Kulongoski said in a statement.

The Mike's Gulch timber sale on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon could lead to the first major harvest in a roadless area anywhere in the country since the Bush administration adopted rules giving states a chance to help the Forest Service decide whether to log in the undeveloped areas.

Roadless areas are tracts generally larger than 5,000 acres that have long been considered too remote and too rugged to be logged economically. Pressure has been increasing to exploit the old-growth timber found in them.

The Forest Service characterized the sale as overdue restoration of an area burned in a massive 2002 wildfire. The service said the plan comes after a federal judge in Wyoming overturned the old rule protecting roadless areas, and before the new roadless rule was adopted, so is not governed by it.

But environmentalists maintain the old rule remains in effect pending resolution of appeals. They characterized the auction as the opening salvo in a Bush administration effort to begin logging undeveloped areas of national forests that are more valuable for clean water and for fish and wildlife habitat.

"The bottom line is the Bush administration is focusing on unraveling environmental protections," said Lesley Adams of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. "They can and should be working on the common ground that exists," to offer sales that lower the danger of wildfire through thinning.

The sale is within the South Kalmiopsis Roadless Area, which together with the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area comprise some 300,000 acres of national forest, considered the largest intact piece of old-growth habitat on the West Coast. Conservation groups have proposed the area as a national monument to protect the diverse mix of plant species that grow there.

Prior to the auction, Kulongoski had asked the Forest Service to hold off on the Mike's Gulch sale, urging it to protect all 1.9 million acres of roadless areas in Oregon from logging. On Friday, Democratic U.S. Rep Peter DeFazio of Oregon joined Kulongoski in opposition, arguing that the sale should wait until the state's petition is considered.