SEATTLE, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Two of three appellate judges, hearing arguments on Monday on a federal plan to restrict roads on 60 million acres (24 million hectares) of U.S. forests, questioned whether environmental lawyers had a right to argue the case. In an hour-long hearing in Seattle, the two judges said they doubted green groups' legal standing in the case, since the U.S. government had not challenged an injunction prohibiting its implementation of the road building ban. A third judge, Warren Ferguson of Pasadena, California, appeared more sympathetic to the environmentalists and offered tough questions for lawyers representing timber and livestock interests and local Indian tribes, which oppose the ban. At issue is a rule approved by the former Clinton administration last January and slated to take effect on May 12. A federal judge agreed to delay the plan at the request of timber company Boise Cascade Corp. The rule would restrict road building on land amounting to 2 percent of the entire United States and would also curb oil drilling and timber cutting, except to prevent fires or other dangers to surrounding private property. President George W. Bush has said he would implement the plan, but would modify it to allow local input and different interpretations made on a forest-by-forest basis. Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of Fairbanks, Alaska, and Judge Ronald Gould of Seattle told lawyers for the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and other green groups that they doubted they had any business arguing the case. Raymond Ludwiszewski, representing corporate and tribal interests as well as Boise County, Idaho, was asked by Judge Kleinfeld to explain whether the environmentalists had a right to be there. "It would be hard for me to say it any better than you did," Ludwiszewski said. After the hearing, Doug Hannold, who argued for the environmentalists in favor of the road ban, said it was difficult to predict the outcome. But he acknowledged the panel had questioned him aggressively. "I don't think anybody could have sat through that and not think it had been a challenge for us to raise the issues we wanted to," Hannold told Reuters. The judges could take weeks or even months to render a decision, according to Ludwiszewski, who declined to comment on the likely outcome. "They kept me pretty busy today." Other observers noted that oral arguments can be highly deceiving, but some predicted Judge Gould may be the swing vote. "It looks like two judges are pretty clearly on opposite sides while Judge Gould is a big question mark," said Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst for the Wilderness Society.