Just last month, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced her intention to roll back the 2001 “Roadless Rule,” which prohibits new road construction and most new development on nearly 59 million acres of Forest Service lands.
Now, that rollback has been officially released for public comment, and you have 21 days to make your voice heard.
I encourage anyone who cares about wild places and the critters that live on them to consider submitting a comment in opposition to this proposed rule change. Here’s why.
DOGE is a chainsaw rather than a scalpel, and this idea mirrors that philosophy. It blindly removes a level of protection from 59 million acres of federal ground without much regard for individual parcels and forests.
The administration says it wants to increase timber harvest, and most Americans would be more than willing to discuss timber sales in certain areas, and further discuss the means of funding fire fuel reduction efforts (which, oddly enough, the USFS is not). But they won’t get behind changing management policy over an area as large as half of the state of Montana or 12 New Jerseys.
Anyone who’s driven through Montana on Interstate 90 can tell that it’s not all the same kind of landscape. Our hypothetical traveler would notice the same thing driving through New Jersey on Interstate 95. Not every acre is the same; not every acre is suitable for logging. If timber harvest is really the reason for this move, let’s look at the places most suitable for logging.
Previous forest management plans, which would be the default if the Roadless Rule is rolled back, only support logging for about 20 million acres. (That equals about 22 Rhode Islands, by the way.) So, why aren’t we starting there?
Perhaps rolling back the Roadless Rule is about more than harvesting timber for “affordable housing.” Perhaps it’s really about opening up 59 million acres for other extractive uses like mining.
I’m not anti-mine, and neither are most hunters and anglers. But I am justifiably more cautious about mining than I am about logging. Why? Because early successional growth that results from timber harvests are magnets for animals. A good cut can benefit game species just like fire. And, just like fire, the footprint of a timber harvest comes and goes relatively quickly. Most public land is multi-use, and it can be harvested and hunted in a short amount of time.
However, the footprint of a mining operation is almost always prohibitive to public access and takes a lot longer to heal. The Appalachians are a great example. West by God Virginia is gorgeous now, but at one point, hunters, hikers, and clean water drinkers had to look elsewhere.
Could there be valid reasons to roll back the Roadless Rule? Sure, but if you’re concerned about government overreach, painting in broad strokes by treating nearly 60 million acres like they’re all the same should concern you.
Show me where we can increase timber harvests, and let’s go on a case-by-case basis. Rescinding the Roadless Rule puts some of the last roadless places in jeopardy in a world where it’s increasingly hard to get away. These areas are scarce, and scarce commodities are the most valuable–let’s treat them that way.
To submit your comment on the Roadless Rule rollback, click here.
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