When the 2001 Roadless Rule was proposed, the public had 60 days to comment. To undo the rule, it’s 21 days.
That’s a timeframe Corey Fisher, Trout Unlimited’s public lands policy director, said is pretty short.
“Commenting on a kind of wonky regulatory process probably isn't something that a lot of people have experience with,” he said.
The Trump administration wants to roll back the rule, which could open up about 58 million acres of national forest and wildlands to new roads and logging, that includes about 3.2 million acres in Wyoming.
Trout Unlimited, which opposed the rollback, released an interactive map showing what areas in the U.S. could be impacted. In Wyoming, that could mean new roads being built in places like the foothills of the Big Horns and Snowies, the Wyoming Range and the southern end of the Wind River Range.
The administration said it’s necessary to build roads and commercially log in these areas to help with wildfire suppression.
“For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action – prohibiting road construction, which has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.
But studies have shown there’s more to the story.
Many scientists agree that U.S. forests are in rough shape and prone to wildfire. However, research shows that aggressive logging and wildfire suppression has helped lead to this. Remedies to the situation aren’t easy, but some proven methods to help lower the intensity of wildlife are a combination of controlled burning and logging mostly small trees and brush.
Other research shows where there’s roads, there’s more fires. Namely, because roads bring more people and plowing can change the type of forest floor vegetation, as reported by NPR.
Trout Unlimited’s Fisher said the land that’s being offered up, which is about 30% of the nation’s total forest acreage, is pristine wildlife habitat, with little development.
“The roads kind of create this death of a thousand cuts to fisheries. And it's no coincidence that these roadless areas are home to some of the last best native trout habitat,” he said.
The Roadless Rule was initially adopted in 2001 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for several reasons, ranging from maintaining the look and value of large swaths of untouched public land, health of the environment and concern over adding new roads to the federal government’s responsibilities.
“The size of the existing forest road system and attendant budget constraints prevent the agency from managing its road system to the safety and environmental standards to which it was built,” according to a USDA 2001 summary document.
The current USDA proposal to roll back the rule is open for the public to weigh in until Sept. 19, about a third of the time normally allotted.
