Wilderness Watch is urging the Department of Agriculture to drop its plan to rescind the Roadless Rule, which has helped protect roadless areas and adjacent wilderness lands on national forests for nearly a quarter-century.
The Roadless Rule dates back to 2001, when the Clinton administration finalized a lengthy rulemaking process to protect roadless areas in national forests from road-building and associated development. About 58 million acres of wildlands were covered under the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which have mostly been kept free of road construction, logging, and other types of development.
National forest roadless areas in Idaho and Colorado received overall lesser protections via separate state-based rules and are not part of the repeal attempt; however, 44.7 million acres of roadless areas on national forests could be opened to logging, mining, road-building, and development if the administration succeeds in repealing the Roadless Rule.
The national forests already have more than 380,000 miles of roads, which the agency can’t afford to maintain.These roads choke rivers and streams with sediment, fragment important wildlife habitat, and lead to more human-caused fire in the backcountry. In contrast, roadless areas on national forests offer recreation, with large sections of the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest, and Appalachian National Trails crossing protected roadless areas. Roadless areas also provide secure wildlife habitat and migration corridors. Because many roadless areas abut Wilderness, these roadless areas better protect Wilderness by keeping road-building and development away. And in the future, Congress may look to roadless areas for possible wilderness designations.
Unfortunately, the 2001 Roadless Rule is not nearly protective enough. It contains numerous loopholes that allow some road-building, logging, and development under certain circumstances. Wilderness Watch is advocating that rather than repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule, it should be strengthened and these loopholes eliminated.
Photo: Pemigewasset Inventoried Roadless Area in New Hampshire by Zack Porter, Standing Trees
