The Trump administration this week opened a public comment period on rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, a move it says will help better manage national forest lands and bolster wildfire suppression.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made the announcement Wednesday.
“We are one step closer to common sense management of our national forest lands. Today marks a critical step forward in President [Donald] Trump’s commitment to restoring local decision-making to federal land managers to empower them to do what’s necessary to protect America’s forests and communities from devastating destruction from fires,” Rollins said.
The U.S. Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, on Friday published its notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement.
“Given changing resource conditions and shifts in policy priorities, the Department believes that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to roadless area management under the 2001 Roadless Rule is no longer appropriate and proposes to use local land management planning processes to administer inventoried roadless areas,” the Forest Service wrote.
Rollins first announced her intent to rescind the rule during a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in New Mexico in June.
Critics argue that building more roads will spark more fires, not prevent them.
“One of the most fundamental concepts in fire, especially in terms of fire geography, is that roads are the dominant place where you see ignitions,” Alexandra Syphard, senior research scientist with the Conservation Biology Institute and the director of science for the Global Wildfire Collective, told NPR.
An abstract written by the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in September 2020 noted that “roads are strongly associated with the spread of invasive plant species in national forests.”
“Speculation that eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly 20 years of monitoring data,” Sean Healey wrote at the time.
Current Forest Service chief Tom Schultz said the rule “has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action – prohibiting road construction, which has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management.”
“The forests we know today are not the same as the forests of 2001. They are dangerously overstocked and increasingly threatened by drought, mortality, insect-borne disease, and wildfire. It’s time to return land management decisions where they belong – with local Forest Service experts who best understand their forests and communities,” he wrote.
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