- USDA moved on Tuesday to repeal the Roadless Rule, which restricts roads and timber harvesting across 44 million acres of national forests, including roughly half of Utah’s Forest Service land.
- Supporters say the rule has left forests dangerously unmanaged and hindered energy development, while opponents warn repeal could worsen wildfires and threaten air and water quality.
- The administrative repeal is moving forward as Congress considers legislation to make the change permanent, though development on Forest Service land would still require permits and environmental reviews.
A two-pronged approach to give state and local groups more authority over forest land management is developing, and after a year, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is making ground on the administrative side.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture filed a draft of its environmental impact statement in the Federal Register on Tuesday, with the goal of removing the national designation of roadless areas. The proposal will be published on Wednesday, and public comments on the rule will be due by Sept. 21.
“Roadless Rule” protections currently apply to 44 million acres of national forest land, 95% of which are in 10 states across the West. About half of Utah’s 8 million acres of U.S. Forest Service-managed land is restricted by the Roadless Rule.
The protections restrict road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting.
If the Roadless Rule changes, it will remove road-building bans from roadless areas everywhere except in Idaho and Colorado, since they operate under separate rules.
Leaving vast swathes of the West untouched is causing American forests to deteriorate, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told the Deseret News in a previous interview.
Only 5% of the inventoried roadless areas have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014, Schultz said in a statement upon the USDA’s announcement. “Acting now, thoughtfully and decisively, is the best way to restore the balance, reduce wildfire risk, and secure the long-term health of our forests and neighboring communities,” he said.
Meanwhile, Congress is seeking to make the USDA’s executive changes law.
Even if the Roadless Rule is nullified, private citizens and companies would still be required to obtain a Forest Service special use permit, undergo an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, and follow any other location-specific regulations before doing anything on Forest Service land.
Lawmakers, analysts and activists discuss the rule change
Analysts and activists reacted to the news strongly on Tuesday.
In a statement, the director of Utah’s Wilderness Society, Charlie Luke, described the rule’s removal as “irresponsible” amid the state’s destructive wildfire season. He added that the move could “threaten” the state’s air and drinking water.
Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have voiced similar concerns about removing the rule.
Getting rid of the Roadless Rule “is basically like saying, ‘OK, we’re going to go build a road anywhere, even where it’s not cost effective, even where it’s going to cost the public more,’ instead of focusing on the backlog ... it’s like, there’s a divide here. And it’s a bad divide,” Wyden previously told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in mid-June.
In the same committee, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., added concern that removing the rule would increase the risk of wildfires, since more people would have access to the land.
On the other hand, legal analysts have questioned whether the USDA had the authority to enforce such a rule in the first place. Luke Wake, a senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, told the Deseret News in a statement that when the USDA imposed the rule in the early 2000s, they “never had statutory authority.”
“So the department is right to rescind a rule that exceeds its legal authority,” Wake said.
Outside of environmental effects, the Roadless Rule has had practical consequences on energy development, he added. The Roadless Rule prohibits developers from pursuing “hydroelectric and geothermal projects that could reduce ... dependence on high-cost diesel fuel for electricity,” Wake said.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where the bill was originally introduced, has spoken in favor of removing the rule.
“There’s no explicit statutory activity directing the Forest Service to do this — to create inventory of roadless areas. The rule has wreaked havoc on a lot of Western communities, including a lot of communities in my state, the state of Utah,” Lee said.