It seems the Trump administration has a new threat for environmentalists every week. Local environmental agencies are up in arms against the pending removal of the Roadless Rule.
The Roadless Rule protects areas called inventoried roadless areas, or IRAs, within Forest Service land that lack roads and development. Most roadbuilding and commercial logging are prohibited in IRAs. The Gila National Forest has a lot of roadless areas than are not wilderness — about 730,000 acres.
The Gila Wilderness is not at risk. It is roadless because it is wilderness, not because of the Roadless Rule. But if you drive north toward the wilderness or east through the Black Range, you can see wild vistas with no roads.
A big part of the area between N.M. 15 and N.M. 35 is roadless. That made it hard to fight the Trout Fire, as there were limited access points to build firebreaks.
Notice that it’s the Roadless Rule, not the Roadless Law. It’s a regulation that is controlled by the executive branch. You and Sen. Martin Heinrich have approximately the same leverage to affect the outcome.
The Roadless Rule was established in 2001 after months of public comment nationwide. But in June, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the rollback of the Roadless Rule as if it were a done deal. The proposal was part of President Trump’s intention to increase logging on public lands by 25 percent. It was justified as a way to restore decision-making from a national mandate to local managers. By local managers, they mean Forest Service managers appointed by the administration.
Changing a regulation with almost 25 years of history doesn’t happen as automatically as Secretary Rollins implied. We’re in the first phase of comment until Sept. 19. After that, the Forest Service will write an environmental impact statement that the public can comment on. And then — Well, there are two theories: One is that if enough people protest, some undefined legal action can delay or stop the change. The other theory is that the more people protest, the happier the Trump administration will be to ignore their foolish objections.
The first theory is why New Mexico Wild and other organizations are urging you to send in your comments supporting the rule. Others may urge comments against the rule. Whatever your leaning, you can post comments here: bit.ly/41JBdpK.
But regulations aren’t the only thing affecting what happens. There’s the law of supply and demand, and the rule of unintended consequences. It turns out that many roadless areas are roadless not because of a federal rule, but because it’s uneconomical to make roads there.
About a quarter of the Gila National Forest is designated roadless, meaning that three-quarters are considered road accessible. So if there were a push for logging in our area, it would be easier to do it next to existing roads than to create new roads in rugged areas.
Most of our timber is ponderosa pine, which is not particularly valuable — at least not compared to the fir and cedar in the Pacific Northwest or the redwoods in California. When I had to remove ponderosas on my rural property, I couldn’t give the logs away. I’ve got a nice log now, if someone wants it. But most people don’t even take ponderosas for firewood.
Rolling back the Roadless Rule would decrease legal protections for primitive areas, but it’s not necessarily going to turn Southwest forests into clearcut wastelands. The same cannot be said for national forests with more valuable timber in Washington, Oregon and California.
I know about this because as a young adult, I was a logger (aka Destroyer of the Forest) in Washington state. Things have changed a lot in the 50 years since, but I do know what clearcut devastation looks like, and I don’t want to see it on both sides of the highway when I drive out to the Gila Cliff Dwellings.
Logging in my day was a well-paying unionized job with adventure and a lot of muscle- building. Many young people came from all over the country to try it without worrying too much about the environmental consequences. Perhaps it’s hypocritical for me to hope that young people today don’t do what I did.
As an enthusiastic user of wood, I support sustainable timber harvesting. That means thinning the trees, rather than mowing them down the way we did. I hear the technology now exists to manage timber in a more environmentally friendly way, but that doesn’t mean we’ll use it.
This is just one more battle in the Trump administration’s intention to roll back a lot more than the Roadless Rule. We can resist or support, but there’s not much room to ignore.
