As you probably know by now, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins last June announced plans to repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which bars road-building and development from tens of millions of acres of national forest.
Rollins explained that rescinding the rule would “remove prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System, allowing for fire prevention and responsible timber production.”
A call for public comment followed in August, and, despite its short 21-day window, garnered more than 223,000 individual responses, with 90% to 99% opposed, depending whose count one uses. A draft environmental impact statement expected soon will again be subject to public comment, and few expect different results this time around.
The Roadless Rule is rooted in the 1960’s, when the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, began to shift its mission from growing trees, overseeing land and fighting fires to a broader approach aimed at multiple use, from commercial activity to wildlife and resource protection, recreation and more.
Public comments on the original 2001 proposal totaled more than 1 million and the USFS held some 600 public meetings, including 34 in Montana. Yet the administration now proposing revocation has yet to schedule a single public meeting on the matter.
Might that be because a 2018 Pew poll showed 75% support nationwide for roadless areas, or because two previous attempts at rescission failed? (The first within days of its January 2001 passage, when President George W. Bush took office and pushed to delay it, the second three years later, when the administration proposed a permitting process for roadless areas.)
Bringing the issue home, in Jefferson County, more than 147,000 acres are designated as inventoried roadless areas (IRAs). And as forest boundaries rarely align with county borders, these areas cross into Lewis & Clark, Powell, Silver Bow and Broadwater counties.
One of the largest, and most popular, of these roadless areas sits in the Elkhorn Mountains. Within the Elkhorn Wildlife Management Unit (EWMU), encompassing 175,000 acres and stretching into Broadwater County, 75,000 acres are roadless.
First proposed as a wilderness area in the late 1970s, the EWMU is the result of a compromise that created the national forest system’s first and only wildlife management unit. The EWMU has grown exponentially in popularity and support, providing extraordinary recreation (the Hunting District 380 elk permit is the state’s most applied-for permit), university research opportunities and school natural education classes.
One of the first restoration projects of westslope cutthroat trout occurred in the EWMU and its success has helped keep Montana’s state fish from being listed as threatened. The EWMU has numerous historic resources, including archeological sites among the oldest in North America.
The EWMU also provides spectacular backcountry experiences, all within the roadless area and reasonably close to sizable population centers. Add in commercial activities such as grazing and limited mining, and the EWMU has succeeded through cooperative efforts between federal and state agencies, assisted by public input and support.
A related concern that has been largely absent from recent roadless discussions is the USFS’ intention, announced in September, to repeal the Travel Management Rule, which requires all national forests to ”identify a transportation system that is environmentally and financially sustainable while meeting public needs.”
Some forests have been able to comply with this rule and make clear determinations regarding which motorized vehicles are able to use which routes and paths and at which times. The maps many of us use to navigate our national forests have been shaped by this rule. Yet these maps are now largely out of date, like that of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF), which includes sizable portions of Jefferson County.
Most of BDNF has lacked travel planning for some 40 years. The Forest Service and BDNF supervisors have made several attempts over the years, most notably in 2005, but those efforts have always been interrupted or fallen short.
Supervisors and the public know travel management is no overnight project, yet they are willing to invest the time and sweat to do it. Instituting a comprehensive BDNF travel plan is supported across the board by motorized and non-motorized users, grazing permittees, special use permittees, county agencies, and residents within and beyond Jefferson County.
Yet last year saw Forest Service staff reductions and budget cuts, mixed messaging from Washington, DC, and then a proposal to revoke Travel Management, which would undoubtedly compound the impact of Roadless Rule rescission.
Thousands of miles of existing national forest roads that are already in serious disrepair, preventing access and reducing public safety. Some roadless areas are home to headwaters for nearby towns’ water supply, and new roadbuilding, combined with the existing sub-par roads, would likely imperil water quality at the tap.
Repealing the Roadless Rule would pose major risks to the EWMU and to roadless areas across Jefferson County, Montana and the nation – and still many questions remain unanswered. How will IRAs be managed once protections are removed? What of the Roadless Rule’s many invaluable exceptions, which detail how to address fire, water quality, and environmental concerns? And if no areas of our national forests are designated roadless, and our national forests lack travel management plans, will the result be a vehicular and commercial free for all?
Roadless Rule rescission also ignores the conclusion of study after study: that more roads means more wildfires. Forest Service researchers and numerous scientists have found that four out of five wildfires are human-caused, with most ignitions occurring near roads. If the objective is protecting our forests long-term, allowing more roads seems the wrong path.
Far better than wholesale and reckless repeal would be a thoughtful and comprehensive review. Circumstances have shifted over the past quarter-century due to years of drought, bouts of insect infestation, aging and evolving forests, a changing climate and a spike in users and uses.
Consider that Colorado and Idaho would be exempt from rescission because they have in recent decades devised and implemented their own in-state roadless rules. Through considerable hard work, countless public meetings and lengthy discussions over several years, these two states were able to accommodate a range of uses and maintain basic conservation values.
It’s not too late for Montana to begin down a similar path. That, however, is dependent on how the Forest Service’s new “reorganization” (see article on page TK) impacts its mission, scope of work and on the ground presence. That, and the degree to which the public is able to participate, should give us a roadmap to helping the Forest Service better manage our public resources.
The Roadless Rule and Travel Management need to stay in place, however we get there.
Retired after 30 years with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, including as Helena Area Coordinator, Mike Korn lives in Montana City and is vice-chair of the Elkhorn Working Group.
