US moves to open vast tracts of pristine forests to logging
Trump Administration Seeks to Unlock 44 Million Acres of Untouched Forest for Roads and Timber Harvesting
Bharatmorningnews.com – On Tuesday, the White House put forward a regulatory proposal that would dismantle longstanding protections shielding 44 million acres of pristine, road-free woodland from timber extraction and highway construction. The move targets the Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001, a policy signed into effect during the closing days of the Clinton presidency that had locked down sprawling swaths of federal forest and grassland classified as "inventoried roadless areas."
Administration Justifies the Change as Fire-Prevention Necessity
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins framed the rescission as a correction of bureaucratic paralysis, arguing that the old rule had blocked the Forest Service from performing essential stewardship tasks aimed at suppressing wildfire danger.
"Across the country, we've watched preventable conditions overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease turn healthy landscapes into tinderboxes," Rollins said.
"For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities."
Geographic Reach and Exclusions
Over 95 percent of the inventoried roadless acreage falls within ten Western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. National forests in Colorado and Idaho are carved out of the proposal because those states operate under their own roadless-area regulations.
Conservation Groups Sound the Alarm
Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the initiative the most sweeping rollback of public-land safeguards in the nation's history, arguing it runs counter to popular sentiment.
"Trump is pushing for the largest evisceration of public lands protection in American history and against what Americans want," Spivak said.
The nonprofit characterized roadless tracts in the Northern Rockies as critical corridors for grizzly bears and lynx. It warned the proposal would also devastate salmon-bearing streams and millennia-old Sitka spruce stands in the Tongass National Forest, the largest forest in the country, situated in Alaska.
Polling Data and the Road-Infrastructure Legacy
A recent survey conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research indicated that 77 percent of likely voters consider "conserving national forests and other roadless lands for current and future generations" to be the top priority.
Before the 2001 rule took effect, more than 370,000 miles of roadway had already been cut through national forests, leaving behind a maintenance debt measured in billions of dollars.
Wildfire Science and Climate Context
The Center for Biological Diversity highlighted research published in the journal Fire Ecology showing that wildfire ignition was nearly four times more probable on land within 50 meters of a road than in roadless terrain. The organization noted that the majority of wildfires are human-caused and tend to break out near roadways.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has shown open hostility toward measures aimed at curbing climate change, a driver that is intensifying wildfire frequency and severity by pushing temperatures higher and moisture levels lower across the West.
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