Roadless Areas contain some of my favorite places on our National Forest lands. Some of your favorites spots are probably in Roadless Areas as well. Unlike wilderness areas, there are no wooden signs you pass or lines crossed on the map. These invisible boundaries are often traversed without us knowing. Please read on for some useful links and information. And how you can submit your comments to USDA on the Roadless Rule rescission. Despite the rhetoric that you hear from national and state big green NGOs, Roadless Areas should not be considered as “protected lands.” Extraction like logging and livestock grazing are occurring in Roadless Areas right now. The information below was discussed in the video for your reference: Early government surveys found that ponderosa forests were 17x denser than claimed. And mixed conifer forests are 4x denser. Baker et al. 2023 A comprehensive analysis of 1,500 wildfires in the west found they burned slower and less intensely in protected areas. Bradley et al. 2016 34% of “fuels reduction logging” occurs in Inventoried Roadless Areas according to Healey 2020. This tradeoff (better firefighting, more human-caused fires) partially explains why the presence of roads is relatively neutral with respect to the long term occurrence of fire in national forests. Management records also indicated that a lack of roads did not prevent fuel reduction efforts in IRAs between 2001 and 2019. IRAs contain approximately 21% of the total tree cover across NFS (Homer et al 2015); those areas accounted for 34% of the total fuel treatment activities and 8% of the total area treated (USDA 2019a). A lack of roads in IRAs has not implied passive fire risk management. The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act would designate 23 million acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas as new wilderness in OR, WA, ID, MT, and WY. Submit your comment here for the Roadless Rule rescission here → http://www.Roadless.org Some talking points to consider: * I oppose the Forest Service’s proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. * The Forest Service should strengthen the Roadless Rule, not eliminate it. The current rule provides essential protections but still permits damaging activities in Inventoried Roadless Areas. * Rescission would remove national protections from approximately 45 million acres of National Forest lands, exposing intact wildlife habitat and watersheds to additional logging, grazing-related roads, mining, and fragmentation. * Research examining 1,500 fires shows that protected (unroaded) forests burn at lower intensity and have lower rates of fire spread when controlled for weather conditions. Roads can increase human-caused fire ignitions and spread invasive plants. * The Forest Service should close loopholes that permit logging and the construction of so-called “temporary roads” in roadless areas. Temporary roads can cause lasting harm to wildlife habitat, soils, and watersheds. * The 2001 Roadless Rule does not address livestock-grazing impacts, and grazing has continued uninterrupted in Inventoried Roadless Areas. A mapping analysis estimates that between 10 million and 15 million acres of these lands are actively grazed by domestic livestock each year. Livestock can damage streams and springs, remove riparian vegetation, compact soils, spread invasive plants, and displace native wildlife. New road construction would enable harmful livestock grazing to expand. * The Forest Service should prioritize voluntary grazing-permit retirement within roadless areas and close vacant allotments and allotments where grazing conflicts with roadless-area values. * The existing rule does not prohibit hardrock mining claims under the General Mining Law of 1872, and mineral leasing can continue. USDA should ask the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw Inventoried Roadless Areas from mineral entry under section 204 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, subject to valid existing rights. The Forest Service should also prohibit new mineral leasing within these lands.More than 9,000 miles of mapped motorized trails cross roadless areas.. Motorized use can compact soils, spread invasive species, disturb wildlife, fragment secure habitat, and increase human-caused wildfire risk. Inventoried Roadless Areas should be nonmotorized by default, with narrow exceptions for valid existing rights, necessary administrative access, and emergencies. * The Forest Service should withdraw the proposed rescission and adopt a stronger national rule that protects roadless lands from commercial logging, unnecessary roads, damaging grazing, new mineral development, and harmful motorized use. Get full access to Our Public Lands Podcast at ourpubliclandspodcast.substack.com/subscribe
