USDA rescinds roadless rule

[Trogon]

Unless you work in DC or a policy insider, I don't think anyone will fully understand what is behind this. There is no reason to believe it is heartfelt stewardship of the land. Someone stands to profit from this, its only a question of who. What I do know for sure is that normal folks like us will be on the losing end, somehow. I dont know how though.

At the core of the issue, IMO, is that we need roadless areas to support healthy populations of big game. Fractured habitat, busted migration routes, even just people doing people stuff has a negative impact on wildlife health, recruitment of young, etc. Colorado populations are struggling because of expansion of housing, oil and gas, ski resorts, mtb trails, etc etc. There has to be a refuge somewhere or it doesnt work, even if that refuge isnt the most beautiful plots of wilderness.

 

[abbrown]

Act Now to Protect the Roadless Rule

Just last month, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced her intention to roll back the 2001 “Roadless Rule,” which prohibits new road construction and most new development on nearly 59 million acres of Forest Service lands. Now, that rollback has been officially released for public...

www.themeateater.com

 

[Harvey_NW]

I see this as a double edged sword. Ideologically, it looks good on paper. Realistically, I don't trust it to be carried out beneficially.

As a WA state resident, the Cascades are a perfect example of ample existing National Forest access, and piss poor management. There are road systems plastered in so many areas of the range, and almost zero preventative maintenance gets done. My somewhat local access on the west slope used to be amazing to hunt elk and blacktail, once they stopped clear cutting and thinning, the animals have essentially disappeared because of the forest density. Portions of the East slope catch fire every year (currently smokey as hell outside, ash on my vehicles from multiple fires) and it ends up devastating, and in many places turns into a megafire scorching everything to moon dust. Why are we not addressing the current issues, profiting off timber harvest, improving the ecosystem, and being true stewards of the land? Oh yeah, burning the state down is way better than compromising a stupid owl. Hire a damn biologist to scout the cut area first..

I urged my opposition to rescinding the Roadless Rule in the public comment link. Let's actually manage what we do have access to, first.

 

[TaperPin]

Every administration has a loose relationship with the truth. We've all been and continue to be played by .gov.

View attachment 931064

This is a weirder issue then the talk of public land sale and it's getting the exact response intended. Many hikers or those who want easier access are all for supporting this, while those who enjoy getting away from any sign of humans are against. I live out East and unfortunately roads are a way of life here even in large tracts of state and national forests. I wish that wasn't the case, but by allowing forestry activities and gas drilling we have broken up what once was strictly forests. It's difficult to get more then a mile from a road (although it may be gated off) in the NE.

I agree politicians of all colors can’t be trusted farther than you can toss ‘em. That’s always been the case. Like a manipulative teenager, I almost ignore what comes out their mouths and focus on their actions. Talk is cheap. This simple technique has been used since one Neanderthal didn’t trust what his brother in law was saying, but today good people with common sense have been convinced to stop using critical thinking skills of any kind. An entire generation is reduced to turning a blind eye to things they cried about for decades.

When someone says they only want America to be healthy, but their actions are to stop research into many important diseases, eliminate healthcare for many, stop anti tobacco initiatives that have helped save a ton of lives, restrict shots based on politics, etc. I judge them by their actions. Pedo protectors say one thing and obstruct justice - we should judge them by their actions. The list of double talking throughout government is as long as the project 2025 table of contents.

 

[menhaden_man]

You should look into the NEPA rule changes and how the public is engaged now…

Can you explain?

 

[Windigo]

Can you explain?

The legal argument is that NEPA is purely procedural and not a vehicle for public involvement in fed projects, leading to proposed recisions of a bunch of regs across agencies.

 

[menhaden_man]

The legal argument is that NEPA is purely procedural and not a vehicle for public involvement in fed projects, leading to proposed recisions of a bunch of regs across agencies.

Not to argue but that’s not accurate at all. It was passed by Nixon way back and the major change under Trump is related to CEQ’s involvement. This gives agencies more autonomy to implement, which could expedite process but also lack consistency (think DOD and TVA or USFWS and NOAA. NEPA is still an Act of congress and it ain’t going away anytime soon.

30k public comments posted in less than 5 days over a holiday weekend is impressive though!

 

[Windigo]

Not to argue but that’s not accurate at all. It was passed by Nixon way back and the major change under Trump is related to CEQ’s involvement. This gives agencies more autonomy to implement, which could expedite process but also lack consistency (think DOD and TVA or USFWS and NOAA. NEPA is still an Act of congress and it ain’t going away anytime soon.

30k public comments posted in less than 5 days over a holiday weekend is impressive though!

The procedural argument is actually cited in the text of the proposed rule change. We might be looking at two separate NEPA related changes; I was citing the proposed USDA reg changes since this thread was talking about the roadless rule.

 

[Windigo]

“The rule unifies NEPA procedures across all USDA agencies into a single, department-wide rule. Key changes include limiting public input opportunities, expanding the use of Categorical Exclusions(CEs), and narrowing the scope of environmental impacts that must be considered in analyses.”

Pulled from google’s garbage AI summary because the text of that pdf is atrociously small.

 

[menhaden_man]

“The rule unifies NEPA procedures across all USDA agencies into a single, department-wide rule. Key changes include limiting public input opportunities, expanding the use of Categorical Exclusions(CEs), and narrowing the scope of environmental impacts that must be considered in analyses.”

Pulled from google’s garbage AI summary because the text of that pdf is atrociously small.

Pretty confident they’ll be two comment periods, one after the NOI and again once’s the draft EIS hits - both with tons of public input. Looks like they’re already over 30k comments in less than a week. The ‘substantive’ comments are required to be addressed in the DEIS, and that second comment period is normally when the lawsuits fly. This one will be a complete mess. Now it’s much easier to draft lengthy, detailed, targeted comments with LLMs! This will cut both ways and I’d hate to be in the position to weed through it all.

 

[Buglebrush]

Sometimes it feels like these people see a wildfire occur and don’t see anything other than $ going down the drain rather than wildlife habitat being created.

Modern Logging is the best habitat creator. In thick areas like North Idaho, we desperately need to reopen old roads and start serious logging again! Also, areas with road access have allowed us to keep the wolf population somewhat managed as opposed to the devastation they've caused in the enormous roadless areas. If we just returned to the amount of access and logging from 50 years ago, there would be way more wildlife. I know it's different in less heavily timbered ecosystems.

 

[elkhunter505]

Modern Logging is the best habitat creator. In thick areas like North Idaho, we desperately need to reopen old roads and start serious logging again! Also, areas with road access have allowed us to keep the wolf population somewhat managed as opposed to the devastation they've caused in the enormous roadless areas. If we just returned to the amount of access and logging from 50 years ago, there would be way more wildlife. I know it's different in less heavily timbered ecosystems.

Not certain about those areas but there are plenty of forested areas where a single thin or logging treatment followed by taking the foot off the fire suppression peddle would put the forests back into balance and allow for the low severity patchy burns to create the best habitat. The nutrient cycling you get through fire is different than just thinning. You can emulate them somewhat but the nutrients put in the soil by fires just can’t be replicated. People lived with smoke seasons for thousands of years with mixed severity burns every year. We’ve inserted ourselves to say we are the “managers” but the forest manages itself just fine without us in the mix. Besides, what most people think of as being good habitat is habitat with large game mammals and minimal predators, which likely is not what the true climax habitat supports in many places. As with just about everywhere, the hayday of the 60s-90s is only sustainable with consistent large scale disturbance making early successional habitat which only thinks about game animals in some sense rather than the entire ecosystem.

 

[Harvey_NW]

We’ve inserted ourselves to say we are the “managers” but the forest manages itself just fine without us in the mix.

I think you could find a lot of credible evidence to contradict that simply comparing areas of forest that are properly managed to areas that aren't, in regards to game populations, inhabitance, and fire damage alone. Maybe this is isolated to the areas I frequent and not applicable across the board, but the effects I've seen over the last 20 years are disgusting.

 

[Customweld]

I think you could find a lot of credible evidence to contradict that simply comparing areas of forest that are properly managed to areas that aren't, in regards to game populations, inhabitance, and fire damage alone. Maybe this is isolated to the areas I frequent and not applicable across the board, but the effects I've seen over the last 20 years are disgusting.

The FCW has left the chat.
I'm not advocating for building road in there, but it's a prime example of a area, largely devoid of human activity. It's also extremely low in game numbers.

 

[Buglebrush]

Not certain about those areas but there are plenty of forested areas where a single thin or logging treatment followed by taking the foot off the fire suppression peddle would put the forests back into balance and allow for the low severity patchy burns to create the best habitat. The nutrient cycling you get through fire is different than just thinning. You can emulate them somewhat but the nutrients put in the soil by fires just can’t be replicated. People lived with smoke seasons for thousands of years with mixed severity burns every year. We’ve inserted ourselves to say we are the “managers” but the forest manages itself just fine without us in the mix. Besides, what most people think of as being good habitat is habitat with large game mammals and minimal predators, which likely is not what the true climax habitat supports in many places. As with just about everywhere, the hayday of the 60s-90s is only sustainable with consistent large scale disturbance making early successional habitat which only thinks about game animals in some sense rather than the entire ecosystem.

"Modern Logging". It does take the ecosystems into account with thinning, controlled burns, etc... The Forest doesn't manage itself in a way that's productive for timber or huntable big game populations. The real problem is people believing that it does, which is why we import our timber from Canada and have so much less game than 25 years ago.