Brooke Rollins, the department’s secretary, called the rule “overly restrictive” and an “absurd obstacle” to forest management when she made the announcement during a Western Governors’ Association meeting in New Mexico. The rule, she said, prohibits agencies from properly managing forests and preventing wildfire, while stifling the timber industry.
Utah leaders celebrated the decision, with House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, calling it a “big win” for the state.
But in Utah, proponents of the rule say it’s a vital tool for protecting the state’s forests, which in turn keep water clean, provide habitat for wildlife and allow recreation opportunities.
“This rule protects almost half of the forest service land in Utah,” said Kate Groetzinger, communications director for the Center for Western Priorities. “This opens about half of Utah’s forest land to logging that has been previously protected. That can drastically change the feel of some of our most popular forests.”
The scope of the roadless rule in Utah
The roadless rule was established during the Clinton administration in 2001 and restricts road construction and reconstruction, and timber harvests, on roughly 58.5 million acres of the country’s national forests and grasslands. The goal, according to the forest service, “is to provide lasting protection” on some of the country’s most remote areas.
Called inventoried roadless areas, the forest service created boundaries around roads and existing infrastructure to identify stretches of forest eligible for more stringent protection. Inventoried roadless areas are typically sorted into two categories — places where road construction or reconstruction is allowed, and places where it isn’t allowed.
There are roadless areas along the Wasatch Front, in places like Big, Little, Millcreek and American Fork canyons; in vast sections of the Uinta Mountains; in southern Utah, near Moab and Monticello. They can be recreation hotspots, with some of the state’s most popular hiking trails on or near roadless areas.
Utah has roughly 8.1 million acres of national forest, according to the federal government, spread out across eight regions — Ashley, Caribou, Dixie, Fishlake, Manti-La Sal, Sawtooth, Uinta and Wasatch-Cache national forests.
According to forest service data, about 4 million acres is inventoried roadless area — road construction and reconstruction is allowed on about 3.5 million acres, and prohibited on the remaining 446,000 acres.
But according to Tim Peterson, the cultural landscapes director for Grand Canyon Trust, the distinction can be misleading.
“We haven’t built a lot of new roads in our national forests over the last two to three decades,” said Peterson, who’s been involved in Utah’s roadless areas since the 1990s and helped conduct inventories for environmental groups. “Road building is so expensive and the forest service already has a maintenance backlog … we can’t even maintain the roads that we have, let alone build new roads.”
Regardless of whether new road construction is or isn’t allowed, the rule generally prohibits timber harvesting in covered areas. There are exceptions, Peterson said, including mechanical thinning, removing trees killed by insects, or for fighting fire.
In an email, Redge Johnson, the director of the Utah Public Land Policy Coordinating Office, acknowledged the exceptions, but said the state is still confined in its ability to manage forests to improve habitat and reduce fire danger.
“While the roadless rule allows for limited timber harvest it has so many restrictions it makes it nearly impossible for timber projects to be completed,” Johnson said. “Our forests are overgrown and unhealthy, it is past time that we start to actively manage our national forests.”
Johnson shared a picture with Utah News Dispatch that he took while on a recent horsepacking trip through the Manti-La Sal National Forest, that shows an entire ridge with mostly dead coniferous trees.
“Even though there are old logging roads on the ridge shown, we can not use them to remove the dead timber due to the restrictions from the roadless rule. Removing this dead timber would reduce wildfire risk, increase wildlife habitat and protect our watersheds,” Johnson said.
Read the full report at UtahNewsDispatch.com.
