Commentary: Americans loudly tell the Forest Service to not rescind the ‘Roadless Rule’

The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which currently protects over 58.8 million acres of national forest land from road-building, logging, and other industrial activity, represents one of the most significant protections for wildlife habitat in the United States.

Despite the long-standing success of the rule in protecting our forests while allowing for active fire management, the Trump administration announced in June that it plans to repeal the rule. Public comments collected by the government regarding the rule, however, demonstrate an overwhelming rejection of this plan.

A public mandate

An analysis conducted by my colleagues at the Center for Western Priorities found that over 99% of the public comments submitted during the past month oppose the Trump administration’s plan to rescind the “Roadless Rule.”

We found that 99.2% of comments opposed the rescission of the rule, while just 0.6% were in support, and 0.2% were neutral. This level of opposition is not new: When the Roadless Rule was first proposed by the Clinton administration in 2000, it garnered 1.6 million public comments, with over 90% of commenters favoring it.

More recently, a 2019 poll found that 75% of the public supported the rule, including those in rural areas. This consistent and historic public support shows that Americans are united in their love of our national forests.

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How CWP calculated the opposition

To reach our finding of near-unanimous support, we followed a scientific methodology using data submitted to regulations.gov.

First, we gathered all public comments posted by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture by the morning of Sept. 19, about 12 hours before the truncated, 21-day comment period officially closed. At that time, more than 183,000 comments had been submitted.

Next, we extracted a statistically random sample of 5,000 comments from this large data set. We then used a combination of keyword analysis and manual coding to analyze the sample and categorize each comment as either “oppose,” “support,” or “neutral.” The analysis has a margin of error of +/- 1.4% – larger than the amount of support we found for getting rid of the Roadless Rule.

It is important to note that the total number of comments received eventually grew to 625,737, with more than 400,000 additional bulk submissions – largely petitions collected by conservation groups opposed to the repeal. These bulk submissions are not publicly available for analysis, but would undoubtedly push the percentage of comments opposed to rescinding the Roadless Rule even closer to 100%.

Need for the Roadless Rule

The Roadless Rule protects countless watersheds and habitats, while offering incredible backcountry recreation opportunities to all Americans – regardless of income. Despite the administration’s claim that repealing the rule would reduce wildfire risk, scientific evidence suggests the opposite is true.

Research indicates that increasing the amount of roads in forests actually increases wildfire risk. Furthermore, fuel reduction treatments are already permitted in roadless areas and, in fact, fuel management activities have been more numerous on a per-acre basis in roadless areas than elsewhere in the National Forest System. Historical fire maps confirm that forests with and without roads have burned at similar rates since the rule was established in 2001.

Additionally, repealing the rule would exacerbate existing fiscal problems. The U.S. Forest Service already faces a massive $10 billion road maintenance backlog. Increasing the amount of roads by opening up roadless areas would only grow this debt. Finally, nearly 85% of wildland fires in the U.S. are caused by humans, according to the USFS, and more roads means more humans in forests.

While the administration may attempt to move forward despite the public’s clear support for keeping the Roadless Rule, the political ramifications could be disastrous. Americans have spoken out loud and clear twice this summer against attacks on our public lands – first defeating U.S. Sen. Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off national public lands in June, and now demanding the Roadless Rule remain in place.

The administration should listen to the unified voice of the American people and leave our public lands alone.

The author hails from Salt Lake City and co-hosts CWP’s podcast, The Landscape.