Logging, we might note, involves a renewable resource – trees. Here in the Great Land, the implementation of the so-called “Roadless Rule” in 2001 hampered logging in places like the Tongass National Forest. Yes, in a national forest; part of the justification for the national forest system was the preservation and availability of a strategic asset, timber. The Biden administration(‘s autopen) enforced the “Roadless Rule” with vigor, and that rule was used to lock up 58.5 million acres of National Forest land.
On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins announced that the Roadless Rule has gone the way of the dodo.
Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced during a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in New Mexico, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. This outdated administrative rule contradicts the will of Congress and goes against the mandate of the USDA Forest Service to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands. Rescinding this rule will remove prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System, allowing for fire prevention and responsible timber production.
This rule is overly restrictive and poses real harm to millions of acres of our national forests. In total, 30% of National Forest System lands are impacted by this rule. For example, nearly 60% of forest service land in Utah is restricted from road development and is unable to be properly managed for fire risk. In Montana, it is 58%, and in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest in the country, 92% is impacted. This also hurts jobs and economic development across rural America. Utah alone estimates the roadless rule alone creates a 25% decrease in economic development in the forestry sector.
This is a great piece of deregulation for all of the United States. Here in Alaska, it will open up the Tongass National Forest for logging and other uses.
Congressman Nick Begich noted, “Today’s decision by the USDA to rescind the deeply flawed and outdated Roadless Rule is yet another a major victory for Alaska. Alaska’s forests are one of our state’s greatest natural assets and the “Roadless Rule” has long stifled responsible forest management, blocked access to critical resources, and halted economic opportunity particularly in Alaska, where 92% of the Tongass National Forest was off-limits. The Roadless Rule was never about responsible conservation; it was about bureaucratic overreach that undermined the ability of local forest managers and communities to effectively manage their lands.
Congressman Begich is precisely right. The “Roadless Rule” was a nonsensical regulation, written to appease environmental activists who rarely, if ever, see the actual environment, much less try to make a living from it.
Of course, nobody wants to see vast tracts of forest clear-cut and left empty, nor do we want to see endless dirt roads crisscrossing the landscape. But we won’t. That’s not how modern forest management works, and we still want to conserve resources, not waste them. People like wild places, people like green trees and colorful wildflowers. This act, this stripping away of some unnecessary red tape, will increase, not decrease, people’s access to these areas – to land that actually belongs to the American people.
This is the kind of deregulation that we voted for.
See Also: Alaska Sues Biden Administration Over New Tongass Logging Ban
Two New Biden Administration Energy Policies Will Send Prices Soaring, Harm Alaska Natives
The elimination of this rule will create jobs, it will allow greater access to the commodity that the Forest Service was created to protect, it will make preventing and managing wildfires easier and, we can hope, will allow greater recreational access to these lands by Americans – they are, after all, our lands.
Promises made.
Promises kept.
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