Aug. 28—The Trump administration said it’s moving later this week to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, drawing a wave of opposition from critics who said it opens 15 million acres to potential development in Alaska alone.
The removal of the rule could pave the way for development in forests across the U.S. including in Alaska, home to the Tongass and Chugach national forests, the nation’s largest forests.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that it expects to publish a long-anticipated “notice of intent” about the proposed repeal in the Federal Register on Thursday.
That will lead to a comment period starting Friday on the agency’s plan to develop an environmental impact statement for the repeal, the agency said in a statement. The three-week public comment period will end Sept. 19.
The notice will explain the reasons for rescinding the rule, the potential effects and how national forests are managed, the statement said.
The filing will mark an initial step in removing the 2001 Clinton-era rule that prohibited new roads across forest land nationwide.
It’s the latest salvo in the seesaw battle between presidential administrations over resource development issues, with lands in Alaska often at the center of the fight.
The first Trump administration repealed the rule for the Tongass National Forest, inviting legal pushback and prolonging the decades-long fight over the issue. The effort drew 16,000 unique comments, the vast majority opposed.
The Biden administration reinstated the rule for the Tongass in 2023.
Nationwide, the repeal would apply to 45 million acres of inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System, about 75% of such lands, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the statement.
A change will restore local decision-making to federal land managers to prevent forest fires, he said.
“This administration is dedicated to removing burdensome, outdated, one-size-fits-all regulations that not only put people and livelihoods at risk but also stifle economic growth in rural America,” Rollins said.
The rule has prohibited road construction, limiting wildfire suppression and active forest management, said Tom Schultz, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, in the statement.
“The forests we know today are not the same as the forests of 2001,″ he said. “They are dangerously overstocked and increasingly threatened by drought, mortality, insect-borne disease, and wildfire.”
Some Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, spending a week in Alaska as part of a delegation to better understand the state, spoke in favor of the repeal at events in Anchorage on Wednesday.
Committee chair Bruce Westerman, R-Arkansas, said the nation’s forests should support clean air, water and the economy. The rule has devastated “forest products communities” in Alaska and on the West Coast, he said.
“And today, with all of our abundant resources, we still import about 30% of wood products that are consumed in the United States,” Westerman said. “That just really shouldn’t be.”
“The roadless rule has really handicapped us in a number of areas,” said U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona. “When you restrict that, then you restrict the ability to look at a resource and harness it.”
U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle, an Oregon Democrat, said she’d like “to see a more nuanced approach.”
“We have to protect our federal lands,” she said. “We have to make sure that the public has access to our public lands. And we have to make sure that we aren’t just wholesale taking out the protections that we worked really, really hard for, because we owe it to the people of this country to protect those lands that truly are theirs.”
Exemptions to the road rule in Alaska alone have allowed approval of more than 50 projects including road reconstruction, mines, plus hydropower and intertie projects, the U.S. Forest Service said in 2019.
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said in a statement that a repeal would support industrial activities that hurt the environment.
“Secretary Rollins is steamrolling ahead with Trump’s plan to deliver America’s last wild forests to corporate polluters,” Huffman said. “Forcing a rollback with only a matter of days for the public to voice concerns is an insult to the American people and the communities who depend on these lands.”
Conservation groups blasted the three-week comment period as far too short. A record 1.6 million people commented on the rule’s development close to 25 years ago, with 96% opposed, they said.
A repeal will put the Tongass and Chugach national forests at risk of new logging, mining and drilling activity, and hurt wildlife, hunting, fishing and tourism, they said.
“Roadless areas make up beloved hunting grounds, fly fishing areas, and hiking opportunities,” said Dyani Chapman, state director with Alaska Environment Research & Policy Center. “It is more important to protect these areas than to get a little more wood or to build one more mine or one more road.”
In Southeast Alaska, a group of tribes, municipalities, small businesses and conservation groups oppose the repeal, according to a statement from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.
In the Tongass, a repeal would add nearly 190,000 acres to the inventory of lands considered “suitable” for timber production, the Southeast group said. The lands support subsistence and recreational harvests and industries like commercial fishing and tourism. More than 240 miles of salmon streams are still blocked by failed culverts from past roadbuilding, the statement said.
“Rescinding the Roadless Rule will devastate our community just as we are beginning to heal from clear-cut logging of the past,” said Joel Jackson, president of the tribal government in Kake. “It’s clear the people making these decisions in Washington, D.C., don’t care about how it will harm those of us who live here and have lived here for thousands of years.”
Daily News reporter Iris Samuels contributed.