Map: These wild California forests could open to logging under Trump plan

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

The Trump administration is seeking to undo a 25-year-old rule that shields nearly a third of U.S. Forest Service lands from roads and logging, including large swaths of California, notably areas near Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and Giant Sequoia National Monument.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who announced the plan to rescind the 'roadless rule' this week, called the protections outdated, saying they were preventing responsible timber production and necessary wildfire prevention work.
Conservation groups, however, shot back that the move would simply encourage destructive logging ventures in ecologically important areas. They pledged to fight the action as it winds through what promises to be a lengthy and litigious repeal process.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule covers about 59 million acres of Forest Service lands, mostly in Western states. The protections were initiated by President Bill Clinton to try to stop the encroachment of industry in some of the last untouched parts of national forests. Many have criticized the measure, though, as an end run on the Wilderness Act because it establishes safeguards similar to wilderness areas without getting congressional approval as required by the act.
In California, 4.4 million acres across 20 national forests are protected by the rule, according to the Forest Service. It's nearly 5% of the state's total lands and includes stretches of such heavily visited forests as the Tahoe, Sequoia, Sierra, Stanislaus and Inyo.
Many of the spots that are protected border wilderness areas and national parks.
'Most people think they're in wilderness when they step in,' said John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for healthy landscapes. 'People use them as gateways to go through to get to wilderness areas' and to parks.
Buckley and others describe some of the protected lands as ecological hot spots where the development of roads and timber operations would fragment sensitive habitat, disrupt wildlife and pollute watersheds.
'It would be short-sighted and arrogant for the American people to support the unleashing of chainsaws and the bulldozing of new roads into the small percentage of our public lands that have managed to stay pristine, wild, roadless areas,' Buckley said.
While enterprises such as oil drilling and mining aren't expressly prohibited under the roadless rule, the policy has served as a de facto ban because roads are required for such endeavors. Supporters of the rule say new roads would inevitably bring these commercial activities.
Speaking this week at a meeting of the Western Governors' Association, Secretary Rollins said not building roads into these areas is worse. It prevents the Forest Service from ensuring that important firefighting and fire mitigation work is done, she said. She also said it stifles economic development, which is at odds with President Trump's many executive orders calling for greater resource extraction on federal lands.
'This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation's forests,' Rollins said. 'It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.'
The timber trade widely welcomed the proposed rollback, though opening new public lands for private logging is no guarantee of increased timber production.
Building roads into these areas will be costly. Under the Trump administration, the Forest Service has cut the staffing that helps plan and oversee logging contracts. The timber industry, especially in California, has lost capacity to harvest wood.
Matt Dias, president and CEO of the California Forestry Association, said foresters would be happy to have more opportunities to work with the federal government on projects that can increase forest health and fire safety.
'We are very pleased that they're considering rolling back this particular policy, if it will help us get to where we want to be,' he said.
The announcement of the repeal kicks off an administrative process that requires a technical review of what the impact would be as well as inviting public comment. This could take months, a year or even longer. If the rule is changed or eliminated, litigation will almost certainly follow.
Environmentalists insist that little good will come of revoking the rule. They say the Trump administration's promotion of the action as a fire prevention measure is simply propaganda.
'Logging, that's what this is about,' said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. 'They don't like anything that puts a stop to commercialization and exploitation. … Stripping protections from these last unfragmented national forests risks our drinking water, plants, animals and some of America's most beautiful wild places.'