by Tim Peterson, Utah Wildlands Director
As sure as the seasons change, you’ll find some Utah politicians trying to remove protections from our public lands. First, they successfully urged the president to sign the biggest attempted rollback of protections for public lands in American history, cutting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than two million acres in a single day.
Now, the state of Utah is going after our national forest roadless areas by rushing a process to petition for changes to and exemptions from the Forest Service's 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
The roadless rule protects just under half of Utah’s national forests from new roadbuilding and commercial logging. You may have been lucky enough to spend time in places like Boulder Mountain, Thousand Lake Mountain, Hammond Canyon, the High Uintas, or the peaks of the La Sal Mountains outside Moab.
They’re all roadless areas, and they’re treasured backcountry that we rely on for clean air, unspoiled wildlife habitat, clean drinking water, and recreation opportunities for all. The roadless rule is one of our nation's most successful and widely popular conservation initiatives, but Utah wants out.
Why does Utah want a change? The stated goals are to “give our forest managers the tools and flexibility they need to improve the health of our forests and watersheds, and to reduce wildfire risks.” Sounds good, right? Not so fast. Recently, a document obtained by a reporter entitled “Utah Policy Objectives for Land Management” laid the true goals bare. Stated in plain text, Utah’s objective is to: “[r]evoke the Forest Service's roadless rule and reinstate timber production on federal land that has been managed as special areas or roadless areas."
That’s a little different than what the state is telling the public. Regardless, reducing fire risk and improving forest health can’t be done by just hitting the brakes on protecting roadless areas. Most roadless areas are far from communities at risk of severe wildfire. There simply isn’t enough money in the federal budget or labor in the workforce to road-build and log our way out of wildfire risk.
Regrettably, roadless areas have become the latest straw man for Utah politicians to stand up and attack instead of tackling the complicated issues around forests and fire that real people in communities vulnerable to wildfire need addressed. Fighting the roadless rule may be satisfying for Utah’s anti-public lands politicians, but it won’t do what they say is necessary.
The smart way to address concerns would be to focus wildfire mitigation efforts (such as clearing underbrush and ladder fuels and reintroducing prescribed fire where it has been unnaturally suppressed) near homes and communities that need protecting.
Wildfire is deadly serious. Many communities in the West are under direct threat. But since 2013, 90 percent of wildfires have started outside roadless areas. More roads means more vehicle use, and more opportunity for careless or malicious individuals to start fires. The real risks and costs of fire are most serious where homes and communities meet the national forests — mostly places well outside roadless areas. Opening pristine and natural roadless areas deep in the backcountry for commercial logging and new roadbuilding won't fix the complex issues that Utah politicians claim to want to solve.
Utah intends to submit its roadless petition by the end of 2018 or shortly thereafter, and there's still no meaningful mechanism in place to involve the public in these decisions.
Thank you for taking action to protect Utah’s pristine natural roadless areas from unnecessary new roads and logging operations.
Utah is seeking to allow new road-building and commercial logging on nearly 4 million acres of pristine national forest roadless areas in the state. Utah’s petition is now on Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue's desk. Please urge Secretary Perdue to reject Utah’s roadless petition.
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