The Roadless Rule and the Fight for Mt. Hood

In August, the U.S. Forest Service proposed to rescind the Roadless Rule, the twenty-five-year-old regulation that has kept road construction, logging, and mining out of 58.5 million acres of national forest since 2001. Once Idaho and Colorado's separate state-specific roadless rules are set aside, the change would strip protection from an estimated 45 million acres nationwide, including nearly 2 million acres here in Oregon. The public comment period, originally set to close September 21st, has been extended to October 6th after a coalition of conservation groups argued that one month was not enough time to weigh in on a change of this scale.

The Forest Service frames the rescission as a matter of wildfire management and local control. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said the rule has kept forests from the treatments that reduce fire risk, and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz has pointed to the share of roadless land with high fire hazard potential. Bark, the Portland nonprofit that monitors Mt. Hood National Forest, disputes that framing: roads do not prevent wildfire, and research the organization cites finds that fires are four times more likely to start in areas that have them. Humans, not lightning, start the large majority of wildfires in the United States, one widely cited study puts the figure at 84 percent, and new roads bring more people deeper into the backcountry, raising the odds of an accidental ignition rather than lowering it. On Mt. Hood alone, 118,000 acres, about 11 percent of the forest, are protected as roadless: habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl, the Red Tree Vole, and salmon, watershed for Oregon communities downstream, and backcountry that draws roughly 4 million visitors a year.

Jordan Latter and his colleagues on Bark's Forest Watch team track these proposals for a living. As the program's manager, Jordan reviews timber and infrastructure plans across Mt. Hood National Forest and works to hold the Forest Service to its own environmental review process. On June 3rd, he joined us at Half Wild to talk about that work, and about what a change like this one would mean for the forest.

A recent episode of Rosebuds and Resilience, a Portland, Oregon podcast hosted by Rebecca Bowe, takes a longer look at Jordan's work. “Groundtruthing to Protect Pacific Northwest Forests” is cross-posted below, and more episodes are available on the show's website.

Citizens still have a voice in this decision. Until 11:59 p.m. Eastern on October 6th, the Forest Service is accepting public comments on its proposal, and the agency is required to consider them before issuing a final rule. Bark has made taking part straightforward: its Roadless Rule page points commenters to the federal docket and offers a guide to writing an effective comment. The organization stresses that individual comments, drawn from your own experience of these forests, carry more weight than copied template letters. To add yours, use the button below.