Eliminating the 2001 Roadless Rule, giving individual national forests more control over their land, and allowing flexibility to make changes based on local environmental conditions weakens the protection the Rule was meant to provide. This would impact wildlife habitats, increase erosion, worsen water quality, and possibly lead to logging and road development.
Have we not done enough damage to our environment, so we need to figure out how to deplete it more? Have we not imposed enough environmental injustice on Tribal lands, disrespecting their ancestral ways? “Tribes consistently argued that removing this layer of national protection shifts the unsustainable burden of project-level review onto their limited resources and exposes previously untouched areas to industrial activity, mining interests, and destructive recreational access, all of which threaten sacred sites, traditional gathering areas, water quality, and subsistence resources.”
As government and federal agencies continue to change and repeal legislation that was put in place to protect the environment, and as climate change and greenhouse gases increase, you would think preservation would be the main goal, not unwinding nationwide protections that help prevent environmental damage.