I am against rescinding the Roadless Rule. I own a small outfitting and guiding business in Wyoming operating on three national forests with extensive IRAs. The main draw for our clients to visit and recreate in this part of the country is the abundance of wildlife, especially large ungulates, pristine waters for fishing, healthy old growth forests, and wide open views - not roads built for logging and mining that the public can not often access. All of these recreational draws associated with roadless areas that support our local tourism industry (note that outdoor tourism is the second biggest contributor to GDP in our state) would be harmed, according to the government’s own impact statement. And the potential economic gains of timber or minerals extracted in these remote, high elevation areas is severely outweighed by the economic losses in our outdoor tourism industry.
I wanted to give a recent, concrete example of what can happen with the construction of new roads for logging on National Forest lands. I guide in the vicinity of Camp Creek near the Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone River. A new logging operation on Camp Creek has led to the creation of only two jobs. I’ve gotten to know these loggers well and I very much value their opportunity to work, but I have also seen the aftermath of their operation firsthand and do not believe the benefits outweigh the costs. First, the harvest of lodgepole pine does not seem to be of great value if only two loggers have been working. Second, the operation has greatly reduced the scenic value of the area for many years to come. Third, there has been a significant reduction in wildlife, especially elk, that we see in this area. Foourth, access roads have been created that are not professionally built and are already experiencing significant erosion and there are visible sediment deposits coming into Camp Creek and the Clark’s Fork (the only Wild and Scenic waterway in the state). Now, I believe the widely reported statistic that there is a much higher chance of wildfire near roadways, especially those used for logging, after witnessing this particular logging operation drop a tree on a power line that caused the Camp Creek Fire earlier this year and led to a multi day power outage for upper Clarks Fork communities and the town of Cooke City MT. This is just one local example, but I believe it is a predictor of what could become more common if we allow more roads to be constructed for extractive industries in IRAs.
No doubt our forests need improvements and treatments but we’ve seen in northern Wyoming how these can be very successful in IRAs. In the last 5 years the Sheridan Municipal Watershed Project on Bighorn National Forest used mostly low impact lop and scatter treatments in 15000 acres of IRAs, and it’s my understanding that this strategy played an important role in reducing the long term damage associated with the Elk Fire. From what I’ve read from the BNF, those low impact treatments helped reduce the fire’s risk of harming critical water infrastructure and limited the amount erosion and sediment coming into the water supply compared to using heavy machinery. I would suggest instead of a wholesale rescission of the Roadless Rule opting for a science based approach to forest treatments that does not harm our local economy, our water, or our wildlife.