“curtailing fiscal expenditures on road maintenance”
What it names
Roadless areas
Green Mountain
The comment
The Roadless Rule remains the best idea the Forest Service ever had. It conserves vital wild places in forests that are important to me - the green mountain, Mt. Baker- Snoqualmie, Gila, Tongass, Mt Hood, Olympic, nez perce-clearwater, Nantahala-Pisgah and more. Without designated protections, the highest values of these areas stand to be lost.
The Forest Service had the good sense to create the policy in 2001. They solved multiple problems - protecting wild places, curtailing fiscal expenditures on road maintenance, and satisfying overwhelming demand from the American public - with one policy. All of those remain as important as they were then. Repealing the Roadless Rule would mean reintroducing forest management problems of the past without any reasonable justifications.