Trump administration plans to rescind rule blocking logging on national forest lands

Santa Fe, NM – The Trump administration plans to cancel a rule of almost a quarter of a century that blocked the connection to national forest land, the Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced on Monday.

The Range without Road adopted in the last days of the presidency of Bill Clinton in 2001 destroyed the Republican legislators, in particular in the west where national forests extend on a vast mountainous land and the forest operating industry.

The rule hampered road construction and the “responsible production of wood” which would have helped to reduce the risk of strong fire forces, Rollins said at the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association.

“This decision opens up a new era of consistency and sustainability for the forests of our country,” said Rollins.

Scientists say that the worsening of forest fires is motivated by a combination of climate change that warms and dries the forests, less forest exploitation and decades of abolition of fires that have enabled fuels to accumulate.

The Roadless rule affected 30% of national forest land on a national level, or around 59 million acres (24 million hectares), according to the US Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service Agency.

The rules of the region without roads of the State in Idaho and Colorado replace the limits of the Raper -without Road rule of 2001, according to the USDA, which means that all the land of the national forest would not be affected by a cancellation.

Rollins’ announcement on Monday was a first step in a process to cancel the rule without a route which will be followed by an official notice in the coming weeks, the department of agriculture said in a statement.

The announcement comes in the midst of recent discussions on the sale of federal land in part to improve the affordability of housing, an idea criticized by Democrats as a seizure of public land.

The sale of public lands attracted a mixed reception of governors at the same meeting. They expressed their enthusiasm for economic development and concerns about reducing public access to shared land.

Addressing a panel of governors and audiences of hotels, the secretary of the department ministry, Doug Burgum, described a new “era of abundance” on public land under the administration of President Donald Trump in the development of natural resources, including energy and critical minerals necessary for the domestic production of mobile phones, computers and vehicles.

Apart from the entrance to the hotel in downtown Santa Fe, several hundred demonstrators filled the street to denounce the efforts that could privatize federal public lands, sing “not for sale” and wear panels that read: “this land belongs to you and me” and “keep our public land for future generations”.

On social networks, the governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, an ally of Trump, described the overthrow of without road areas “Another example of President Trump fulfilling his campaign promise to open resources for responsible development”.

The change of area without a route marks during this time a lively reversal of the Biden administration, which far from opening more areas with wood harvesting has sought to do more to restrict forest farm and protect old forests.

Environmental groups, which wish to maintain restrictions on logging and road construction for places such as the Tongass National Alaska Forest have criticized the possibility of retreating the protections.

“Any attempt at revocation is an attack in the air and water that we breathe and drink, abundant leisure possibilities that millions of people appreciate each year, paradise for wildlife and critical buffers for communities threatened by seasons of increasingly serious forest fires,” said Josh Hicks, director of the Wilderness Society of the USDA.

Contrary to what Rollins said about forest risk reduction, journalization exacerbates climate change and makes forest fires more intense, said Rachael Hamby, political director of the Center for Western Priories.

“It is nothing more than a massive gift for wood companies to the detriment of each American and the forests that all belong to us,” Hamby said in a press release.

In Alaska, which houses the largest national forest in the country, Tongass, the rule without a route has long been a dispute objective, state political leaders supporting an exemption from the rule that they support obstruct economic opportunities.

During the last part of Trump’s first mandate, the federal government raised restrictions on forest exploitation and the construction of roads in Tongass, which the Biden administration later reversed.

Trump, in January, called upon to return to politics from his first mandate as part of a specific executive decree of Alaska aimed at stimulating the development, exploitation and exploitation of oil and gas in the state.

Tongass is a temperate tropical forest of accident glaciers and coastal islands. It provides fauna habitat such as bears, wolves, salmon and white -headed pygargues.

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Bohrer reported to Juneau, Alaska. Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Matthew Daly in Washington, DC, and Matthew Brown in Helena, Montana, contributed to this report.