Issues: Wildlands

1. What are roadless areas?
2. Why are these areas important?
3. What is the Roadless Area Conservation Rule?
4. What kinds of places are protected under the rule?
5. Who supports the roadless rule?
6. Who opposes the roadless rule?
7. What is the Bush administration's position on the roadless rule?
8. Why do we need national guidelines for managing roadless areas?
9. Isn't road-building and logging in backcountry areas essential to efforts to reduce wildfire risk?

1. What are roadless areas?

"Roadless areas" may not be a very suggestive term, but in fact these are some of the most beautiful and ecologically significant lands in our national forests. Roadless areas are exactly that -- places where no roads have been built and where, as a result, no logging or other development has occurred. Unspoiled by large-scale human activity, roadless areas are among the last strongholds of the primeval American landscape.

2. Why are these areas important?

Roadless areas are havens for fish and wildlife, whose habitat in many other forest areas has been fragmented or entirely destroyed. They provide habitat for more than 1,600 threatened, endangered or sensitive plant and animal species, and include watersheds that supply clean drinking water, unpolluted by development for 60 million Americans.

These quiet, pristine places offer refuge to people as well; a world apart from the bustling, settled landscapes of our daily lives, they harbor some of the best trout fishing, hunting, hiking and camping in the nation.

Where roads go, "weedy" species of non-native plants and animals inevitably follow, colonizing landscapes and upsetting the delicate balance of native ecosystems. Roadless areas provide refuge from these assaults on native landscapes.

3. What is the Roadless Area Conservation Rule?

The Roadless Areas Conservation Rule is an administrative rule adopted by the U.S. Forest Service in January 2001 to protect the last remaining wildlands in our national forest system. It places about one-third of the national forest system's total acreage off-limits to virtually all road building and logging. (More than half of our national forest land is already open to such activity.) This protection is the only way to spare roadless areas from the severe damage that roads and intense development like clearcut logging have done to other parts of our national forests.

As adopted, the plan protects 58.5 million acres of unspoiled national-forest land in 39 states. But in protecting these areas, the plan does not isolate them from the public. Instead, it preserves all current opportunities for public access and recreation, including hiking, fishing, hunting, camping and mountain biking, as well as the revenue and jobs that these activities generate in local areas.

4. What kinds of places are protected under the rule?

The rule protects hundreds of thousands of hiking trails across the country -- including significant stretches of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Continental Divide National Scenic Trail and Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail. The roadless rule also protects many backcountry areas in the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada.

5. Who supports the roadless rule?

An overwhelming, and bipartisan, majority of Americans. The plan was adopted after a two-year process that included more than 600 public meetings. The Forest Service has received more than 4 million comments on the roadless rule, the vast majority of them in favor of strong protection for roadless areas in our national forests. Support for the forest-protection plan has also poured in from scientists, religious leaders and newspapers across the country, and polling has shown strong support among outdoor-recreation enthusiasts -- according to one survey, 86 percent of anglers and 83 percent of hunters back the plan. And it's not only concerned individuals who voiced their support for the roadless rule. Even KB Home, one of the nation's largest homebuilding companies, sent a letter to the Forest Service in support of forest protection, saying that the homebuilding industry does not need lumber from roadless areas of our national forests.

6. Who opposes the roadless rule?

Despite the support for forest protection among forward-thinking businesses like KB Home, some in the timber industry are still intent on sacrificing America's last remaining wild forests for its own short-term gain. They are led by a former industry lobbyist who holds a top position in the Bush administration.

7. What is the Bush administration's position on the roadless rule?

Using a range of tactics, the Bush administration has attempted to dismantle the roadless rule since taking office. For example, the administration has repeatedly refused to defend the rule in court, and in December 2003, Bush officials "temporarily" exempted Alaska's Tongass rainforest -- our largest national forest -- from roadless protections. Although NRDC and its allies have thus far stymied their efforts to log roadless areas under that exemption, the battle continues.

The administration also tried to jettison the entire rule outright -- a gambit that was struck down in court, though legal action continues. More recently, Bush appointees have worked on rescinding the rule one state at a time. It has launched rollback processes in Idaho and Colorado, two states with more than 13 million roadless areas between them. In each state, they are pursuing phony replacement rules shot full of loopholes that would jeopardize millions and millions of wildland acres. Vigorous public support across the country for the original, strong rule will be essential in beating back these state-specific rollbacks.

8. Why do we need national guidelines for managing roadless areas?

Local decision-making sounds great. But it actually poses a grave threat to our remaining wildlands, because decisions made out in the field by agency officials generally do not take into account cumulative impacts across the national landscape -- or the real value of disappearing wildlands to the nation as a whole. Piecemeal decision-making is, in practice, a recipe for continued loss of a vanishing national treasure, one roadless area at a time. In the past, leaving the fate of our wildest forest areas in the hands of local officials has resulted in a large-scale loss of wildlands.

Historically, the federal government created national forests to stop forest destruction at the hands of local interests. Now, more than half of the national forest system has been roaded and developed. The roadless rule was designed to make sure that short-term motivations and local issues do not determine the future of our last remaining unprotected forestlands. There's no doubt that many local officials would have a difficult time withstanding political pressure to allow road building and logging -- and to destroy, one by one, the remaining critical areas of our national forests.

9. Isn't road-building and logging in backcountry areas essential to efforts to reduce wildfire risk?

No. In fact, roadless areas serve as buffer zones that help prevent wildfires. Forest Service studies have found that large fires occur much more frequently in areas that are already roaded than in roadless areas covered by the rule. Human-caused wildland fire is nearly five times more likely to occur on essentially roaded lands than on essentially unroaded lands. According to a 15-year study by independent scientists, large wildfires of all kinds are more likely to occur and to burn to greater extents in areas outside of roadless areas.

Logging and roadbuilding in roadless areas can increase fire risk in several ways. First, cutting down trees and building roads opens up the forest and lets in sunlight and wind, both of which dry out the forest interior and increase flammability. Second, when removing trees, loggers often leave behind collections of highly flammable materials -- brush, limbs, twigs, needles, and saplings -- which are difficult to remove. Third, opening up forests promotes the rise of brushy, flammable undergrowth in a short time period. Fourth, logging equipment compacts soil so that water runs off instead of soaking in evenly to keep soils moist and trees healthy. Fifth, logging and roads introduce diseases and pests, which damage trees left behind and can make them more flammable. And last, roads allow more people into the forest, which leads to more human-caused forest fires.

last revised 2.19.08