Roadless NOI: Not Deja Vu All Over Again?

Note what now-Senator Hickenlooper has to say about the Colorado Rule…

So there’s an NOI for a proposed rescission of the rule.. As a person who was heavily involved in Colorado Roadless and is still around to write about it, I plan to follow it throughout the process. Please tell your friends to  be wary of news stories like this..(perhaps written by AI?)/.

The Trump administration on Monday overturned the “roadless rule” that protected 30% of National Forest land from development for nearly 25 years. This decision dismantles a key aspect of open space protections in Colorado and nationwide.

As we all know there will be many comment periods before a final rule, and likely much litigation afterward.

I think it’s likely that folks can just trot out the same comments they had for the State Petitions Rule, and the Colorado, Idaho and Alaska Roadless Rules.. I can almost repeat them from memory but here’s an example. There will be many, many form letters along the lines of “don’t destroy national treasures” that were submitted via a click. One of the grandest things I think the Admin could do is to have a better search capability on the comments on Regulations.gov so that readers can avoid form letters.   Remember, even Chris Wood, one of the key individuals involved in the 2001 Rule, said “the 2001 Rule wasn’t written on stone tablets.”

And that long-ago view is echoed today by others at TU,  according to this Cowboy State Daily article.

Arguing For Reform, Not Removal

O’Dea and Corey Fisher, public land policy director for Trout Unlimited, said that just erasing the roadless rule would be going too far.

Instead, they said their groups and other outdoors organizations would favor talks between stakeholders at the local level aimed at possibly reforming the Roadless Rule.

“We’re not coming at it from the perspective that the Roadless Rule is perfect and everything on the forests are the same as in 2001,” Fisher told Cowboy State Daily.

“We want a collaborative, stakeholder-driven process. So that we can look at reforming the rule, rather than just rescinding it,” O’Dea said.

(O’Dea is with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers ).  OTOH there might be tension between that position and what appears to be the national position.

From the USDA website:

The USDA Forest Service is publishing a notice seeking public comment on its intention to develop an environmental impact statement for the proposed rescission of the rule. The notice details the reasons for rescinding the rule, the potential effects on people and resources, and how national forests and grasslands are managed. The USDA Forest Service will publish the notice in the Federal Register on Friday, August 29, 2025.

The USDA Forest Service is publishing a notice seeking public comment on its intention to develop an environmental impact statement for the proposed rescission of the rule. The notice details the reasons for rescinding the rule, the potential effects on people and resources, and how national forests and grasslands are managed. The USDA Forest Service will publish the notice in the Federal Register on Friday, August 29, 2025.

“For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action – prohibiting road construction, which has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. “The forests we know today are not the same as the forests of 2001. They are dangerously overstocked and increasingly threatened by drought, mortality, insect-borne disease, and wildfire. It’s time to return land management decisions where they belong – with local Forest Service experts who best understand their forests and communities. We encourage participation in the upcoming public process. Your input will help to build a stronger, safer future for our forests and the communities that depend on these forests for jobs, recreation, and clean water.”

While the rescission would apply to roadless areas in Alaska, state-specific rules for Colorado and Idaho, which were part of the Administrative Procedure Act petitions, would not be affected by the proposal. In total, the 2025 rescission would apply to nearly 45 million acres of the nearly 60 million acres of inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System.

If you’ll recall, Wyoming has a unique and interesting history with the 2001 Rule, including Judge Brimmer’s injunction (this led to various projects going forward that later became “gap leases.”). You can get an idea of the “on and off-ness” during this period with the excellent Earthjustice timeline here.  It is exhausting to read, let alone live through, but I don’t think you can really get a grasp of the whole without understanding some of the history.  If you go back, we had a pre-TSW field trip to the federal appeals court. This was while I was still working, which in retrospect was not in the interest of my continuing employment with the FS. Then there was the campground road project to reduce damage to the stream in the Bighorns that one part of the Obama Admin approved for ARRA funding and another part wanted to hold up because it was in an IRA.

And, also on the Bighorn, recently there is this (reported) request for a technical correction:

A little less than two weeks before Rollins’ pronouncement, Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson told attendees at a forest steering committee meeting that he planned to seek a technical correction to the forest’s roadless boundaries from Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.

Johnson said that roughly 50% of the forest’s suitable timber base is located in areas designated as roadless.

“If you look at the footprint of fuels treatments and timber sales and forest health work that we did, for example, in the Buffalo Municipal Watershed, we left a lot of what I would call residual risk on the table,” Johnson said at the June 15 meeting. “There were stands that were roaded stands or accessible stands, but were within inventoried roadless that didn’t fit in one of the existing exceptions to the rule, so we were unable to treat them.”

It’s unclear as of press time how the roadless rule rescission could impact Johnson’s petition. Bighorn National Forest officials did not respond to questions by press time Tuesday.

The corrections would reflect recommendations of the Bighorn Forest Roadless Collaborative, which formed in 2016 to determine how much of the forest would be included in the roadless inventory.

The 2001 rule was not formally enacted after the change in presidential administrations, and it wasn’t accounted for when the local Forest Service office revised its management plan in 2005.

It’s time for a Faulkner quote, you can imagine which one..

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”

The 2001 Rule wasn’t even the beginning.. there was RARE II and so on.  I only came into it in the 1995 RPA Program.  As I recall, we presented the idea of “staying out of roadless areas” to the Chief and Staff group, and one person said “what about Alaska?” and the discussion was ended.

“Even when it’s good it must really be bad” department… This was an interesting piece by the Colorado Sun.. sure we’re exempt here in Colorado and that would be a good thing, but we don’t trust the Trump Admin to mean it.

“Even if that’s what the Trump administration is saying, that doesn’t mean that’s what they’ll do. They’re not necessarily known for being straight, transparent or sticking to their word,” said Joshua Hicks, director of conservation campaigns for The Wilderness Society and based out of Lakewood.

It’s almost as if there is a partisan element here.. who is the President of TWS again? And TWS wasn’t a fan of Colorado Roadless at the time.. as their rep on the State Task Force said at the time “I’ll work with you to get the best we can, but the national organization will never support it.”     I wonder whether some cracks between local and national viewpoints will be a feature of this new Roadless effort as well.