Help repeal the roadless rule in national forrest.

[MilesTeg]

The roadless rule only restricts the building of new roads and commercial logging.

It does not prevent the use and maintenance of existing roads.

It does not prevent recreational use, including motorized recreational use.

It does not prevent other commercial activities, such as mining, grazing, oil/gas

It does not prevent forest management activities.

It doesn't even prevent road construction for reasons of health and safety, wildfire management, environmental management, and other reasonable exceptions.


This is an underhanded attempt to remove what is pretty much the most minimal protections for forests and forest habitat that you can have (not just straight cutting down the forest).

No thanks.

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[Tonka Bronka]

The roadless rule only restricts the building of new roads and commercial logging.

It does not prevent the use and maintenance of existing roads.

It does not prevent recreational use, including motorized recreational use.

It does not prevent other commercial activities, such as mining, grazing, oil/gas

It does not prevent forest management activities.

It doesn't even prevent road construction for reasons of health and safety, wildfire management, environmental management, and other reasonable exceptions.


This is an underhanded attempt to remove what is pretty much the most minimal protections for forests and forest habitat that you can have (not just straight cutting down the forest).

No thanks.

Thank you for confirming what I suspected.

 

[HighVelocity]

So you park your ride at the street and walk in 20 miles to see the wilderness?

Exactly. I've been backcountry hunting & fishing since I was a teenager. 20 miles would be a short trip.

 

[Valhalla]

I hear many of you being afraid of new roads. Here they use it to close roads. Specifically, they don't repair the road, it falls to disrepair, they close it as not "reconstructing. So, in my years they have closed many beloved trails.

 

[Valhalla]

In SE TN I'd disagree.
It does not prevent the use and maintenance of existing roads.

 

[The Green Flash]

In the Tahoe National forest, commercial logging is absolutely essential to bringing the forest fuel load back into balance. I've lived up here most all my life, and would welcome commercial logging like what was done in the 60's and 70's, back when the Department of Forestry managed our forests for everyone, with open arms to reduce the severity of wildfires.

 

[EasternSierra]

In the Tahoe National forest, commercial logging is absolutely essential to bringing the forest fuel load back into balance. I've lived up here most all my life, and would welcome commercial logging like what was done in the 60's and 70's, back when the Department of Forestry managed our forests for everyone, with open arms to reduce the severity of wildfires.

Back in those days, our mid-elevation ponderosa pine-mixed conifer forests in the Sierra were already badly overgrown with huge amounts of undergrowth, mainly saplings. Those were the days of 100% fire suppression, no exceptions. The forestry profession was solidly behind this policy and had been since the 1920s.

For the most part, logging in the Sierra in those days didn't address this issue (yes, there were local exceptions). Either the larger trees were taken out of the forest, leaving flammable thickets of young conifers and excessive amounts of flammable slash, or the forest was clearcut. In the latter case the clearcut would be densely replanted with pines, and the resulting plantation would become highly flammable after a couple of decades. Even if an area was thinned properly, it wasnt maintained as such in following decades. This was generally true both for the U.S. Forest Service and private timber holdings; state land in the area is minimal.

The problem in the Sierra, as in similar mid-elevation forests across the west, is that these forests need regular ground fires to clear out excessive reproduction. Nobody was going around routinely clearing out the undergrowth (like every 10 years or so) over millions of acres because it costs way, way, way too much. Besides, in the relatively dry summers of the Sierra, dead slash doesn't decay much and becomes a great fire hazard. You'd have to pile and burn it which is very labor intensive.

This situation resulted not only in dense undergrowth, but also dense stands of pole-sized young trees. These are too dense to handle droughts well and are a fire hazard. That's where commercial logging can be useful because prescribed fire alone won't address these.

On the Tahoe National Forest, inventoried roadless areas amount to 18% of the land. Only 1/3 of that doesn't allow road construction/reconstruction. Some of this is not forested, only has scattered trees, or has high-elevation forests with different conditions than described above.

 

[markpilip]

I would not mind. There is little protect land remaining, and I believe protecting what's left is important. I do not feel entitled to drive everywhere.

Yep. Exactly.

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