While I agree with much of what you present here, I have to take exception to the statement that the primary purpose of the USFS is to permit and support industrial extraction. This may depend on which USFS bubble you live around, but as a 30-year career hydrologist with the USFS in California, this was not my experience. I also disagree with your interpretation that the roadless rule does not prevent new road building for the purposes you stated. The current exceptions that do allow new road building are very limited, and the reality is there are examples where the rule has hindered options for the treatment of forest fuels hazard where roadless areas extend into WUI's. Although some forests/districts have successfully treated fuels in roadless areas using the exceptions, others felt they did not have that option. I suspect that is because of site-specific differences related to roads that were grandfathered in. What nobody is talking about so far is an alternative that proposes modification to the exceptions in the current roadless rule, to allow more temporary or level 1 road building specifically for wildland fuels reduction, with straightforward language regarding current best management practices to ensure those roads do not adversely impact waterbodies and are not accessible for unmanaged motorized recreation. But as you correctly pointed out, under any scenario, funding is the biggest factor in limiting new road building, including water quality mitigation and maintenance. Which is why the roadless rule was established to begin with. The USFS road maintenance backlog is REAL.
Good comment. I work with and around a lot of Forest Service employees and I've heard some of this before. What this points out is that the situation contains complexities, and those complexities can vary from location to location -- something that is quite common with the Forest Service.
My own personal feeling about the roadless rule is that while at least one purpose for the establishment of the Forest Service was to permit extractive activities on public lands (even if it may not have been the primary purpose), I don't believe that the public should have to pay the cost for the infrastructure for private, for-profit companies to access these resources. When an extractive industry want's to develop extraction on private land, they need to pay all of the costs of that, or get investments from other partners. While I don't have a problem with the use of some public land for profit-making extractive activities by private companies, the public shouldn't have to subsidize the operating costs any more than they do on private land.
Basically, I agree with you that exceptions for non-extractive uses such as those you mention should be expanded, while leaving in place the policy that extractive industries need to pay for their own infrastructure, and not have the public pay for increased private profits through road credits and other incentives that effectively burden the public with the cost of logging roads used by private companies.
Lastly, I do think Wes came down a little too hard on NGOs who are against removing the roadless rule. It's true that over the past 25 years, a culture has built up around the rule in many NGOs and non-profits, and the public has also become attached to it. It's certainly true that some of that anti-road culture has been overdone, but I think branding all disagreement with what the administration is doing as just cheap fundraising is probably a bit over the top. There may be some cases of that, but I doubt that explains every case of a non-profit or NGO opposing this action.
Here in the Plumas Sierra, we treasure our partnerships with the friends and neighbors of the Plumas and Tahoe National Forests.
Now we have stability in forests stewardship funding that puts State resources behind the scientific and technical expertise of the United States Forest Service.
We have put the lumber people in their place: as part of the infrastructure to make best use of the material that our loggers remove for the benefit of the forests.
It is too bad the current leadership ended USFS participation in the carbon accounting that the previous leadership had introduced.
Too bad for the US taxpayer. Good for the California taxpayers and for our private partners in the California Climate Fund.
"We can no longer rely on norms and good intentions to protect us from our worst impulses. If we want to protect the things we care about, we need to enshrine those protections in law." - Absolutely the most important thing we all need to remember, when and if we get ever get a Congress again that is interested in passing laws. But thank you for all the information and, hopefully, talking many people off the ledge.
By the way, your last paragraph was a PERFECT ending to this :)
I recently attended a symposium of lawyers talking about public lands. The gist of the event was the message, don’t throw out the conservation laws we have. The Roadless Rule does work to prevent clearcutting and protect ecosystems because any limit on motor vehicles does that. Once industry gains rights it will be impossible to claw anything back. The cumulative effect of trump2.0 eliminating all conservation laws all at the same time won’t be negligible. One thing the lawyers said is, people don’t know what laws, rules or plans protect (or don’t protect) the public lands they use. When the bulldozers come, it’s always a shock. https://substack.com/@amybrunvand/note/c-238197508?r=3aadnk&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
Wes: Thanks for this. I have a couple of topics (for starters) I wish you would address. I see comments that the Feds have put Utah sawmills out of business. (Cattlemen who use BLM land via grazing permits hate the Feds, too. They want state or local control. Wonder how that would work?) How many trees can be cut down (and sent out of the country) before they get the last one? Where do wildlife values get considered. I also see comments blaming the recent big fires in Utah on "poor maintenance" by the Forest Service. I assume the commenters are advocating pre-emptive cutting, or pre-emptive fires. And why are the National Forests and Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture instead of overseen by the National Parks? Can that be changed? Dept. of Ag. designation/oversight seems to suggest that trees are crops to harvest. I met a Forest Service biologist last week who had lost her "dream" job after college and 10 years for the Service. Now working as a utility dispatcher.
I have a hard time with the way you belittle all of us who are defending roadless areas and the significance of what could happen if we don’t all act to stop this latest atrocity. We DO need to open people’s eyes to what the timber interests want to do —and will do in many roadless areas if we don’t all pull together to do everything possible to protect roadless areas. There are already maps drawn out of which roadless areas have the most merchantable timber and where they will go first. It’s not a small thing. I started following you after Heather Cox Richardson recommended you and mostly agree, but your way of dealing with the roadless area rule is bizarre. You mix in good stuff but there’s this strange air of condescension. I hope you will convince me to keep reading and subscribing.
I think my pount here is that while it's important to defend what we have right now, it's more important to learn the lessons necessary to build back stronger when this is all over. And one of those had to be speaking up to people with fact rather than just copying the fear and lies and ineffective virtue signalling our opponents rely on.
While I agree with much of what you present here, I have to take exception to the statement that the primary purpose of the USFS is to permit and support industrial extraction. This may depend on which USFS bubble you live around, but as a 30-year career hydrologist with the USFS in California, this was not my experience. I also disagree with your interpretation that the roadless rule does not prevent new road building for the purposes you stated. The current exceptions that do allow new road building are very limited, and the reality is there are examples where the rule has hindered options for the treatment of forest fuels hazard where roadless areas extend into WUI's. Although some forests/districts have successfully treated fuels in roadless areas using the exceptions, others felt they did not have that option. I suspect that is because of site-specific differences related to roads that were grandfathered in. What nobody is talking about so far is an alternative that proposes modification to the exceptions in the current roadless rule, to allow more temporary or level 1 road building specifically for wildland fuels reduction, with straightforward language regarding current best management practices to ensure those roads do not adversely impact waterbodies and are not accessible for unmanaged motorized recreation. But as you correctly pointed out, under any scenario, funding is the biggest factor in limiting new road building, including water quality mitigation and maintenance. Which is why the roadless rule was established to begin with. The USFS road maintenance backlog is REAL.
Good comment. I work with and around a lot of Forest Service employees and I've heard some of this before. What this points out is that the situation contains complexities, and those complexities can vary from location to location -- something that is quite common with the Forest Service.
My own personal feeling about the roadless rule is that while at least one purpose for the establishment of the Forest Service was to permit extractive activities on public lands (even if it may not have been the primary purpose), I don't believe that the public should have to pay the cost for the infrastructure for private, for-profit companies to access these resources. When an extractive industry want's to develop extraction on private land, they need to pay all of the costs of that, or get investments from other partners. While I don't have a problem with the use of some public land for profit-making extractive activities by private companies, the public shouldn't have to subsidize the operating costs any more than they do on private land.
Basically, I agree with you that exceptions for non-extractive uses such as those you mention should be expanded, while leaving in place the policy that extractive industries need to pay for their own infrastructure, and not have the public pay for increased private profits through road credits and other incentives that effectively burden the public with the cost of logging roads used by private companies.
Lastly, I do think Wes came down a little too hard on NGOs who are against removing the roadless rule. It's true that over the past 25 years, a culture has built up around the rule in many NGOs and non-profits, and the public has also become attached to it. It's certainly true that some of that anti-road culture has been overdone, but I think branding all disagreement with what the administration is doing as just cheap fundraising is probably a bit over the top. There may be some cases of that, but I doubt that explains every case of a non-profit or NGO opposing this action.
Here in the Plumas Sierra, we treasure our partnerships with the friends and neighbors of the Plumas and Tahoe National Forests.
Now we have stability in forests stewardship funding that puts State resources behind the scientific and technical expertise of the United States Forest Service.
We have put the lumber people in their place: as part of the infrastructure to make best use of the material that our loggers remove for the benefit of the forests.
It is too bad the current leadership ended USFS participation in the carbon accounting that the previous leadership had introduced.
Too bad for the US taxpayer. Good for the California taxpayers and for our private partners in the California Climate Fund.
That's my bubble. I call it
California.
Home of the Washoe Forests Carbon Bank.
Your mileage may vary elsewhere.
"We can no longer rely on norms and good intentions to protect us from our worst impulses. If we want to protect the things we care about, we need to enshrine those protections in law." - Absolutely the most important thing we all need to remember, when and if we get ever get a Congress again that is interested in passing laws. But thank you for all the information and, hopefully, talking many people off the ledge.
By the way, your last paragraph was a PERFECT ending to this :)
I recently attended a symposium of lawyers talking about public lands. The gist of the event was the message, don’t throw out the conservation laws we have. The Roadless Rule does work to prevent clearcutting and protect ecosystems because any limit on motor vehicles does that. Once industry gains rights it will be impossible to claw anything back. The cumulative effect of trump2.0 eliminating all conservation laws all at the same time won’t be negligible. One thing the lawyers said is, people don’t know what laws, rules or plans protect (or don’t protect) the public lands they use. When the bulldozers come, it’s always a shock. https://substack.com/@amybrunvand/note/c-238197508?r=3aadnk&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
I am running analysis on the comments as they come in. https://nicholaseholshouser.substack.com/p/roadless-rule-comments-sentiment and the reports at https://roadless.org/analysis/comments.html - we’re over 10,000 so far. I’ve reviewed 8,875 of them.
Thanks Wes. I’ve been eagerly awaiting your take
I do still wonder if they’ll take some of the damn ICE budget and do something sneaky with it
I don't think that's possible.
Good
Wes: Thanks for this. I have a couple of topics (for starters) I wish you would address. I see comments that the Feds have put Utah sawmills out of business. (Cattlemen who use BLM land via grazing permits hate the Feds, too. They want state or local control. Wonder how that would work?) How many trees can be cut down (and sent out of the country) before they get the last one? Where do wildlife values get considered. I also see comments blaming the recent big fires in Utah on "poor maintenance" by the Forest Service. I assume the commenters are advocating pre-emptive cutting, or pre-emptive fires. And why are the National Forests and Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture instead of overseen by the National Parks? Can that be changed? Dept. of Ag. designation/oversight seems to suggest that trees are crops to harvest. I met a Forest Service biologist last week who had lost her "dream" job after college and 10 years for the Service. Now working as a utility dispatcher.
I have a hard time with the way you belittle all of us who are defending roadless areas and the significance of what could happen if we don’t all act to stop this latest atrocity. We DO need to open people’s eyes to what the timber interests want to do —and will do in many roadless areas if we don’t all pull together to do everything possible to protect roadless areas. There are already maps drawn out of which roadless areas have the most merchantable timber and where they will go first. It’s not a small thing. I started following you after Heather Cox Richardson recommended you and mostly agree, but your way of dealing with the roadless area rule is bizarre. You mix in good stuff but there’s this strange air of condescension. I hope you will convince me to keep reading and subscribing.
There's certainly no condescension intended.
I think my pount here is that while it's important to defend what we have right now, it's more important to learn the lessons necessary to build back stronger when this is all over. And one of those had to be speaking up to people with fact rather than just copying the fear and lies and ineffective virtue signalling our opponents rely on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/climate/trump-ends-roadless-rule-forests.html?smid=url-share
Why are you linking to this?
Just recent reporting on the subject.
Don't I cover all that, with more insight?