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Laramie--Today the Bush administration announced its intent to repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule with a state petition process. Conservationists and recreationists charge that this announcement amounts to the elimination of all safeguards provided by the Roadless Rule and greatly increases threats to the remaining wild forests from road-building and industrial logging. The policy change was announced in Boise, Idaho by the Secretary of Agriculture and is expected to appear in the Federal Register later this week.

Today’s proposed rule would leave unprotected over 3 million acres of forest land in Wyoming, or about 5% of the state (see photos, maps, and important facts); nationwide about 58 million acres of roadless area would be unprotected.

The new proposed rule would require governors to petition the USDA Forest Service to protect roadless areas in their states. However, the agency does not have to adopt the petitions, as stated in a regulatory schedule released last week, “Such petitions would be evaluated and, if agreed to, addressed by the Secretary in a subsequent rulemaking on a State-by-State basis.” Furthermore, if a governor chooses not to submit a petition the management of roadless areas would revert to the direction of local forest plans, which allow road-building and logging on most of the 58 million acres of roadless areas.

“Despite the arm waving, this is nothing but a complete vaporization of the roadless rule,” said Jeff Kessler, spokesperson for Laramie’s Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “This is bad news for future generations of Wyoming residents and wildlife, for open space and quiet recreation,” Kessler said.

The roadless rule was the most popular regulation in the history of the nation, with over 2.5 million comments supporting full protection for roadless areas (this is more comments than any other rulemaking in U.S. history). During the comment period for the 2001 rule, Wyoming citizens submitted about 1,900 comments in favor of roadless area protection. Less than half that many, about 880, opposed some aspect of the rule.

“Nationwide, and inside Wyoming, citizens have resoundingly supported protecting roadless areas on our national forests,” said Patricia Dowd, Wyoming Chapter Sierra Club. “It appears that the timber industry speaks louder than the public’s voice,” Dowd added.

Photos, maps, WY facts and figures, info on fire, forest, and roadless areas are available online at http://www.voiceforthewild.org/roadless/index.html