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The Past, Present and Future of The Roadless Rule · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Welcome to another conversation for a wild and connected world, what we call the Wild Idea Podcast. My name is Bill Hodge, and along with my friend and co-host, Anders Reynolds, we have been digging into the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. Today we bring our recent webinar, The Past, Present, and Future of the Roadless Rule, to our audience, and Anders, excited to have you be here, be a part of it.
• 0:26
  Oh, hi, Bill.
• 0:28
  I am very excited to be here and to be a part of it, um, but
• 0:33
  I feel a little bit like a poser because I, I think the fair thing to do is to say, um, that I'm embarrassed, um, a little bit, and that's because not only do I have about a quarter of the knowledge of our esteemed panelist, um, but I did about one percent of the work on this, Bill, and you really deserve a lot of kudos for putting this together. Um, I don't think anybody listening to the podcast week in and week out would ever doubt your passion for the Roadless Rule and roadless areas, but, I mean, you have really been the driving force behind this, and it has turned out so good, and I am so glad that we can share it with a wider audience now. So yeah, tell us what's up.
• 1:15
  Yeah, thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. It was a true labor of love. Yeah, so we had a great panel discussion earlier this month. We wanted to bring it to you as an episode of the podcast. You're gonna hear a lot of voices on that, and I'll start with who that's gonna be, and then we're gonna hand it off to, uh, to so the man who played point guard for our afternoon with the webinar. So the panel features Mike Dombeck, retired former chief of the United States Forest Service, the chief that oversaw the development of the rule, and by Martin Nie, professor of natural resources policy and director of the Bowles Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana, Monty Mills, the Charles I. Stone professor of law and the director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington, Greg Applett, who we've had on the podcast before, along with Martin and Monty, uh, senior forest ecologist for the Wilderness Society. We're also joined by Annie Nyborg, head of environmental and social impact at Peak Design, and she also serves as the role of chair of the Conservation Alliance. And later on in this episode and in the webinar, we hear from Vera Smith, director of the National Forest and Public Lands Program for Defenders of Wildlife, where she shares some important tools for folks understanding the importance of the Roadless Rule for threatened and endangered species. And finally, we have our point guard, as I mentioned, Chris Wood. Chris was a policy advisor for the Forest Service as the agency and the public helped form the rule. Today, he serves as the CEO of Trout Unlimited. He's proud to have been a former guest on the Wild Idea Podcast, and he graciously agreed to play point guard for this important discove- discussion that we had around the past, present, and future of the Roadless Rule. So let's hand it off to Chris and let him do his m- magic.
• 2:57
  Thanks, Bill. Um, and thanks everybody for joining. It's great to have so many old friends on one, uh, call. You know, Mike, I, I thought, uh, you know, as the, uh, as the godfather of the Roadless Rule, I should, or, or even the father [chuckles] I should, I should talk to you, uh, first, and I thought maybe you could help us to understand the, the background and the historical context. What was the-- why did we need a rule that protected fifty-eight and a half million acres of relatively pristine landscapes from roads and from most forms of timber harvest? And Mike, you'll have to remove yourself from Mike.
• 3:37
  Yeah. And, uh, it, it's good to be here with old friends and, and supporters also. And Bill, thank you for pulling this together. Um, actually, it's a long story, and I'll try to, uh, to, uh, i-in a nutshell, uh, it's the old Will Rogers statement, "Buy land, they ain't making it anymore." And at the rate of land development and the loss of, uh, basically open space, backcountry lands, the bottom line is, um, they ain't making it anymore and, and, uh, you know, we need to keep for future generations what, what few wild lands are remaining out there. But I can, um, I can go back a lot further than that if you want me to and, and, um, uh, l-let me just start with, uh, just pre-World War II. Uh, the timber industry and the country didn't, didn't want federal timber on the market because it depressed prices of, of private timber. Uh, the East had already been cut over completely and was regrowing like, you know, my home state of Wisconsin had been largely clear-cut. We've got about sixteen thousand acres out of sixteen million, uh, of old growth left in the state of Wisconsin. Uh, but come along World War II and, uh, you know, external things have a, a way of changing a lot of other things that they're connected to. Um, uh, we needed timber for the war effort. We needed timber to rebuild homes or to build homes for, uh, uh, GIs coming back and, uh, the Forest Service was then called upon to increase timber harvest. And it did. It did an amazing job of that, hence the, the can-do attitude of the agency. So for example-- and it takes roads t-to get timber, u-out of the forest. Uh, and remember, the, the flatter part of the Midwest and stuff had al-already been cut over. So what was left was largely in the West. So by, um,
• 5:23
  just looking at some, some numbers here, by, um, uh, the 1940s, we had a-about a hundred thousand miles of roads in the fifty-eight-- in the hundred and ninety-three million acres of national forest. Um, within the next thirty years, that increased to two hundred and twenty-one thousand miles of roads.
• 5:43
  By 1985, that had increased to three hundred and forty-three thousand miles of roads on a hundred and ninety-three million acres of land. So I mean, that's a lot of mileage, and just to put that into perspective, it's two hundred and forty thousand miles to the moonAnd the interstate highway system in the US is, I believe it's forty-six thousand and about eight hundred miles. And here on, uh, just a, a small portion of the planet, of the country, we've got, uh, three... Uh, basically by nine- nineteen nineties, we had three hundred and eighty-six thousand miles of road. So, you know, I walked into the door and, and with, with Chris's help and, and many, many others, a lot of other things were going on at the same time. I mentioned this increase in timber harvest and demand in the US post-World War II. So by, uh, nineteen eighty-nine, we had increased harvest on the national forest to about twelve point eight billion board feet a year. And it takes about fifteen to twenty thousand board feet to build a single-family home. So it, it takes roads to get, uh, the timber out of the woods. And, um,
• 6:55
  when we were dealing with easy to get at, easy accessible, high value, um, basically virgin timber, um, there was money in it. Finally, you start running out of that and the... You know, it takes two, three, four hundred years in many cases, depending upon the timber type. Um, uh,
• 7:15
  everyone knew that by the nineteen seventies, the nineteen eighties, uh, the national forests were being harvested at an unsustainable rate. And, uh, basically we were emptying the piggy bank that had, had been filling up for decade-- for-- actually for centuries. Uh, and a lot of the road building, uh, um, was paid for by timber.
• 7:36
  So you get into the, the, the high value stuff starts to decline. You get-- We get into controversies like below-cost timber sales because now to get the wood out, it costs more. Uh, we had to get into steeper terrain, uh, more fragile soils, uh, greater distances. So basically, we end up with a economic side of the puzzle that it, it can no longer sustain itself because the values are not there. In a sense, the wood had already been mined. Uh, the high value wood had been mined. Um, number two, there was a lot of controversy now associated with this. Um,
• 8:15
  the amount of, uh, wood that was being cut, people were seeing clear cuts. They didn't like what they saw. Uh, uh, there was concerns about protecting wilderness, protecting wild places. As urbanization grew, we were focusing more and more on recreation as a nation, what to do with... All, all this, all, all this sort of was going on at the same time. So by, by nineteen ninety-seven, um, the timber harvest had fallen as a result of the spotted owl issue back in the late eighties and early nineties from about twelve point eight billion to now less than three billion.
• 8:50
  The, um, the Forest Service roads budget took a big hit. And I mention budget and roads because it costs a lot of money to maintain roads, especially in a rugged country. You've got very steep terrain. You've got culverts. You've got literally, you know, say hundreds of thousands of culverts, thousands of bridges. Um, we-- By the nineteen nineties, we were maintaining, uh, about thirty percent of our roads to standard.
• 9:20
  Uh, we were losing miles and miles, thousands of miles of roads, in fact, t- that were no longer able to pass, uh, passenger cars because they had, they had washouts. They had, you know, mud holes. Uh, they had slides to deal with. So all of this was going on in the midst of the controversy. Um-
• 9:37
  And, and, and Mike, if I might add, when, when those roads aren't maintained, they have a tendency... You know, gravity works cheap, and it doesn't take a day off. They have a tendency to fall down, and what's typically below them are streams.
• 9:50
  Yeah. So I, I know this is a long story, but to, uh, sort of fast-forward, um, Congress, uh,
• 9:59
  couldn't fund the roads budget, wouldn't fund the roads budget. The, um, timber and-- the timber receipts couldn't fund the roads budget. So by nineteen ninety-seven, I believe it was, uh, the Forest Service came within one vote of the House of Representatives of losing eighty percent of its roads budget. So there we sit. You know, I, I ask myself, "Okay, I'm a private landowner," or, "I'm a, say, a timber industry exec. Uh, what do you do?"
• 10:25
  You have controversy. You can't afford the systems you have. Uh, well, the first thing you ought to do is you probably ought to stop building roads or at least slow down. As you said, uh, when you're in a hole, stop digging. Uh, so we did a temporary suspension on road building because that was the authority that I had as chief of the Forest Service. And, you know, we did a public comment period for that, and what we saw was amazing public support
• 10:49
  for slowing this thing down. Um, the next thing we saw is the adminis-- Because of that level of public support, the next thing we saw is the administration and the president began to be interested and say, "You know, maybe this is a good thing." So we took it on to the next step. How can we make this permanent? And, uh, that was through the federal rulemaking process, which, uh, um, we, we started. And, uh, uh, over the course of the eighteen-month period, we had, you know, literally thousands of meetings, scoping meetings, public hearings, and overwhelming public support. Again, um, one point six million comments, an all-time record for the Forest Service, at least of public comments, ninety percent in favor. In fact, from the time we started the rule till the time we ended up, based upon public comments, it got-- they wanted it increasingly restrictive. At first, we didn't have the Tongass included because it had a recent forest plan. The same with the Northwest Forest, the same with the South Dakota Forest, and the public wanted all of those included. So to-- I'll, I'll just, I'll just stop there in saying we had this overwhelming public support for the rule, and I think it's most important in the future that we, we see the level of public support for it now as the current administration is proposing rescinding that. So let me just stop there because there are so many more important stories that we need to hear about the values of roadless.
• 12:14
  Thanks, Mike. So, so basically you came into office in '97 and enacted a moratorium on, an eighteen-month moratorium on road construction writ large across the, the National Forest System, in part because there was an eight point six billion dollar maintenance backlog. This is a, an agency that its budget is about four and a half billion dollars a year. So the maintenance backlog just on the road system was eight point six billion. And then in response to the comments you heard from the public about that temporary suspension on road construction, you pivoted and then led the agency through a, a rulemaking process, which had well over six hundred individual public meetings, well over one point six million comments, ninety-five per-percent of which were in support of protecting these so-called roadless areas. And when I... And I should be clear with everyone, what we talk about when we talk about protecting them, these are, these are widely used areas. As we're gonna hear later, they're, they're, uh, you know, they're, uh, destinations for recreation. They're-- we have tremendous off-road vehicle use in them. They're open for oil and gas development. They're open for mineral extraction. Basically, the prohibition was on building new roads because the agency was carrying a nearly, I'm an angler, so I'm gonna tend to exaggerate here, ten billion dollar maintenance backlog on the-- on taking care of its existing road system. Um, and so you, uh, led us, led the agency through a rulemaking that led to a rule that says no more r- new road construction in these roadless areas, except for certain i-times when you have valid existing rights, and generally no commercial timber harvest. But importantly, and I, I wanna move now to other panelists, importantly, um, it didn't say no timber harvest, because one of the things that we were learning even a quarter of a century ago was that, um, because of the Forest Service's amazing, frankly, ability to extinguish fires quickly, um, we had-- and these are f-forests that are dependent on fire. They had had fire in them for centuries until we started putting them out, um, upon, uh, finding them. We, we were getting too many stems per acre. And so, Greg, you've done... One of the rationales that the administration has put forward for, um, rescinding the roadless rule, which is what they're calling it, basically eliminating it, taking, getting rid of it entirely, is that, um, it, it doesn't allow for forest health treatments, and, and they're doing it because they wanna make sure that, uh, we're able to defend against fire. And I know, Greg, you've done a fair amount of research on, on that topic, and I wanted to give you a chance, uh, to weigh in on some of your research and what you've found. And you'll have to take yourself off mute.
• 15:16
  Good reminder. Thanks. [laughs] Uh, yeah, as you've, as you say, you know, from the outset, the administration has made the claim that roadless areas represent a threat to communities, a wildfire threat to communities, and that we need to start building roads into roadless areas in order to reduce the wildfire threat. And when we heard, first heard that, it just, it seemed crazy to us, to anybody who knows anything about the, the relationship between fire and, and forests and the, the main causes of wildfire in, in our forests being human-caused. Just didn't make any sense that, that we'd be building more roads and getting people closer and closer to, to the middle of roadless areas in order to reduce the fire threat. So
• 16:06
  we asked the question, are there, are there any data out there that we can use to, to evaluate this claim? And we found a, a data set that the i- federal agencies maintain that has the location and size of every fire ignition that's started since 1992. And we, what we did was we took that data set, this, you know, um, geospatial data set with locations and, and overlaid it on a comprehensive road network data set that we created. And we, we created this buffer around the road system that was a hundred meters wide, fifty meters on each side of the road. And we actually looked at the ignition densities, the, the number of fires that start in a given unit area, uh, across the National Forest System. A-a-and what we found was, and it'll be no surprise to anybody who, who's familiar with the issue, that wildfire ignitions are up to four times, uh, denser within fifty meters of a road than they are out in, in the remote wildlands,
• 17:14
  and that the, in like wilderness and roadless areas, and that the, the ignition density drops off with distance, uh, as you get away from a road. So what we concluded from that was that, you know, rather than, than reducing wildfire risk from building roads, you're actually gonna contribute to it. You're gonna increase the number of fires at start. Now, some of those fires you'll be able to put out because you built a road to it, but a lot of those fires are gonna escape suppression and, and become problem fires. So then there's no evident net benefit to building a road into a roadless area for fire risk. The other thing that they've claimed is that ten million acres of the, of roadless areas on the national forests are in the wildland-urban interface, that area w- of, um, mixing and, and where, where human development comes into contact with wildlands. And that just struck us as flat out absurd given the remote nature of most of the roadless areas on this forest, on the National Forest System. So we did a little bit of diggingInto where that claim came from. And what we found is that the, the Forest Service had constructed this data set based on what they considered to be the wildland-urban interface as defined by communities that had developed what are called Community Wildfire Protection Plans, which was a sort of a planning exercise authorized by the Healthy Forest Restoration Act back in two thousand and three.
• 18:49
  And we looked at that data set, and the first thing we noticed was that in, in this, in, in these data, there are in some cases, entire counties that have been included in the wildland-urban interface out, out in the rural West, where there's just remote wildlands. And, um,
• 19:08
  and we thought, well, maybe the, the communities themselves had designated those whole communities or whole counties as wildland-urban interface. And in some cases they did. But as we dug a little bit more, we found that there are just huge errors of omission and com-commission in this data set that they've, you know, claimed whole counties, uh, like, you know, remote place-- rural counties in, in Wyoming, and they put them on the same footing with downtown Los Angeles, claiming that both of those are wildland-urban interface. And then as we dug even deeper, we found that they hadn't even accurately characterized what were in the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. So we came to the conclusion that this whole data set is just inaccurate and not, not to be relied on. So if you look at the, the wildland-urban interface as the Forest Service has defined it in several research papers, there's actually about one percent of the area that they claim to be, uh, within the wildland-urban interface is in, is in, uh, roadless areas. So the idea that, that, uh, roadless areas represent a threat to, to communities just doesn't hold water. The last thing I'll mention is that they've claimed that, you know, we need to-- we need this rescission in order to, to get in there and, and do fuel treatment work and, you know, forest health treatment work in these roadless areas,
• 20:39
  despite the fact that the Forest Service, Forest Service research itself has, has shown that there are-- that roadless areas are being treated using conventional methods all over the place. And just recently, Defenders of Wildlife repeated the analysis the Forest Service did back in twenty twenty and updated it and found that every single kind of fuel treatment that is done outside of roadless areas is being done inside of roadless areas. And so there's just no, um, no need to rescind the roadless rule in order to do treatments. They're being done now, and we can rely on them to be done in the future.
• 21:23
  And, and, and thank you, uh, Greg. I, I should say that, um, one of the noteworthy statistics that, um, belies the argument that we need to rescind the rule is that eighty-five percent of all fires on our national forests are human-caused, and I think it's seventy-eight percent, and you, you will correct me here, I'm sure, of those human-caused fires start within a half a mile of a road. A-and so the, the notion that building roads into roadless areas will help protect [chuckles] us from fire, it just, it doesn't sort of stand up to, uh, the facts. The other thing I should just mention for those of you who aren't familiar, um, who aren't as immersed as Greg and Mike and I and the other panelists in these topics, is when Greg talks about forest health treatments, what he means is thinning these forests that in many cases have too many stems per acre, literally because these are fire-adapted forests that historically would have fires come through either periodically or routinely and, and, you know, kill a bunch of the trees. Um, a lot of these forests have too many trees per acre. And so the agency will allow for, um, folks to go in and thin out those forests or mulch, uh, the forests or use prescribed fire, but otherwise try to reduce the number of trees per acre. And, and, and Greg, I have to add to the good analysis that you and, and Defenders did, Trout Unlimited did the same analysis, and we found that, um, there's extensive treatments happening in roadless areas for the states that choose to do them. And, um, and so it, it does, it does raise a question. And Martin, I thought maybe I could bring, uh, you into the conversation. There is an extensive forest planning process that has existed since the passage of the National Forest Management Act, I'm about to embarrass myself. I think that was... And you'll correct me, I know, of seventy-six, I think. Um, there-- you know, the agency is required every, uh, ten to fifteen years to, to develop these forest plans and then to amend them with extensive public involvement. You know, why can't this problem simply be solved at the forest plan level?
• 23:37
  Well, it's-
• 23:37
  And I should-- Martin, I'm putting you on the spot, but others should feel to, uh, weigh in on that too.
• 23:44
  [chuckles]
• 23:44
  Well,
• 23:46
  I don't know. The way I see it, the, like, bigger sort of psychoanalysis of the agency, it has two sort of behavioral tendencies. And the first one
• 23:57
  is to embrace administrative discretion at all costs, and the second one is to punt to some subsequent forum for decision-making, like a sort of shell game.
• 24:08
  And so this, th-this argument preceded the Roadless Rule in two thousand and one, that the best place to make such decisions were in, uh, unit level forest plans. The problem, as I recall back in two thousand and one in the EIS, is sixty percent of the plans at that stage allow-- had prescriptions permitting road construction and reconstruction
• 24:32
  And that localized sort of framing, um, is part of this re, proposed rescission. And again, you look at the plans that have been revised, you, uh, since twenty twelve in the new National Forest Management Act planning rule, about eleven or twelve plans, and they have gaping holes. A lot of those plans incorporate the two thousand and one rule by reference. So basically saying, "Oh, this, this particular unit or watershed is protected by the, the two thousand and one roadless rule." You take that roadless rule away, and there are, th-there are no meaningful standards or guidelines or plan components that protect the values and attributes of those places. So, um,
• 25:19
  we've heard that argument before. It's, it continues to be made, and it just doesn't make sense to me. And, you know, the, the other piece of this, you know, to go back to Mike's excellent history that he provided with, the Forest Service took all the easy stuff first because it's just human nature. And then the harder and harder stuff to maintain, you know, basically between nineteen sixty and nineteen eighty-nine, they were cutting between nine to almost thirteen billion board feet of timber. And it gets harder and harder once you've removed all the easy stuff. And so they're building roads into these more and more remote landscapes, high elevation areas with granitic soils and low timber values. Because if the timber values were higher, they would have cut them earlier. The controversy that was engendering, you know... You know, Mike mentioned earlier the, uh, fact that the House of Representatives came within a vote of eliminating the roads budget. Now, you might think, "Well, that's a good thing, right?" Well, not really, because that, the maintenance on that existing road system was paid for through that roads budget. And, and the House was very clear, it was basically, uh, you know, moderate Republicans in the House, that they were doing that as a surrogate to get the agents building roads into these roadless areas that had become so controversial through this forest planning process. And, you know, one of the areas that, um, you know, has been just a hotbed of activity, even since two thousand and one is the Tongass. And Monte, I thought I would bring you in and just ask you generally, you know, we often forget about the indigenous communities that often lived on these lands, resided on them for centuries before we were around. Um, but I, I wa-- So I'd like to talk to you specific-- or generally about the implications of this rescission for tribal nations, but specifically about the Tongass, which I will put in a shameless plug because I work for Trout Unlimited. It is a fish factory. About ninety-five percent of all the salmon and steelhead that are in the Tongass or that, uh, flow-- come from streams in Alaska, come out of the Tongass. Forty percent of all the salmon and steelhead that swim down the West Coast of the United States are born in the Tongass National Forest. So maybe you could talk to us a little bit about, about indigenous people generally, but the Tongass specifically.
• 27:38
  Yeah. Thanks, Chris. And thanks, Bill and Wild Idea team for bringing us together. Um, a-as you say, the, the Tongass is one example, but across the country, these lands, these forest lands are, are truly native lands. And the Tongass is recently, uh, documented in the preparations for the updated, uh, revised forest plan. There is, is described as an indigenous place, and I think that's, that's relevant for many of these forest lands. And in that regard, I think it's no surprise and should be, uh, uh,
• 28:10
  no big news to anybody that tribes across the country are intensely interested in the management of these forest lands and have through the quarter century now of, of roadless rule, uh, whipsaw and changes and considerations and litigation been directly involved in, uh, participating both in rulemaking processes and in litigation. And, um, it takes a couple of different forms. Of course, it's impossible to generalize what a specific tribal interest in a specific forest region might be because those differ across all of the tribes, uh, whether in the Tongass or down in the southeast or here in the Pacific Northwest or in the Great Lakes. You can imagine the different types of interest connections, stewardship resources, and, and relationships the tribes have with these forest lands that may be affected quite differently
• 29:02
  based on roadless rule protections, based on broader forest management schemes. But fundamentally, I think there's a consistent thread that tribes across the country are interested in ensuring and protecting their continuing relationship, their sacred sites or other areas of cultural importance, their reserve treaty rights, and their ability to maintain those time-honored relationships with these lands. With specific regard to the roadless rule, I think that takes a couple of different forms. Um, certainly the, the, as, as Martin mentioned earlier, and I'll call on him too to, to talk a little bit about some of the Tongass issues specifically. But as Martin mentioned earlier, in the context of forest planning, the, the roadless rule has been an important reference point for protections of, of certain landscapes, and that has been true with regard to areas of cultural importance or areas where tribes have specific interests. Um, in addition, however, there's questions of access for the exercise of treaty reserved rights that may be affected by roadless rule protections or designations. As you were talking about earlier, some of those thinning projects and some of the work done on forests may be carried out by tribal partners, either through Tribal Forest Protection Act or otherwise. And those could have implications de-depending on the status of the lands under the roadless rule or otherwise. Um, and then there are someI think, unique and, and, and especially complex, but also important considerations in Alaska, in the Tongass, where, uh, given a, a slightly different legal framework that's developed over time, the access to subsistence resources and the protection of those resources required by ANILCA, which was passed in nineteen eighty to help ensure a priority for Alaska Native and rural Alaska subsistence uses. That demands a particular approach on the part of all land management agencies, and especially the Forest Service in the Tongass, to recognize and protect subsistence resources and uses, be they fisheries, as you pointed out, and the, the centrality of fisheries to the health of the Tongass and the people of the Tongass, um, but other subsistence resources too. And you can think about flora and fauna. The, the unique legal dimensions at play there puts a whole different layer across the con- the roadless rule and planning and all of the forest management, uh, activities in the Tongass. So i-i-- all of those issues, I think, i-uh, make the, the consideration both of adoption, implementation, and potential rescission of the roadless, uh, a little bit more complex from a tribal perspective. And fundamentally, all of that has to be taken into account within the context of the federal government's trust obligations to tribes. And far more, a-and, and maybe without exception, tribes across the country are insisting on and concerned about the re-responsibility of the United States to engage them in their decision-making. And I think the, the lack of meaningful engagement and timely engagement and consultation and a really thoughtful approach to this rescission process from a tribal perspective has generated significant opposition and concern from tribal groups, including recent resolutions adopted by the National Congress of American Indians, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, all calling on, uh, the Forest Service to really s-step back and engage tribes in a meaningful way and offer some more options for tribal collaboration, tribal partnership, and the tribal, uh, voice to be heard throughout these discussions. And leaders in-- of the Tlingit Haida and others in Southeast Alaska have been at the forefront of a lot of those communications. Tlingit Haida, for example, issued a, a statement immediately after Secretary Rawlins announced the rescission of the roadless rule last summer, documenting the tribe's interest in subsistence resources and fisheries, the protections of the roadless, uh, areas in the Tongass, uh, for those resources, and demanding that, first of all, that the, the rescission be walked back at the very least so that meaningful tribal consultation and, and incorporation of tribal considerations could continue. Um, but, but then beyond that, that those protections, uh, be maintained in order to ensure those unique tribal interests were protected, uh, through the preservation of the roadless rule, uh, in the Tongass. But, uh, I'll, I'll toss it to Martin to, to add a little bit more specifically on the Tongass as a case study here.
• 33:31
  No, that's, that's great, Monty. I would just say, I, I certainly can't recall a
• 33:38
  public lands action in my history being so uniformly opposed by tribal nations. I mean, those two resolutions are incredibly powerful and, and strong. And I guess preceding that, in some ways, you could argue that the Alaskan Native tribes of Southeast Alaska have really led the way. Um, there's been like this kind of like a toxic on and off again relationship with the roadless rule and the Tong-- on and off, on and off again relationship with the Tongass and the roadless rule. Um, and the latest exemption in twenty twenty, um, you know, Alaskan Native tribes fully engaged in that process. They were coordinating agents, several coordinating agencies under NEPA, and their voices, again, just completely disregarded, undervalued. And of course, like there were virtual consultations during COVID, that sort of thing. And I've never seen anything like it where the, those Central Council and other tribes pet- used a Administrative Procedure Act petition, an APA petition to craft a traditional homelands rule, which is to protect those roadless areas for their traditional, customary, and subsistence-based uses. The secretary responded that, denied the pet- the APA petition, but then promised the tribes that they would get the same values and protections in the Tongass revision, which is going on now. And that's sort of taken a turn as well. So yeah, uh, a, a loaded history.
• 35:15
  Thank you, uh, both. That's fascinating. I've, I've got, um... you know, we, those of us who kind of geek out on, on roadless areas are amazed by the idea that, you know, although they only occupy two percent of the landscape, they've got over a quarter of all the endangered species, uh, uh, in them in the United States. Uh, they, they supply drinking water to over sixty million Americans. But one of their, uh,
• 35:43
  highly appreciated values is the value of public lands generally, uh, but roadless areas specifically to recreation. And, and Annie, I thought I'd let you, uh, weigh in on that and just talk maybe if you could share with us a little about why the outdoor-- why outdoor recreation enthusiasts care so much about, about this rule.
• 36:04
  Yeah, absolutely. Um, so just as a reminder for folks who are listening of who I am and the angle that I'm approaching this from is I work for a company that designs and manufactures outdoor products called Peak Design. And in addition to that, I sit on the board of an organization called The Conservation Alliance. Um, and we are a coalition of over two hundred companies, um, in both the outdoor industry and adjacent industries. Um.
• 36:30
  You know, and as we've been talking and we've covered, these roadless areas are often embedded within popular national forests, and they provide nearly endless recreation opportunities. Uh, you know, just your hiking, your camping, backpacking, fishing, hunting, white water paddling, climbing, motorized vehicle recreation, um, it's pretty endless. And it's accessible for little, if not for free, unlike other public land offerings like our national parks. Um, so they provide tremendous outdoor recreation opportunity. And as I'm sure many of you have heard the number being thrown around, the outdoor recreation, um, economy i- is huge. It's-- It currently, uh, was recently reported that it generated about one point three trillion of gross economic output in twenty twenty-four and supported about five point two million jobs nationwide. And that key source of that economic output are our public lands, and specifically, I think to an important degree, these roadless areas. And, you know, that's not just important for brands like my own that, you know, design and manufacture products that are being used in these places. Um, it also is hugely beneficial to the surrounding communities. Um, these communities near the sur- the-- near the roadless areas and recreation areas benefit significantly, um, through outdoor recreation, through the hotels and lodge- lodging that they offer, through the markets and grocery stores, the restaurants, the gear shops, the transportation services, um, you know, rental and guide services. There's tremendous economic activity within these communities thanks to outdoor recreation. Um, and one point that I wanted to make in this that I think is an important, important point to take away is the fact that outdoor recreation really is an economy for the future in that it is sustainable. It can produce an income for these communities theoretically forever if we take care of these natural places that support that recreation. And, you know, that's unlike uses, um, you know, that's unlike the extractive uses for the land which often come in more of a boom and bust form for these communities. Outdoor recreation really can serve a community indefinitely. Um, so there's just, I think, a lot of good-- there's a good business case around why it's important to protect these roadless areas and the outdoor recreation value that they bring to the table. Um, and that's one reason why, you know, the Conservation Alliance, this, this coalition of hundreds of businesses, um, is very concerned about the rollback of this rule, um, from both, you know, from the economic and business perspective, and it's why we, you know, continue to oppose it together.
• 39:21
  Someone's got to pay the light bill. We'll be right back after this break.
• 39:25
  Hi, I'm Leslie Miller with Backcountry Horsemen, and you're listening to The Wild Idea.
• 39:30
  I don't think I've revealed this before, Mike. I caught my first brook trout in a roadless area in West-- in the Monongahela in West Virginia. I caught my first steelhead in a roadless area on the Tongass, and I shot my first bull elk in a roadless area in Idaho, um, after Mike shot his first [chuckles] bull elk in a roadless area in Idaho. Um, I, I should mention just an important part of that outdoor recreation economy is hunting and fishing. And, uh, Trout Unlimited's done a little bit of analysis and looked, um, at the importance of these landscapes for outdoor recreation and for hunting and fishing. And I'll tell you that seventy percent of all roadless areas across the National Forest System harbor native trout and salmon. Seventy-nine percent of the roadless areas, um, in the state of Utah have been designated by the state as critical habitat for mule deer. In Wyoming, seventy percent of all roadless areas are spring, summer-- critical spring, summer, or fall, fall habitat for elk. And in Montana, ninety-three percent of all roadless areas are, uh, summer range for elk. And so again, that's just one piece of the broader outdoor industry, a piece that I happen to care a lot about, but-- and, and sort of, you know, fifty-eight million other, uh, Americans. But Mike, you know, I thought maybe, um, you could talk a little bit about, um, how else roadless areas contribute to the well-being of the nation's economy, or just generally, I'll give you the last word before we turn it back over to Bill.
• 41:07
  Well, a couple of things. Uh, uh, kind of thinking about, uh, to build on what Martin said about the level of decision-making. Should it be local? Is it national? And it's important to realize that there's different levels,
• 41:23
  uh, of the decision-making process, uh, for various reasons. And then most importantly, it's because they make sense.
• 41:32
  Now, if we pull this down to the field level, that puts a tremendous amount of stress on a field manager,
• 41:41
  uh, to make decisions that they know are gonna be very controversial. And, and the thing is, we've been up-- down this road before. There's a reason that we have federal laws. There's a reason that we have state laws. There's a reason that we have county zoning ordinances and municipal ordinances. And, and I would just say we need to consider that. Um, the second thing I would mention with regard to fitting into the big picture, if we took at the-- look at my land, they're not making it anymore, as Will Rogers said. Uh, if we look at the rate of subdivision in the United States of lands and the rate that we're losing large unfragmented tracts of lands or the backcountry, it's, it's actually astounding. And I'll get this-- I'm, I'm taking us back to the data that, um, uh, we use for the roadless rule. Um-From 1978 to 1994, the number of people that owned forest, tracts of forest land smaller than 50 acres doubled. So, y- you know, we know what that means, and land tenure is very important. Uh, from 1992 to 1997, we were losing 87,000 acres a day of basically vacant, undeveloped land to suburbanization, to strip malls, to industrialization, to other kinds of things. So as a nation, I think no one could, could have put it better than Annie did in saying this is a su- sustainable use. And the, the Forest Service chief that followed me, uh, Dale Bosworth, talked about, you know, what is the greatest good, uh, for the greatest number in the long run, sort of the Forest Service motto, and that's... His answer to that was similar to mine. It's probably water and recreation. Uh, extractive industries are important. They will continue to be important. But, uh, it's this long-term sustainability. You mentioned 60,000 people get their drinking water from these roadless areas. Um, if we leave this alone, that'll, that, that water machine will just keep on working. We won't have to rebuild it. We won't have to change the equipment. It will just keep on working. So this whole concept of ecosystem services that we think about, rebuilding topsoils, uh, uh, recharging aquifers, uh, the scenic beauty, the, uh, traditional values, the spiritual values, the point that, um, the public lands system in the United States is the model of the world because number one is you don't have to be a wealthy person to, to be able to afford to go on a dude ranch on a vacation. Uh, anybody in small town USA that's, uh, that's working minimum wage can go camping in these areas. And, and if they can't afford a Coleman stove, they can build a campfire, assuming [laughs] they do it safely. And, uh, the one other point I wanna make is we think of national forest issues or, uh, we talk about the Tongass a lot, are largely Western, but the fact is we've got a national forest in so many of the eastern and southeastern states of where there is much more development. So therefore, these smaller islands of undeveloped lands, the backcountry, the roadless areas, you could s- argue are proportionately more important
• 44:55
  because there's fewer of them, and you've got these large urban areas like New York, like Boston, like Milwaukee, like Chicago, like St. Louis. Uh, you go on and on. And, and, uh, when we remove this, the... We're, we're basically taking away, taking this away from the small taxpayer that can't afford to, uh, to take an expensive vacation, to buy an airplane ticket, to go on a dude ranch and, uh, spend, you know, thousands of dollars on a vacation. So this is, this is something that, you know, little guy isn't the right word, and it may not even be appropriate, but it's something that this belongs to all of the people. And, and the opinions of all of the people, uh, should be considered in this, not just the select few.
• 45:40
  Well said, Mike. And, and, uh, thank, thank all of you, and I can't wait to hear more from you as we respond to the numerous questions that we are g- getting in the Q&A box. But before we get to those questions, I wanted to turn it over to Vera Smith from Defenders of Wildlife. Uh, Vera and her team there have come up with some really important tools. A lot of the questions we're getting are about what about tools to have our voice heard. And, and Vera, I- I'm just gonna turn it over to you, let you share your screen, and, uh, talk about some of those tools that Defenders of Wildlife has created to, to share the, the economic value of wildlife diversity.
• 46:13
  Yeah. Thank you so much, Bill. Um, I am gonna share my screen. Um, let me just give a little bit of an introduction here. Others on this panel have talked about, uh, the value of roadless areas for wildlife in terms of fish, that 70% of our cold water fisheries are in roadless areas, and for hunting, where we find really quality, um, hunting opportunities. Um, the roadless areas are also extremely important for at-risk species. Those species, for instance, that are labeled as threatened or endangered, meaning that they're really c- close to extinction, and roadless areas provide that home and refuge for some of those species. So, uh, Defenders knows this. We wanna be able to communicate that information to people, so we developed two map products that, uh, folks can access in a way to illustrate, um, the importance of roadless conservation areas for at-risk wildlife and wildlife in general. So with that introduction, let me go ahead and share my screen with folks. There we go. Is that working well?
• 47:20
  Yeah, looks good.
• 47:21
  Great, great. So I just wanna point out this website, uh, on this introductory slide. Um, these two map products are linked on this website, um, defenders.org/roadless-rule. It's an easy site to remember, so know that you can go there. And at the end of this presentation, uh, we'll share some QR codes as well, if that's an easier way to access these map products.
• 47:45
  So I, in my introduction there, I just talked a bit about why roadless conservation areas are so important for wildlife, and I always view this sort of in two buckets. One is that there are these larger, uh, intact blocks of habitat that are so important for wildlife that need these undisturbed interior forest areas. And second, as I talked about, so important to the more vulnerable species. Um, our roadless conservation areas provide habitat for 220 threatened and endangered species. So I wanna launch right in with our first, uh, interactive mapping tool. Again, you can access this online. Um, this is an interactive map viewer.That allows you to look at every roadless area and see what at-risk wildlife overlap, uh, or have habitat within that roadless area. So what I'm gonna do is walk you through it with, with a set of slides, uh, just because it's a little easier to walk through on an interactive system and give you an idea about how to use this viewer.
• 48:56
  So when you first get into this viewer, this is what shows up, and the green areas are the roadless conservation areas across the United States. And there are two ways that you can dive in here. Step one on the left, you can select a state to see which at-risk species are within the state's national forest roadless areas, or on the top right, step two, you can go up to that magnifying glass.
• 49:23
  I'll move my cursor. And you can actually click on that, and you can type in a place or a zip code, and you can hone in. So it's a great way to explore roadless areas near you. And I'm gonna just walk you through this process. So, uh, if, let's say, we live in Bozeman, Montana, and we wanna know what roadless areas are in Montana, I can go click on the state of Montana, and this viewer will show me that there's just over six million acres of roadless conservation areas in Montana
• 49:57
  and that those areas provide habitat for seventeen at-risk species. But now I wanna even know more because I live in Bozeman,
• 50:05
  and so I go up to that magnifying glass, and I type in Bozeman, and I find it there,
• 50:11
  and then it hones in or zooms in right into Bozeman. And I highlighted the roadless area to the north of Bozeman, which is the Bridger Roadless area, and on the right you can see that it's saying there are six at-risk species and explaining what they are. So it's a great way to be able to see what roadless areas are near your communities and then understand more how important those roadless areas are to specific species.
• 50:43
  So the second product that we developed is a story map, um, that g- is, is essentially guided storytelling about the at-risk wildlife in roadless forests. So let me take you through a little tour of this and show you how you can use it to find out more.
• 51:04
  So what we did is we highlighted, uh, specific species. We profile these species around the country from, uh, in Alaska, the Alexander Archipelago wolf, to the jaguar in the southwest, to the book- brook trout in the southeast. And you can dive in deep on each of these and read about these species and their relationship to roadless areas.
• 51:32
  So for instance, as we dive in, you can see along the top that you can pick your region, and as... and for each region, you can explore a specific species. So if I wanna pick the Pacific region, it's gonna come up with the coastal marten, which is, um, a, an extremely rare species that occurs in the northwest. There are estimated only four hundred individuals left of the coastal marten, and the sh- and they rely on the roadless strongholds in the Rogue River, Siskiyou National Forest, and the Six Rivers National Forest. So you can continue on and explore all these species in the various regions. Um, we hope that this, these two viewers provides you the information, uh, that you need around wildlife and will help you be an advocate for protecting these places that are so important to our nation's native wildlife. And as promised, here are some QR codes if that's an easier way for you to connect to these map products. And thank you. And I'm gonna hand it over to Bill.
• 52:48
  Thanks, Vera, and thanks for taking the time to, uh, to share those products. And, and, uh, we are gonna be getting an email out to everybody who registered, um, which obviously will include all of those who attended, uh, but the few who registered that didn't make it, uh, with a lot of these resources, links to a lot of these resources. There are others that we haven't talked about, but there are a number in a working document that we've put together. Uh, as promised, we are gonna get to the question, questions from our community that have come out throughout. And some of these, um, I'll maybe select somebody to start the answer, but I certainly hope all of you all can jump in and, um, address. This first one's a big one. Um,
• 53:30
  it is wondering if all of the panelists, so this would be for all of you, as- you know, assuming that the original roadless rule is not perfect,
• 53:38
  what would you change about it? Don't make me call on you, 'cause I will.
• 53:42
  [laughs]
• 53:42
  I'll, I'll, I'll take it, I'll take it first. I mean, look, I, I don't think, um,
• 53:47
  anyone is suggesting that we haven't learned anything in the past quarter century and that that rule couldn't be improved. But what makes
• 53:55
  this proposal offensive, frankly, is that that's not what they're talking about doing. They're not talking about using the data that Greg was describing about presence of roads, um, and, and how that contributes to fire. They're, they're ma- they're almost dissembling an argument that, um, uh, purports to equate, um, roadless areas to causing fires, which is just, it's just not borne out by the data. And so I think if the administration wanted to come out with a tailored, narrowly structured set of proposals that looked at how we can learn from the past quarter century, I can't speak for anyone else on the panel, but I know TU would absolutely look at that. We-
• 54:37
  We play-- So we're talking about forty-five million acres right now, not the fifty-eight point, uh, three that Mike mentioned at the top of the hour, because TU played a pivotal role in helping to develop the Colorado roadless rule and the Idaho roadless rule, and those two rules are excepted from this rescission, so they're not part of it. Um, and so, you know, again, I, I think that's the-- it's just kind of the ham-handed nature of this proposal. It's either they're required by law to say, "We're gonna look at doing nothing,"
• 55:11
  and then they're proposing, "We're gonna just take it all away." And, you know, finding a sweet spot where we can-- they can document that there have been things we've learned about fire ecology or forest health or whatever, or recreation economy, whatever it is, um, I think that would be a smarter way to go than what they're proposing now.
• 55:28
  I, I would, I would add a couple of things to that, and, and I, I think, you know, there's virtually probab- no policy out there that couldn't be improved in some way or other. Some minor tweaks, maybe with boundaries. But, um, you know, I'm still connected with, uh, internally with the Forest Service, uh, and a lot of retirees, and I gotta tell you, there's no appetite within the Forest Service to get this done. This is a totally top-down, uh, policy. And however, they're employees of the executive branch, and, and you do what the boss says or you're out. Uh, so that's, uh, that's a large part. And, and all administrations are like this. This one I would say is, is much more assertive than most. Um, that's important. The other important thing is that, a-again, with the, the connections that, that I and other refor- retired former chiefs and others have, we see no constituency out there that's pushing this. So this is a bit puzzling. It's not the timber industry clamoring to get in there to harvest timber, because as Chris mentioned, the easy stuff is gone. It'll force us into a below-cost timber sale issue type thing again because the values of the product being removed will hardly pay for the expenses. And then the last point I wanna make along these lines, and I should have made it earlier, is that it's puzzling to me bec-- especially to the budget hawks, because this is a very conservative policy. We're not building infrastructure that will require maintenance and, and funding year after year after year, which were already-- was already problematic twenty or thirty years ago. So, you know, in the sense, it's a conservative policy, costs no money, uh, it keeps options open for future generations. Plus all of the environmental values which, uh, all of you really covered so well. And, and, uh, I would encourage anyone to read the preamble of the rule. Uh, go and, and Google the rule. It's, it's-- it has a very detailed, very thorough explanation of the social, economic, and ecological environmental values, uh, uh, that, um, uh, are still probably ninety percent accurate today.
• 57:37
  Yeah. And if I might pop in, um, that point about how expensive the current road system is, is really important. Mike went through the history of how much timbering occurred, um, decades ago, and that left us a legacy road system that's there today, and the Forest Service has to keep paying to maintain that system. And unfortunately, they don't generally get enough money to pay f- to maintain it. And so what happens is we have an ever-increasing, uh, road maintenance backlog. And Defenders actually just recently with a few other groups, um, went and got some recent Forest Service data, and to the best of our abilities, estimated that the current maintenance backlog is about nine billion dollars. And so it really makes no sense to make more roads and add to that future economic burden, and that's what it would be.
• 58:32
  I'll just toss one other thing into the mix in terms of, uh, what could be changed, and that's really to call on suggestions from tribal groups. Part of the National Congress of American Indians was, it's not specifically roadless, but they did call for an opt-in, uh, potential for tribes to engage in co-stewardship of IRAs specifically that would enable tribes with connections to particular roadless areas to more collaboratively, uh, participate in the management of those resources in particular. So one other potential, uh, modification in the context of roadless that has been suggested.
• 59:09
  I want a roadless law instead of a roadless rule. That would be my... A roadless rule and statute
• 59:16
  is my preference. And, and Bill, I'll just say, like, um, you know, personally, I have, as Vera and Monty and others know, I have an elk camp that I try to get to way too frequently, and it is the most ideal roadless area. Drive there to a road, just the perfect mosaic of sagey south slopes and hundreds of streams that dump into two Class One trout streams. Uh, grizzlies, lynx, elk, pine martin, um,
• 59:50
  cast of characters that I've met in that backcountry over the years. And I think about, like, the roadless rule in context of everything else that is going on within the agency right now, where the public is being systematically disenfranchised from the management of public lands. I could go on a week-long elk hunt in September, and I would find out upon my return that there is a project being proposed in an IRA where I would have a seven-day comment period.
• 1:00:24
  I could miss that comment period altogether. With the new NEPA r- Forest Service NEPA regulations, the profound changes to the objection process,
• 1:00:35
  I would have abs-- And then you can't even-- I won't-- I wouldn't even know about it because there's no schedule of proposed actionsGetting wonky here. But, uh, for me, it's like the roadless rule in some larger context, um, that troubles me most, and that's why I'd like to see it codified.
• 1:00:55
  I believe that's called the Roadless Areas Conservation Act, and it is, uh, it is out there for you to ask your, uh, representative or senators to, uh, support, folks. So, uh, but Martin's solution actually has a, uh, a tool at play currently. Anybody else wanna weigh in on that, what you would change about the rule? I think the, the, the one context I would, would add is, um, I wish the rule had built-in, uh, money for a PR firm to, uh, to elevate the profile of these areas, and yet at the same time that's contradictory to what we're trying to do for these places. But, uh, it's sort of the same conundrum that we have with wilderness areas is they're some of the most special places that a lot of people just don't know about, and now all of a sudden they're hearing about it. I like to believe that Americans can respond better to opportunities than to threats, but right now they're having to respond to a lot of threats. Um,
• 1:01:46
  Annie, I had a, I had a question from somebody, if you could articulate, and this is probably a really hard thing to answer, but, like, what are the top three... like, if you're trying to get somebody hooked on why they need to be a voice for these roadless areas, what are the sort of three big recreation examples you would give that people use these areas for, and, and why they're so critical?
• 1:02:05
  Well, you know, I don't, I don't think I-- I don't have stats around-- I mean, I do actually have stats on, you know, the forty-three thousand miles of hiking trail, and it goes through the Appalachian Trail and the, you know, the, the major trails that traverse our country. Um,
• 1:02:21
  I think what's special about roadless in the recreation-- from the recreation aspect is that so many of us live near a roadless area and have engaged with a roadless area, even if you don't necessarily know you have. And so I think it's a case-- I think it can easily be made a case-by-case argument and made one that is true to you from where you sit and what you do in the outdoors. Um, and I think that's what's special about roadless is that it's not just us trying to protect the boundary waters, which might be so far from where we sit. It literally is in-- I'm looking at my roadless area right now in my backyard. And I think a lot of us have that, and I think maybe don't even realize that. And so I encourage people to look at the maps, learn more about where their nearest roadless area is because I think they might be surprised that they've been there and didn't even know it was a roadless area. Um, and I think that's what makes them special.
• 1:03:19
  That's great. Uh, here's a question near and dear to my heart. Um, and I don't know whether Mike or Martin might be better to answer this. I'll try to chime in too. But how will a potential rescission of the roadless rule impact wilderness study areas or recommended wilderness and forest plans and their opportunity to become designated wilderness at some point?
• 1:03:42
  Um, well, let me say, if anything, it will, um, reduce the options for the future, uh, would probably be the most important, uh, thing that would happen. Uh, uh, in a sense, uh, Chris, I believe or someone made the point, you know, the easy stuff is gone. So I, I, um, I just-- e-even in, uh, twenty-five years ago, we didn't see the opposition to wilderness, the concept of wilderness that was there, say, many, many decades earlier. Keep in mind that the Wilderness Act passed in nineteen seventy-four in the Senate of a vote, I believe either ninety-eight or ninety-nine to one.
• 1:04:24
  Right.
• 1:04:24
  And a similar proportion in the House of Representatives. That's the level of support there was in nineteen sixty-four for this. And e- and that level of s-support for protecting these backcountry wild places, uh, has not changed because we see that-- We even saw this in the, uh, uh, the comment period of the, uh, you know, what the current administration is doing with the, what was it, six hundred and thousand some comments, uh, that they got, and something like ninety-five percent of them, uh, were supportive of keeping the rule in place. And, and I, like, uh, Martin, would rather have it called a rule, and I'm think-- I'm gonna propose maybe we call it-- start calling these the big beautiful backcountry, uh, with a local name attached to them, and strike the word roadless.
• 1:05:11
  Martin, you wanna add to-
• 1:05:12
  Yeah
• 1:05:12
  ... to what this will do to those WSAs or, or recommended wilderness inside forest plans?
• 1:05:16
  They will definitely impact their potential designation as capital W wilderness. Again, going back to the forest my elk camp, um, th-there are recommended wilderness areas, wilderness study areas on the Beaverhead Deer Lodge, and they come with some plan guidance in terms of how they're gonna be managed preceding potential wilderness designation. But the vast majority of those IRAs are outside of those designations and have no such prescriptions or protections at all. So it will definitely factor into that debate.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah, I think I'll, I'll add a perspective that, um,
• 1:06:00
  when working on a wilderness bill in Tennessee, um, in two thousand and ten to twenty eighteen when the bill finally passed,
• 1:06:11
  you know, the, the legislative champions we had first asked the questions were: Are these areas recommended?
• 1:06:18
  And the process of recommending these, of course, is, is done through the forest planning process, but there's also the overlay of what the Wilderness Act says and, you know, the, the somewhat flower, flowery language of, you know, do these areas primarily, uh, reflect their primeval character. And if we're gonna go punch in roads to all of these places, we're obviously gonna degrade some of those values that could lead to a future recommendation. And without that agency recommendation, though I will again underscore as a guy who lives close to the scapegoat wilderness, it does not requireA, uh, agency recommendation for an area to become wilderness. The scapegoat would be an example if the agency didn't recommend it, but the community rose up for it. But it is helpful in a modern context, uh, that the agency, uh, and we obviously have the complication now that we had the deputy chief of the Forest Service recently testified that they no longer recommend areas that are recommended in forest plans, which is a contradiction if there ever was one. Um,
• 1:07:17
  so I do think it has a chance to have a significant impact on the future of roadless areas. There's often talk about, just like Mike talked about, we got at the easy timber early, we got at the, the wilder- easy wilderness designations early. A lot of people talk about the early rock and ice that was designated and, but we've come down the slopes into incredibly important biodiversity areas, uh, with, uh, more modern wilderness designations, and, uh, it's certainly something that's definitely at risk. Um, I have a question here. Um, is the rescission just an opening effort to renegotiate the rule itself? Does anybody think that they're actually just, just an opening salvo in hoping, hoping to force a, a renegotiation of the rule itself, or do we think it's quite as binary as it seems to be, which is either they're gonna keep the rule or they're gonna get rid of it, and there's obviously the, the table is tilted in a certain direction on that?
• 1:08:10
  You know, I'll take a shot at that. Mike said earlier, "I don't think there's a Forest Service employee that wants to do this."
• 1:08:17
  Um, this is a, this is a solution that's in search of a problem. It's a religious argument. It's not a substantive argument. There, there's no timber values there. There's no constituency that's advocating for this. This is just
• 1:08:31
  someone somewhere doesn't like regulations, and they're just trying to get rid of it.
• 1:08:37
  I do think that the, uh, lack of interest in the Forest Service in reopening something that was settled a quarter of a century ago, like, the Forest Service has become real leaders in collaborative stewardship around the country. They lead collaboratives with dozens and dozens of organizations. Most of us on this call work with the Forest Service in some sort of collaborative spirit. And so I, I think the... it's gonna come down to the professionals at the Forest Service and their ability to convince the, you know, political folks that, um, this isn't a fight that's worth having and they should try to tailor it rather than take on the whole thing. And, and I don't, I don't know where that's gonna end up. I think it's gonna really come down to how effectively people make their voices heard.
• 1:09:22
  I'd just a- a- add onto that in this, this theme that,
• 1:09:28
  um, here we are in 2026. It was 100 years ago this year that the Forest Service, the chief really
• 1:09:37
  directed his director of recreation to, to conduct the first roadless area inventory of the national forests. So this is an idea that was pioneered by the Forest Service 100 years ago and then
• 1:09:53
  worked through internal regulations up through the Roadless rule.
• 1:09:59
  Uh, and now here we are 100 years later with this solution that the Forest Service has developed itself in acknowledgement of this incredibly valuable resource that exists on the national forests. And now, after all that time, the administration is coming in and directing the Forest Service to abandon that, that century of legacy. And it just strikes me as the height of misguided policymaking.
• 1:10:28
  Bill-
• 1:10:29
  Mike-
• 1:10:29
  Could I jump in? Could I- Could I-
• 1:10:30
  Yeah. Sure, Martin. Absolutely, please.
• 1:10:32
  You'll probably never invite me back after I say this since it's the Wild Idea podcast, but I, I do wanna make a distinction between wilderness and roadless, and I, I think it's an important one.
• 1:10:45
  Of course, some of those IRAs will and deserve to be capital W wilderness, but there's a really important distinction between those lands. It's one of the reasons why those roadless lands are my... are, are so profoundly important to me in terms of, like, a different ecology, um, different... And from, you know, Vera, like, from an ESA, um, standpoint,
• 1:11:12
  the Roadless Rule is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the sort of affirmative recovery actions that might be necessary for some of those species, recovery actions that could be prohibited by the Wilderness Act. And so for me, it strikes that perfect balance, um, between capital W wilderness and multiple use, um, in terms of hunting, angling, and act- and, and prescriptive management actions that can be taken.
• 1:11:41
  Always gonna have you back, Martin, just so you know. Yeah, I mean, I think you... I think it's important to note that, uh, there is motorized recreation going on in roadless areas. Uh, specifically, I was part of a collaborative in Beaverhead County and the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, where we are working at actually helping to codify that form of recreation that was going on in roadless areas there. Mike, we had a question. Do you know if the number of Forest Service miles of road has changed at, at all, up or down since 2001?
• 1:12:11
  Uh-
• 1:12:11
  Has it grown or shrunk?
• 1:12:13
  I, you know, I, I, I think there are probably people that have followed the data closer than I have, so I really can't answer that. I'm-- would speculate that there are increasing miles in disrepair
• 1:12:27
  and poor maintenance because of th- the budget. The Forest Service roads budget problem has not been solved. As I mentioned earlier, the money came from two sources, either congressional appropriations or timber sale receipts,
• 1:12:41
  and, and
• 1:12:43
  neith- neither of those have, uh, uh, put the money up yet. And i- in, in timber, the, the money, the values are not there because the high value timber has been gone. So the, the other choice is administration is gonna have to propose request and Congress is gonna have to step upAnd start as, and take care of our infrastructure. Because basically it's an infrastructure issue. And, and I, as I mentioned earlier, as a somebody that's responsible for public policy, um, what do you do if you're holding the bag on an eight-plus billion dollar, uh, public liability is basically what it is.
• 1:13:19
  That's causing other problems, you know, sedimentation in the streams impacting salmon, uh, roads, bridges, uh, culvert problems, a whole variety of issues. Uh, we had one situation where, uh, weight limits were put on a bridge in a Bridger-Teton National Forest, so the school bus couldn't go across it. So the people had to take their... drive the kid down the road to, uh, uh, across the bridge to walk on the bus. So it's things like that that people don't see, uh, that's, uh, important when we make these investments. It, it's-- Everybody wants to do a ribbon cutting, but then who wants to keep the building painted and keep, uh, the maintenance going year after year after year when you're doing something like basically a major soil disturbance activity in very steep, rugged terrain for the most part.
• 1:14:06
  Thanks for that, Mike. Um, just so folks know, as we sort of get to, to the close to the end of this, there's a question here I think is pretty important for us to talk about, which is, you know, we, we think there's a timeline of a draft environmental impact statement coming out in late March. This webinar will be released as a podcast episode for The Wild Idea in late March. Um, the question is, has there been any significant evidence that the agency has actually engaged with tribal stakeholders since first announcing their intent to resend in this moment where they're about to come out with what's probably already been written, uh, environmental impact statement?
• 1:14:43
  Bonnie, maybe that'd be-
• 1:14:44
  Yeah, I can jump in on that. I know, uh, so in response to, um, both the fall publication on the proposed rescission and the summer announcement, there was an uprising of, uh, tribal interest in terms of demanding consultation. I think, uh, that process has generally been devolved to kind of local forest staff. And so I, I don't know that there's been a comprehensive, and there certainly isn't any publicly available, at least that I've been able to find, information suggesting there has been a comprehensive or meaningful consultation effort underway. I think it's been much more sort of ad hoc, um, sort of in, in response to particular letters and requests for consultation. And at this point, it's not clear at all, at least from my perspective, to what extent that input will be factored into the crafting of the DEIS or the potential alter-alternatives, uh, analyzed there.
• 1:15:41
  I will say just before, a-and, uh, I know, um, it'll be included in the resources as well, um, but there's a fantastic, uh, tribal resource page on the Roadless Rule, the Roadless Rule hub, uh, that folks who are especially interested in. It, it just brings together a bunch of resources addressing, uh, the, the specific tribal implications, and I encourage folks who are interested to check that out as well.
• 1:16:05
  Thanks, Bonnie. Yeah, we, we are gonna send a, um, an email out to everybody that registered for the webin-webinar with a whole bunch of resources that all the panelists have provided. Uh, also wanna mention roadless.org, uh, is a website which has a lot of great resources, including how individuals can help craft. They're very specific, 'cause you do need to think about your comments as being specific and not generic and/or sort of form letter, uh, if you will, and also how maybe local orgs or regional orgs can pull together, uh, a, a local postcard, uh, about specific Roadless areas and specific comments about Roadless areas, and maybe have a postcard writing party. So go to roadless.org along with these other resources to look, uh, for those sort of opportunities. I have a, a, another question here. We're running tight, but, uh, if the rule is rescinded and an area is not protected by the forest management plan, could the public expect any meaningful environmental impact studies or processes to prevent the immediate construction of new roads and the obvious habitat disturbance and fragmentation that would create?
• 1:17:08
  Sure.
• 1:17:09
  Um, I can, I can start here. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good question. So the,
• 1:17:18
  the kinds of notifications that the public gets and the opportunities for the public to engage have changed a lot over the last several months, and all-- they have been reduced dramatically. So it used to be that we were pretty assured of getting, uh... stuff would go up on the websites, there would be notifications sent to those who have expressed interest in part-- projects, there would be review times to look at draft project proposals, like a project to build a road or to do a timber cut. And, uh, the regulations that required that kind of public engagement and notification have been eroded. And so I think it's a real concern right now that, in fact, projects can happen, and it's gonna be really hard for people to know what's going on in their national forest. And they may discover that a road's getting built when they see the bulldozer out there, or when they go to hike or hunt and see all of a sudden there's been a fresh cut up the mountainside, uh, that they didn't know was gonna happen.
• 1:18:18
  Thanks for-
• 1:18:18
  Again, on, on that, on that point, I'll make the, uh, uh, say the statement that, you know, we've been down this road before, back in the 1960s and early '70s, which is the reason we have the National Forest Management Act, the Federal Lands Management Policy Act, um, National Environmental Policy Act, a variety of things like that where the public demanded, wanted to be engaged in the decision-making process. And, and I recall several hearings that I had, uh, in my time in the 1990s when proposals were made. And basically, the, the public has the right to question government decisions. They're the taxpayers,
• 1:18:59
  they're the owners of the land, and they are the people that are paying the salaries for the government employees
• 1:19:05
  Thanks, Mike. One last question. Uh, and as many of you that want to weigh in, please weigh on this. Um, and I think w-a quick answer to this might be, will this podcast as an example of an answer to this question, but how do we communicate to and educate folks who are impacted by this but have no idea what the Roadless Rule is? How do we... Any thoughts on how we cut through the clutter?
• 1:19:28
  Annie, I'm gonna put you on the spot and see if you could maybe [laughs] I see you shaking your head already.
• 1:19:32
  I mean, that, that is-- therein lies the challenge, I think, us as a brand, 'cause we're constantly trying to educate our con-cust- or consumers and customers, um, about these issues, and we're still trying to figure out,
• 1:19:45
  y-you know... I, I think, I think it's nuanced in that I think it is dependent on what your platform is, who your audience is, um, you know, yeah, the, the, the level of degree obviously of familiarity of the topic. Um,
• 1:20:02
  uh, eh, so if any other panelists have, you know, insights into how to, to bust through the noise, especially now, which is a particularly noisy time in terms of public lands and conservation, um, I'm all ears 'cause we're always trying to figure out how to break through the noise better.
• 1:20:19
  Anybody else wanna chime in there?
• 1:20:22
  Well, uh, I mean, obviously therein lies the challenge, but I think sometimes, especially in our, in our divided climate that we find ourselves, it's really important for friends to talk to friends, neighbors to talk to neighbors, and if this is important to you,
• 1:20:38
  m-maybe we go back to basics a little bit.
• 1:20:42
  I think that's a good point. I think basics, I think the degree to which you can cut out any wonky terms, um, the degree to which you can make calls to action very, very simple, uh, you know, in terms of, like, saying what it is and then saying, "I'll send a link over," you can actually send a note, and that'll do a lot of good. It takes two minutes and actually makes a difference. I think so many people today truly believe that their voice doesn't matter and that writing and calling their representatives does not do anything. But, you know, I think we even saw with the land sale earlier this year that it actually does do something. Um, and I think it could very much, you know... The-these issues can be swayed by, by people speaking up about them.
• 1:21:25
  I think that's a great way to sort of, uh, start to wrap this up. I just wanna take this opportunity to thank our panel, to thank Bonnie Mills, Mart Nye, Annie Nyborg, Greg Applegate, Mike Dombeck, Vera Smith, and our gracious point guard for our conversation, Chris Wood. I, I could not have imagined putting together a more high-powered and articulate and, uh, perfect panel to have this discussion. I hope we all can find a way to get this message out to more and more people, however you do it, all of the resources we send you. To all the panelists, thank you. To all of you that have attended and asked such great questions, thank you all very much for joining us today for the past, present, and future of the Roadless Rule. It has been a real, uh, joy sharing it with this great panel, and, uh, we look forward to everybody being engaged in the process, and, uh, hopefully we continue to talk about the Roadless Rule well, well, well into the future for brighter reasons certainly.
• 1:22:24
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• 1:22:26
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Dipak Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating. And if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]