Your Daily Guide

Protected National Forests Could Be Opened to Logging

For the last year, the Trump administration has been threatening to rescind the Roadless Rule, a federal rule prohibiting road construction and logging on national forest lands, which has been in place since 2001. Recently, the federal government formally proposed the rule’s removal. It protects roughly 2 million acres of some of Washington’s national forests. This would have wide-ranging effects on public lands across the country, as well as downstream consequences locally. To understand the potential impacts, we spoke with Julian Olden, a professor at University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. [City Cast Seattle]

• Local impact on Washington: Professor Olden told Jane, “this is going to be one of the largest rollbacks of public lands protections in our generation.” Potentially impacted areas include Washington Pass, Baker Lake, Lake Chelan and Quinault Lake, as well as 231 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. Leavenworth, Kittitas County and other Washington communities rely on drinking water from forests protected by the rule, according to the Washington Trails Association. [AXIOS Seattle]
• Roads linked to increased fire risk: Though the Trump administration says the current restrictions make it harder to prevent and fight wildfires, Professor Olden told Jane “the science is clear, and the studies have shown that … about 90% of wildfire ignitions are because of humans and that wildfires are up to four times more likely to ignite near roads than in roadless areas.” [City Cast Seattle]
• How to share your input: The comment period is customarily 120 days, but in this case you have 32 days to submit feedback here. So far there are 306.14k comments on the docket. Comments are due by September 21.