©Los Padres USFS

The federal law that prohibits paving and logging National Forest land is officially on the chopping block, and conservationists warn that the cleaver could strike lands on the Central Coast. The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects 59 million acres of National Forest land from logging and roadbuilding — including 635,000 remote acres in Los Padres National Forest. It protects the backcountry, where old-growth forests provide shelter for wildlife and opportunities for outdoor recreation, while keeping the air and watersheds clean. But on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) filed a proposed rule to rescind the Roadless Rule in its entirety. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins’s intent to revoke the Roadless Rule has been on conservationists’ radars for more than a year. But now, the threat is materializing. …More than 99 percent of public comments submitted during the initial process opposed the administration’s efforts to rescind the Roadless Rule