The U.S. Forest Service has proposed lifting the rule that bars roads in designated wilderness areas. The change could open 1.2 million acres of federal land in Arizona to logging. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins proposed canceling the 25-year-old “roadless rule” that created some 58 million acres of wilderness areas throughout the west. Arizona’s forested wilderness areas come to about 1.2 million acres of the 11 million acres of Forest Service land in Arizona. …Environmental groups immediately decried the proposal. They said it would increase the danger of wildfires and destroy wilderness areas essential to wildlife and many forms of recreation. …However, a century of logging, cattle grazing and fire suppression has dramatically increased tree densities across forested Northern Arizona … from about 50 per acre to more like 1,000 per acre in the past century. …The Four Forests Restoration Initiative has tried and mostly failed to ramp up logging on six million acres of non protected forest already criss-crossed with roads.
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- Mesabi Tribune, by Lee Bloomquist: Federal rule change aimed at better forest management. “I think it’s one step of many to turn the ship in the right direction,” Ben Lobb, Associated Contract Loggers and Truckers of Minnesota board president said.
- Union Bulletin: Trump’s plan to strip protections from federal forests affects 62,000 acres in Minnesota
- San Fransisco Chronicle: These wild California forests could open to logging under Trump plan
- Asheville Watchdog: Federal rollback of Roadless Rule could imperil some of North Carolina’s last wild lands, experts say