U.S. Forest Service research shows repealing the Roadless Rule would increase risk of wildfires, despite messaging from federal officials claiming the opposite.
The U.S. Forest Service’s environmental impact analysis, released on Thursday alongside the proposal to repeal the 25-year-old Roadless Rule, says the proposal would only allow of “modest” treatment of wildfire fuels, but could lead to increased ignitions.
The analysis was delivered in the Service’s draft environmental impact statement, which analyzed three possible courses of action: No action, repeal the Roadless Rule, or modify the Roadless Rule.
The document analyzes factors like fire management, mineral development, biodiversity, cultural resources, economics and other factors.
In the document’s "Culture and Historical Resources” section, the U.S. Forest service said the expense of road building into areas it would be helpful to reduce fuel in would only lead to “modest” treatment ability.
“Although lifting restrictions on road construction could expand treatment options in the WUI, the high cost of road building and declining budgets for road construction and maintenance mean the overall increase in treatment capacity would be modest,” the Draft Environmental Impact Statement said.
In several other sections, the U.S. Forest Service wrote that repealing the rule would lead to increased road construction and other human activity, which could create "increased hazard from human-caused ignitions.”
“With increased road construction, especially open-access roads, and other human activity, there could be increased hazard from human-caused ignitions,” the Impact Draft states.
The impact draft adds that no repeal to the Roadless Rule would result in no change, meaning wildfire tactics and potential wildfire impact would “likely remain similar to recent decades.”
Wildfire mitigation has taken a central role in the debate over the roadless rule, with many proponents of repealing the rule claiming it would help mitigate wildfires.
Read the Draft Environmental Impact Statement here.
To read more about the effort to repeal the Roadless Rule, click here.
Originally published on khq.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
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