Montana petition asks for Roadless Rule public meetings

Laura Lundquist

Missoula Current) Before the Trump administration follows through on its intent to rescind the Roadless Rule, some Montanans want the U.S. Forest Service to hold meetings to hear people out.

On Wednesday afternoon, around 50 public land advocates gathered across from the offices of the Lolo National Forest to call on the U.S. Forest Service to schedule public meetings before rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. After Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced in June her intent to rescind the rule, the U.S. Forest Service opened a public comment period in September, but that didn't go far enough, according to the advocates.

Hilary Eisen, Wild Montana federal policy director, said not only did the comment period start on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, but then it was only 21 days long, not 30 or 90 days as is often provided for such significant federal decisions. Even so, almost 656,000 people commented, and more than 99% opposed the rule’s repeal, according to a Center for Western Priorities analysis of around a third of the comments.

When the Forest Service opened the public comment period at the end of August, it said a final decision was expected in the fall of 2026. In the meantime, a coalition of public land groups started a petition calling on the agency to carry out a full public process, including holding public meetings on every national forest in Montana, including the Lolo, Bitterroot, Flathead, Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Helena-Lewis and Clark, Kootenai and Custer-Gallatin national forests. More than 4,000 Montanans signed the petition. Eisen delivered one copy of the petition to the Lolo National Forest and another is being sent to Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.

Jim Burchfield, former School of Forestry Dean at the University of Montana, harkened back to the long history the Forest Service has had with Missoula and the University of Montana, where many a young forester got their start. He recalled that Arnold Bolle, also a former School of Forestry Dean, led an academic study of timber and ecological issues on the Bitterroot National Forest that was presented to the U.S. Senate in 1969. It prompted the passage of federal land legislation, such as the 1976 National Forest Management Act, and one other thing.

“It helped encode something even more significant: the requirement that federal land management agencies must engage ‘in meaningful public involvement in plans, regulations and programs,’” Burchfield said. “The initiation of the roadless rule held all these meetings; 600 nationwide, 34 here in Montana, and it made a difference. Now, how many officially sponsored public meetings has there been for the rescission of this important rule? Unless I’m missing something, it’s zero. In terms of necessary process for decisions of this magnitude, this doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Burchfield added that the benefit of public engagement is that it leads to better decisions because the public possesses a wide range of expertise, some of which might not be familiar to Forest Service managers. Various studies show that unroaded landscapes provide a stronghold for biodiversity and wildlife habitat, provide the best opportunity to sustain cold-water fisheries and offer the increasingly rare chance for peaceful outdoor experiences, Burchfield said.

Ryan “Cal” Callaghan, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers CEO, seconded that, saying that sportsmen value roadless areas, because that’s where the headwaters of almost all Montana’s blue-ribbon trout streams are. Roadless areas also harbor some of the most coveted big game.

“Where can you hunt bull elk during the rut in Montana? Only in inventoried roadless areas. The state of Idaho has found that hunter success goes up in roadless areas in comparison with areas that are roaded,” Callaghan said. “It is a complicated landscape, and it’s complicated to address all the interests that come to the table. But that’s the American way; it’s gotten us this far. It’s a hard job. But what brings the best results in life? Hard things.”

Montana has almost 6.4 million acres of inventoried roadless areas, including in the Crazy Mountains, the Beartooth Mountains and the Gallatin and Bitterroot ranges, according to a U.S. Forest Service summary. Only two other states have more: Idaho with 9.3 million acres and Alaska with 14.7 million. Those three states also have the most abundant and varied wildlife populations in the nation.

The 2001 rule was proposed partly to stem the growing backlog of costs - around $10 billion - associated with maintaining more than 386,000 miles of roads across the national forest system. Adding new roads would cost money that the Forest Service doesn’t have, and it still can’t adequately maintain the roads that already exist, Burchfield said.

“The process can and should occur with repeated public engagement. But that’s not what rescinding the roadless rule will do. It’s a wrongheaded dramatic mandate in search of a problem,” Burchfield said. “We the people are an asset to forest management. We refuse to be left out.”

After more than 30 years with the Forest Service, Jane Darnell retired as the Northern Region Deputy Regional Forester in July 2020, so she’s very familiar with the public process that is required for almost everything the Forest Service does as a caretaker of public land. She said she knows that Americans, particularly Montanans, care very deeply about their public lands and the Roadless Rule.

“I’ll be the first to tell you there’s room for improvement in the Forest Service public processes,” Darnell said. “The rule-making in 2001 was arduous, it was hard work, but most of all, it was public, it was transparent, and we learned a lot about what Americans at their local level want from their public lands.”

Darnell added that Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz also appears to care, based upon what she’s heard from Forest Service employees who were pleasantly surprised by the responses they get from the first chief to be appointed without Forest Service experience. Schultz worked for state agencies and Idaho Forest Group, an Idaho lumber company. He has said he wants to “treat others as they want to be treated” and to do that, he must get to know them and build trust. But there’s a problem, Darnell said.

“Rolling back the Roadless Rule does nothing but break that trust without even getting to know the people who informed that rule in the first place and the generation of people who’ve grown up with it in place,” Darnell said.

Some claim that the Roadless Rule must be eliminated so loggers can get more access to the forest to reduce wildfire risk. Since she retired, Darnell has worked on projects related to strategic fire planning, and she knows that more roads means more wildfire risk because humans now start between 85% and 95% of wildfires each year. She added that a number of fuel reduction projects already occur in roadless areas.

“Using roads as fuel breaks for wildfire is a widely used tactic - it does not reduce the risk of fires starting in the first place. And it’s not just any road that creates an effective fuel break,” Darnell said.

“You won’t know the real impacts or opportunities unless you talk to the wide range of folks locally who use those lands. Try to build a better rule if you like, but don’t do it alone from Washington, D.C. Follow your own advice, Chief Schultz, get to know the people and solicit feedback from the people who use our public lands.”

Darnell isn’t the only former Forest Service leader to argue against rescinding the Roadless Rule. On Jan. 27, four former Forest Service chiefs - Mike Dombeck, Dale Bosworth, Tom Tidwell and Vicki Christiansen - penned an opinion piece for The Hill in support of the Roadless Rule and the public process that created it 25 years ago.

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.