A United States Senate committee on Wednesday voted along party lines to add a legislative repeal of the “Roadless Rule,” which protects roughly millions of acres of federal forestland from road construction and timber harvesting, to a previously bipartisan bill aimed at wildfire reduction.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said that the “last-minute” amendment seeks to bypass the public’s opposition to the rule’s repeal.
“Americans deserve an open debate about the future of their public lands, not a backdoor effort to weaken protections that have benefited communities, sportsmen and wildlife for decades,” he said in an emailed statement to Source NM. “Make no mistake: This is just another attack on our public lands that shuts the public out of decisions about lands they own.”
Heinrich announced Wednesday that he and fellow committee member U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) would hold a news conference Thursday morning regarding the Republicans’ “latest effort to repeal the Roadless Rule.”
United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced last June in Santa Fe that the agency intended to repeal the rule, which has been in place since 2001. She said repealing the protections would prevent wildfires — though some recent studies suggest otherwise — and would mean more “logs on trucks” as the Trump administration seeks to rekindle a nationwide logging industry in federal forests.
The rule currently protects 45 million acres of some of the most remote swathes — including 730,000 acres in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico — of federal forestland from development.
The agency does not need a law like the one Heinrich’s committee passed Wednesday to repeal the rule, though it is required to go through an administrative process, including accepting public comments and also evaluating alternatives. According to Heinrich’s office, 99% of thousands of comments the agency has received so far have opposed the rule’s rescission.
But the legislation, which now heads to the full U.S. Senate following the committee’s 11-9 vote, would cut out that public process, according to Heinrich spokesperson Luis Soriano, and would prevent the rule from being reinstated in the future, absent another legislative change.
Committee Chair U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sponsored the amendment repealing the “Roadless Rule” to the Wildfire Prevention Act, which otherwise establishes annual goals for federal wildfire prevention efforts, including increasing the average number of treated acres by 40% from current levels by October 2028.
