The New York Times reports:

The Trump administration on Tuesday advanced a plan to open nearly 45 million acres of wilderness in national forests to road construction and logging, removing protections that had been in place for a quarter century.

The proposal by the U.S. Forest Service would repeal the 2001 “roadless rule,” enacted during the Clinton administration to preserve the wild nature of forest land. It comes as President Trump pressures the agency to increase logging and to thin forests to reduce wildfire risk.

The repeal would hand a major victory to Republican-led states and industry groups that have argued for years that the prohibitions have hindered economic development. More than a dozen lawsuits have unsuccessfully sought to strike down the rule.

During his first term, Mr. Trump stripped protections from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, only for the Biden administration to restore them in 2023.

This time, the Forest Service is eliminating protections for the nine million undeveloped acres within the Tongass, as well as millions more acres of pristine wilderness across the rest of the United States.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Brooke Rollins, the secretary of the Agriculture Department, which includes the Forest Service, said in a statement.

Environmentalists said the plan would destroy untouched landscapes, including crucial habitats for migratory species and headwaters for major municipal water supplies. Multiple advocacy groups are expected to sue to block the repeal.

“By ripping protections from some of our oldest intact forests, the Trump administration is endangering the drinking water supplies of tens of millions and threatening wildlife habitats and recreation opportunities in almost every state,” said Drew McConville, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization.

Roadless areas make up about 30 percent of all national forest land, encompassing nearly 60 million acres of America’s last wild areas and old-growth forests. They are home to more than half of imperiled wildlife, including grizzly bears, wolves, elk, salmon and wolverines. Forest land in the United States also absorbs millions of tons of carbon per year, helping slow climate change. [Continue reading…]