Picture a clear stream where spawning salmon undulate over clean gravels, pressing upstream through waters the iconic fish once vanished from entirely. That’s Lookingglass Creek, in the Umatilla National Forest.
In the Wallowa National Forest, Huckleberry Mountain sustains rare species like the Wallowa rosy finch, and on the Malheur National Forest, there’s an Alaska yellow cedar forest hundreds of miles inland from its core range.
These three national forests in eastern Oregon share something in common: They are intact roadless forests now on the verge of losing the protections that have kept them free from industrial logging and new roads. These lands are also common ground shared by Tribal members, hunters, anglers, wildlife watchers and anyone who values a quiet trail into the backcountry.
Roadless areas cover nearly 2 million acres of Oregon’s national forests, all currently shielded from clearcuts and roads by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Enacted 25 years ago, the rule was widely supported because it solved two problems at once. It restrained further road building in national forests that already faced a maintenance backlog in the billions of dollars. It also curbed the steady erosion of opportunities for backcountry hunting, fishing and quiet recreation on lands undisturbed by roads.
But now, the Trump administration is working to unwind the Roadless Rule and strip all wild forests of these protections, with a comment period to do just that ending October 6. The administration claims that repealing the rule is necessary to combat wildfire, even though wildland firefighters and scientists widely acknowledge that most wildfires start along roads.
In defending the move to repeal the Roadless Rule, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said that management of roadless areas would go through a “thoughtful process” and would not “be a free-for-all.”
A new management plan for the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon and Washington is the test case that reveals whether that promise holds. It does not.
The draft plan, covering 720,000 acres of the Malheur, Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla national forests, is the first in the country to be drafted on the assumption that no matter how many public comments come in or what they say October 6, roadless protections will no longer exist.
It gives the public the first real look at what forest management without the Roadless Rule actually means. The picture it reveals is bleak.
The plan for the three forests would triple logging levels, open old-growth forests to logging, scrap the road density limits that keep elk and other wildlife secure, and substantially weaken watershed protections that keep sediment out of salmon and trout streams.
That is hardly a thoughtful process. It’s the free-for-all Chief Schultz said would not happen.
It also runs against sound science. Roadless areas are well established as invaluable habitats for wildlife. The Forest Service’s own wildlife reports for the Blue Mountains reference roadless areas more than 650 times.
The native salmonids that are cultural icons of this region — Chinook salmon and steelhead, bull and Redband trout — depend on the clean, cold water that roadless forests provide so well. Despite this, the Forest Service’s environmental impact analysis for the new management plan devotes a mere three sentences to how stripping away conservation protections for these areas would affect wildlife.
This matters even if you’ve never set foot in the Blue Mountains, because what happens here will most likely become the template for other national forests.
Eliminating roadless areas sets up our national forests for more logging roads that taxpayers can’t afford to maintain, more sediment in the streams that hold favorite fish runs, fewer quiet drainages to hunt elk, and fewer refuges for threatened species that depend on intact habitat.
In the enduring words of former President Theodore Roosevelt, “Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children.”
Now is the time to defend that heritage.
Submit comments opposing the removal of roadless protections in the Blue Mountains plan by September 30.
Keats Conley is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She lives in Idaho and is senior policy and planning specialist at Defenders of Wildlife. When she worked for the Forest Service, she served on a specialized forest planning team.
Joseph Canyon Roadless Area Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, David Mildrexler photo
