A Letter to United States Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz: Add your name below!
Montana Trout Unlimited and our allies in the Montana Public Lands Coalition are engaging our respective memberships to emphasize the importance of public participation in actions as far reaching as rescinding the Roadless Rule. As the US Forest Service moves forward drafting an environmental impact statement and rulemaking to potentially rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, it’s essential that the agency makes every effort to ensure change to or rescission of the Roadless Rule is in the public interest.
Montana’s roadless areas are home to the cold, clean headwaters that support Montana’s native fish, including the famed Westslope Cutthroat Trout and Bull Trout. Nearly 70% of roadless lands in Montana contain native trout habitat. With the recision of the Roadless Rule, these habitats will be negatively affected by road building, through sedimentation, pollutants, altered stream channels, fragmented habitat, and migration barriers.
When the Forest Service developed the Roadless Rule, it undertook the most extensive public involvement process in the history of Forest Service rulemaking. Throughout the multi-year process that led to the Rule, the Forest Service held more than 600 public meetings nationwide. This included 10 scoping meetings in Montana (one on each National Forest) and 24 additional meetings across the state during the draft comment period.
Given this history and the seismic changes the Forest Service is proposing to this Rule, rescinding or altering it via a “sprint” process with no public meetings and extremely limited public comment opportunity is unacceptable. The agency must undertake a public process commensurate with the consequences of altering or rescinding the Rule. As the Notice of Intent asserts that rescinding the Roadless Rule is necessary to restore local control to National Forest management, it is only logical that this process would be rooted in local conversations with the public.
Accordingly, we, the undersigned, call on the Forest Service to hold public meetings, with virtual options, for every National Forest that includes lands protected by the Roadless Rule. At the very least these meetings should occur in each community where a Forest Supervisor’s office is located. This is necessary to share information about and gather perspectives to inform the Agency’s proposed repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
We look forward to sharing our perspectives and experiences with the agency to inform responsible, common-sense public land management for the benefit of our communities.
Sincerely,
(Sign your name by filling out the form below)