The Trump administration’s plan to open roadless areas of national forests to potential logging won’t do much to meet President Donald Trump’s timber goals, if estimates the Agriculture Department released Wednesday prove accurate.
Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule could boost timber harvests in national forests by 5 to 10 percent at most — and even that’s unlikely, USDA said in a draft of a proposed rule posted Wednesday in the Federal Register. The estimate falls far short of the administration’s directive for the Forest Service to increase timber production by 25 percent on the land it oversees.
“Given the small number of operable areas for timber harvest in roadless areas and the large number of variables that may occur, it is difficult to predict the potential impact rule rescission may have on timber harvest,” USDA and the Forest Service said in the proposed rule.
The scenario the administration laid out downplays the on-the-ground effects of erasing the regulations, which have blocked road construction, timber production and other development on about 59 million acres of the 193-million-acre forest system for most of the past 25 years.
