The Trump administration announced last week that it would open nearly 59 million acres of wilderness in national forests to road building and development, including almost 86,000 acres of Olympic National Forest.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said during a brief news conference on June 23 in Santa Fe that the USDA is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, which was established by executive order during the final weeks of the Clinton presidency.
It blocked logging, road building, mining, and drilling on the nearly 59 million acres of the remaining undeveloped national forest lands in 39 states.
Many conservationists praised the federal policy as the most significant step since President Theodore Roosevelt created the national forest system.
The Trump administration has a different opinion. Rescinding the “absurd” rule, Rollins said, will “permit fire prevention and responsible timber production.”
Meanwhile, efforts to authorize the sale of millions of acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands, included in the U.S. tax and budget bill by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, were stopped in the late stages of the process. Lee’s amendment had directed the federal government to sell parcels of BLM-managed public land considered “disposable,” which in that context referred to BLM-managed land that could be sold, exchanged, transferred, or otherwise removed from federal ownership, provided it served the public interest, such as community expansion, land exchanges, or economic development.
But the provision, which would have allowed the sale of federal land across 11 states, including Washington, was stopped after U.S. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough said it didn’t comply with the Senate’s budget reconciliation rules. While the amendment did not name specific parcels, BLM-managed land in Washington — especially in the eastern part of the state — would have been in jeopardy.
Sen. Maria Cantwell issued a statement on Sunday, June 29, about its elimination from the budget bill. “This was a wrongheaded proposal that had no place in this reconciliation bill,” the statement said. “Many western Senators who know the value of recreational lands objected to its inclusion. I am glad our special places will still be available for everyone.”
Cantwell held a virtual press conference on June 24 with the mayor of Boise, professional climbers, a leader from outdoor gear retailer REI, and a spokesperson for a hunting and angling advocacy group to push back on the GOP’s plans to sell public lands.
Lee suggested in a post on social media over the weekend that he had withdrawn it of his own accord. “Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders, and stakeholders across the country.” The GOP budget bill was moving so fast, he wrote, that there wasn’t enough time to ensure that American families would benefit from the sales instead of “foreign interests.”
Conservation groups across the country and throughout the peninsula have been urging voters to sign petitions and contact their representatives to oppose legislation that would transfer national forests out of public ownership.
Locally, the Wild Olympics Campaign, a broad coalition working to protect wild forests and river watersheds on the Olympic Peninsula, is gathering support for the Wild Olympics Wilderness & Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. That effort, which dates back to 2012, proposes about 126,600 acres of new wilderness designation within Olympic National Forest and 19 rivers, totaling roughly 464 miles, designated as Wild and Scenic Rivers. The legislation has passed the House twice with bipartisan support and previously reached the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It was most recently reintroduced in May and is now awaiting committee consideration in both the House and the Senate.
