This commentary is by Zack Porter, the executive director of Standing Trees, which works to protect and restore forests on New England’s public lands.
This summer, did you stand on top of the Presidential Range, Mount Moosilauke or Franconia Ridge? Did you follow the Long Trail through the Green Mountain National Forest or the Appalachian Trail through the White Mountain National Forest?
Did you take a scenic drive along Vermont’s Route 100, through one of New Hampshire’s or Maine’s spectacular notches or over the Kancamagus Highway?
There’s a good chance you enjoyed one of these experiences, because these are among the most scenic and popular landscapes in eastern North America, visited by millions of locals and tourists each year, and they are core to our identity as New Englanders. Unknown to most people, one conservation tool — the U.S. Forest Service’s 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, known as the “roadless rule” — is the glue that holds all of these iconic places together across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and it’s currently on the chopping block with the Trump administration. The public has until Sept. 21 to weigh in with their comments.
The roadless rule guards against most road building and logging in the most sensitive areas of our national forest system. In New England, it protects 260,000 acres, including more than one-quarter of the White Mountain National Forest. Nationwide, the roadless rule safeguards 58.5 million acres, or about a third of all national forest lands, from Alaska’s coastal rainforests to the deep hollows of the Southern Appalachians, and countless landscapes in between.
The roadless rule is arguably the most important conservation measure ever established by any federal agency, but it isn’t as well-known as it should be. Unlike national parks, national monuments or wilderness areas, you won’t find “inventoried roadless areas” depicted on any hiking maps, and you won’t come across a sign on the trail. But don’t be fooled: They serve many of the same purposes as those better-known designations, ensuring that America’s healthiest and most intact forests continue on a wild path for generations to come.
AllTrails, a widely used app for finding outdoor adventures, recently highlighted that 15 of the 50 most popular hikes in inventoried roadless areas around the U.S. are in just one national forest: the White Mountain. You read that correctly; a national forest with well under 1% of all national forest acreage contains 30% of the most popular hikes in inventoried roadless areas in the U.S. As New Englanders, that’s something to be proud of, and it’s something worth fighting to protect.
Of course, stunning scenery is just one part of what makes these places so special. Inventoried roadless areas store vast amounts of carbon, protect against floods and droughts, and support our region’s native biodiversity, including imperiled species like the northern long-eared bat, brook trout, Canada lynx, Bicknell’s thrush and American marten, among many others. They also produce the clean, cold water coming out of your tap. A recent study found that in New England, the roadless rule helps to protect drinking water for at least 8.8% of Vermont residents and 7.3% of New Hampshire residents. The Merrimack River, which originates in the roadless areas of the White Mountains, also provides drinking water to 7% of Massachusetts residents.
But maybe these are the kinds of facts and figures that the Trump administration doesn’t understand, so let’s use a language that’s more familiar to our president: money. Put simply, the roadless rule is a cash register for the American public, providing taxpayers billions of dollars in ecosystem services and generating billions more in tourism revenue each year. The Forest Service has a $10 billion road maintenance backlog. Instead of building more roads that fragment habitat and pollute streams, scarring mountains with clearcuts that increase flooding risks to our communities and cutting timber that is better sourced from private lands, protecting our national forest roadless areas is a low-cost, high-reward solution for the economy and environment.
For 25 years, the roadless rule has worked harder than any other conservation tool in the Forest Service’s toolbox. Submit your comment before the deadline of Sept. 21 to protect the roadless rule for future generations, and tell your members of Congress to support the Roadless Area Conservation Act.
