For years, county commissioners in rural Utah have complained the U.S. Forest Service’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule has thwarted sound forest management by unnecessarily complicating and even blocking projects that would promote forest health and sustain a timber industry.
Crafted during the Clinton administration, the rule shields inventoried unroaded lands in national forests from some activities that would require new roads, although exemptions are available. It covers 4.2 million acres, or 49 percent of the national forest lands in Utah.
Now Gov. Gary Herbert, citing this year’s long and busy wildfire season, is petitioning the U.