Last year Gov. Gary Herbert surprised the state’s 29 county executives by sending them a proposal to support him in Utah’s formal rejection of the “roadless rule” that was enacted by the US Forest Service (USFS) in 2001. The roadless rule set aside about half of the roadless areas on our national forests that lacked roads and prohibited new road construction and logging in these areas.
Some 373,000 miles of forest roads already crisscross the nation’s public lands. To manage this network, the U.S. Forest Service determined they would focus on maintaining the well-traveled roads and minimize their environmental impact, let forests reclaim the many unused roads-to-nowhere, and in special cases allow new roads to be built.