Formal Repeal of Roadless Rule Directly Threatens Midwest Wilderness

Michigan’s Norwich Plains is a stretch of unbroken wilderness in the state’s Upper Peninsula dominated by northern hardwood forest, with sugar maples and old-growth aspens that provide habitat for endangered species like the eastern gray wolf and the American martin. 

There are beaver ponds, meadows and miles of trout streams that can all be seen from the Norwich Bluff trail, which rises around 500 feet above the surrounding wilderness. The conservation of this area isn’t an accident—limited logging and nearly 30 years of federal protection have helped preserve it. 

However, the Norwich Plains and pristine areas like it could soon lose their federal protections and face logging and roadbuilding. 

On Aug. 18, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the U.S. Forest Service, which falls under her agency, filed a proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects almost 59 million acres of forest land across the U.S. from road construction and timber harvesting.

“These are the areas of our state that are as wild as it gets, and we have done something very remarkable in protecting them and valuing them,” said Kelly Thayer, a Michigan-based senior policy advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center. “The proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule has to do with looting our greatest natural treasures.” 

This includes the roughly 4,300 acres of the Norwich Plains roadless area within Michigan’s Ottawa National Forest. 

Of the 58.2 million inventoried roadless acres the rule protects, only 512,000 of those acres are in the Midwest. This is largely a result of widespread logging in the region from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, ELPC said in its comments—which Thayer helped write—on the planned repeal.

The proposed repeal comes just over a year after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its plans to rescind the rule. Last August, the USFS published a notice seeking comment on its intention to develop an environmental impact statement for the proposed rescission of the 2001 rule, with a short 21-day comment period for the public to weigh in. 

Still, the agency received over 600,000 comments from groups, including ELPC, tribal organizations and other stakeholders slamming the plan and emphasizing the importance of protecting roadless areas. 

Despite opposition to the repeal, the USDA moved forward last month with an official proposal to repeal. Initially, it announced a 30-day comment period ending on Sept. 21, but on Sept. 11 extended that by 15 days, to Oct. 6. 

This came after 22 Midwest groups, including ELPC, submitted a letter urging the USFS to extend the comment period to 120 days on Sept. 8. 

That proposal includes a draft environmental impact statement; experts argue that it fails to adequately inform the public of the true impact of repealing the rule. It also contains multiple contradictions, they say. 

“The [DEIS] is thin on justification, and it’s long on seeking to fulfill a mandate to knock down more of the national forests,” Thayer said. “It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in search of some reason to justify itself.” 

One of the USDA’s main arguments for repealing the rule is that it will improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk. Thayer, along with other experts, said the agencies admit in the DEIS that roads increase the likelihood of fire ignitions, along with other threats. 

“In general, impacts from road construction and timber harvest activities could include: increased fire frequency (human-caused), reduction in primitive or semi-primitive recreational settings; sedimentation and impacts to water quality; landscape fragmentation; adverse impacts to threatened, endangered, or sensitive wildlife and plants; loss of scenic character; impacts to tribally important resources; or economic losses related to recreation or non-commodity values of roadless areas,” the DEIS reads. 

“They admit that more roads lead to more fire ignitions, and the [DEIS] is agnostic as to whether or not the rescission of the roadless rule will have any beneficial effects on fire,” said Aaron Bloom, a senior attorney at Earthjustice’s Biodiversity Defense Program. “Despite claiming that helping prevent wildfires is one of the reasons for rescinding the Roadless Rule, that is not the case.”

That’s not the only place in the DEIS where the USDA contradicts itself. Another argument the department made for repealing the rule was that it would give individual national forests and the public more local control over forest management.

Bloom argues that this is “directly contradicted” by the USDA’s other argument that the rescission is also serving various executive orders from the Trump administration that command increased logging on the national forests.

“Recent policy and legislation require an increase in timber production. Executive Order 14225 Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production, directs the Forest Service to expand timber production, streamline regulations, and modernize forest management to support national well-being,” the DEIS reads. 

“On one hand, they’re saying it’s to increase local control, but on the other hand, they’re issuing a top-down order to increase logging, and they’re saying that this rescission is intended to carry out that order. They can’t have it both ways,” Bloom said. 

He also pointed out that the administration is only holding four public hearings, compared to the 600 that were held when the 2001 rule was being formalized. Those upcoming hearings are focused specifically on certain issues affecting Alaska and are being held outside the comment period, he said. 

Bloom has been working for Earthjustice alongside other groups to fight the repeal since the USDA announced its intent last year. Although he said it’s still too soon to know what the USDA will do in the final rule, if the USDA “finalizes a full rescission of the Roadless Rule, I can tell you we’ll see them in court,” he said. 

The USDA also claimed that repealing the rule would provide access to timber in national forests. However, national forests already have individual timber quotas assigned by the USFS. A wide-reaching federal rule would override those individual quotas but the need for more Midwestern timber remains unclear. The USDA and USFS did not respond to requests for comment.

There are already systems in place for harvesting timber in national forests, said Chris Collier, the Great Lakes program manager at Trout Unlimited. TU works with the USFS and other state regulatory agencies to make sure that those quotas are met while maintaining and protecting forests, and building roads “as responsibly and in as least impactful a way as possible,” he said.  

Collier added that even if roadless areas were opened for logging and roads, some would be incredibly difficult to access, given their hilly terrain, wetlands and steep areas with higher risks of erosion. Collier emphasized that logging these areas would also have severe consequences on rivers and streams, fish populations and habitat, which could have downstream effects on the Great Lakes. 

“Even just the expense of creating the road, is that worth getting to the timber? And that’s a question that’s going to be site-specific to every single potential timber harvest,” Collier said. 

Thayer echoed this, claiming that even if these areas were opened up to logging, the Midwest already has an oversupply of timber. He cited logging projects in the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan. Within the USFS Eastern Region, which includes 20 states including the entire Great Lakes region, the Chequamegon-Nicolet in Wisconsin produces the most timber, followed closely by theOttawa National Forest. 

Sometimes, he said, when certain logging project areas in the Ottawa are put up for bid for local timber companies to provide the logging service, there are no bids at all. 

“These roadless areas are part of our natural heritage,” Thayer said. “Toppling them for some perceived short-term economic gain will not make us wealthier. It will be something that leaves us poorer for decades to come.”