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Roadless Rule Updates

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The Forest Service is completing analysis and preparation of environmental documents on the revised Colorado Roadless Rule proposal, and will issue them for another round of public comment later this year. We hope the new draft will embrace improvements made in former Governor Ritter’s last petition, while adding additional protections that address the remaining flaws in that petition. More information will be posted on this site once the new draft and environmental impact statement is released.

The State’s 2010 Petition

Last year, former Governor Ritter submitted his revised petition for a Colorado Roadless Rule to Agriculture Secretary Vilsack. The new petition was markedly improved from the deeply flawed draft rule provided for public comment in 2009. TU has consistently suggested the following standard for evaluating the Colorado rule: does it represent as strong of, or stronger, protections for Colorado backcountry as compared to the 2001 rule that currently governs Colorado’s national forest roadless areas? While improved, TU concludes that the revised Colorado Rule still falls short of that standard.

The most recent draft included many improvements from the original rule:

  • It helps close a loophole that would have allowed “linear construction zones” – being used as roads in all but name – without the sidebars that govern road-building within roadless backcountry.
  • It narrows exemptions for road building to facilitate logging for fuel reduction projects, so that they will be focused in protecting areas close to at-risk communities and municipal water supply systems from wildfire rather than allowing more extensive logging in the name of fire – potentially far into backcountry habitats.
  • It restore roadless protection to 8900 acres of the Currant Creek roadless area that were previously proposed for new coal mine development; the are has superb wildlife habitat and is particularly important for elk and deer.
  • It narrows the exemption for constructing future electrical power lines within roadless areas, so that projects will be allowed only if it is determined that locating them outside of roadless areas would cause substantially greater environmental harm.
  • It modifies the exemption for dams and water conveyances so that future road construction would be limited to projects with existing water rights.
  • It adds protections for native cutthroat trout watersheds, so that road exemptions would need to be approved only after ensuring they would not harm native cutthroat habitat.

While these improvements moved the level of protection in Colorado’s rule closer to the 2001 rule, it still allows for logging and road building in ways that could harm backcountry resources. Some of the areas in which the Colorado Rule weakens protections from 2001 include:

  • Carve-outs from roadless protection of lands to accommodate ski area expansion at multiple locations, and coal mine development in the North Fork of the Gunnison watershed.
  • Allowance for logging in roadless areas in order to suppress insect and disease outbreaks. The problem is – you cannot log your way out of forest health issues. Addressing fire risks for the interface between urban areas and roadless land is one thing, but these proposals could go far beyond what is needed to protect lives and property.
  • While improved in its treatment of dams and water diversions, the rule would allow roads to be constructed for new water development projects within roadless areas as long as they have existing water rights – the so called “conditional” water rights that many concepts for water projects have obtained long before they are ever actually constructed.

To help balance areas of reduced protection when compared to 2001, TU supports the concept of an upper tier of areas within roadless that would be subject to stronger protections for their backcountry fish and wildlife values. The new draft created such an “upper tier” of protection – but applies it to only 6% of roadless acres. Specifically, the new proposal would offer “upper tier” protection to those locations that already have Forest Management Plan protections that are more stringent than the proposed roadless rule’s baseline. While creation of this upper tier was a very welcome development, more high-quality backcountry deserves that level of protection.

In brief – the latest petition was a marked improvement from the previous draft which was deeply flawed. Unfortunately, it still falls short of the 2001 rule’s protections – protections that, absent a Colorado-specific roadless rule, do apply to our state’s National Forests. TU is not prepared to support a Colorado rule that represents, on net, a step back from the 2001 protections for backcountry areas. We look forward to working with the Department of Agriculture and the State of Colorado to further improve the proposed rule so that it can indeed meet the standard of, on net, equaling – or exceeding – the protections of the 2001 Roadless Rule.