Last Wednesday, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced the USDA has taken the next step in the rulemaking process for rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. (Read USDA Press Release here)
The rescission would apply to nearly 45 million acres of national forest land, including 394,000 acres on the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.
Virginia’s largest roadless area protects part of a watershed that Staunton uses for drinking water. A nearby complex of roadless areas protects part of the water supply for Harrisonburg. Together, more than 75,000 people live in the cities that rely on the two water systems. If protections are lost, new roads and logging steep slopes will eventually harm drinking water quality and increase water filtration costs, as sediment, debris, and pollutants wash off newly-logged denuded slopes and into drinking water reservoirs.
The removal of the Roadless Rule is expected to increase oil and gas leasing and other harmful development on public lands, hurt wildlife and biodiversity through habitat loss, and increase the possibility of wildfire ignition.
The public has been given until September 19 to comment on this latest attack to our shared lands. You can submit public comments here.
The rescission would apply to nearly 45 million acres of national forest land, including 394,000 acres on the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.
Virginia’s largest roadless area protects part of a watershed that Staunton uses for drinking water. A nearby complex of roadless areas protects part of the water supply for Harrisonburg. Together, more than 75,000 people live in the cities that rely on the two water systems. If protections are lost, new roads and logging steep slopes will eventually harm drinking water quality and increase water filtration costs, as sediment, debris, and pollutants wash off newly-logged denuded slopes and into drinking water reservoirs.
The removal of the Roadless Rule is expected to increase oil and gas leasing and other harmful development on public lands, hurt wildlife and biodiversity through habitat loss, and increase the possibility of wildfire ignition.
The public has been given until September 19 to comment on this latest attack to our shared lands. You can submit public comments here.
Photo taken of Little River Roadless Area by Lynn Cameron
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