New Mexico’s senior US senator, Martin Heinrich, objects to roadless rule rollback

Sen. Martin Heinrich wants to keep in place a ban on building new roads or timber harvesting across 45 million acres of national forest land.

“When the Trump administration advocates for eliminating the roadless rule, they are talking about endangering some of the last great wild game habitat on our national forests,” the New Mexico Democrat said during a speech Wednesday on the Senate floor.

The roadless rule is a Clinton-era regulation that prohibited building new roads, rebuilding others or harvesting timber in large swaths of federally owned forests across the country. New Mexico has approximately 1.6 million acres of inventoried roadless areas across more than 9.3 million acres of national forest lands in the state.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture would try to repeal the regulation during a June conference in Santa Fe.

When Rollins announced the repeal, she said the roadless rule got in the way of thinning trees to prevent wildfires and limited firefighter access. But opponents like Heinrich believe repealing the rule could raise the risk of wildfires by allowing vehicles into more remote areas and disrupt wildlife habitats.

“Ninety-five percent of human-caused fires begin within a half mile of a road, and you can imagine why,” Heinrich said. “It’s not complicated: cars backfire, cigarette butts get thrown out a window, trailer chains can spark at a rock.”

Heinrich asked that the public get more time to comment on the rule. The public comment period opened at the end of August and closes Friday.

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz believes repealing the rule will return land management to local experts.

“The forests we know today are not the same as the forests of 2001. They are dangerously overstocked and increasingly threatened by drought, mortality, insect-borne disease, and wildfire,” Schultz said in a statement.

The decision also “reflects the department’s commitment to President (Donald) Trump’s executive actions to expand American timber production and unleash American energy,” according to a USDA spokesperson.

Republican Party of New Mexico Chair Amy Barela said the rule has been “overused and abused for years.”

“In New Mexico, this inflexible federal mandate has allowed our forests to grow dangerously overstocked and poorly managed,” Barela said in a statement.

But not everyone thinks more roads could help prevent fires in New Mexico.

“I don’t really see any benefit,” said Zander Evans, executive director of the nonprofit Forest Stewards Guild, which promotes forest stewardship and works on tree thinning projects.

Roads are a key tool for managing forests, Evans said, but he can’t think of areas in New Mexico forests that would benefit from new roads.

Evans agrees New Mexico forests are overcrowded, in part because of a history of aggressive fire suppression instead of regular burning. The Forest Service has changed its approach to wildfire management in recent decades to include more prescribed burns.

“Researchers can read a tree like a book because of the tree rings. You can go back in time and see how often fires used to burn,” Evans said.

Ponderosa pine, a common type of forest in the state, used to burn every two to seven years, creating a fairly open forest, he said.

But thinning and prescribed burns already happen in New Mexico’s roadless areas. The Forest Stewards Guild has worked on tree thinning projects with the city of Santa Fe and other partners around the Santa Fe watershed east of the city.

It’s important to protect that area from wildfire because it includes the Santa Fe River headwaters, a source of drinking water for the city, Evans said.

Those projects were sometimes complicated to accomplish, but the roadblock wasn’t accessing the forests, Evans said. It was community opposition to cutting down trees.