Roadless Rule under fire

To the Editor:

When I was a young guy, my dad was a small-town lawyer and a friend of Senator Bill Proxmire D-WI. Proxmire was a staunch fiscal conservative famous for his Golden Fleece awards; he would award the golden fleece to federal agencies wasting money. Long before I was involved in forestry, the awards that stuck with me were to the U.S. Forest Service for building roads supporting timber sales with less value than the cost of the road. Had it not been for that experience, I wonder if I may not have followed the Roadless Rule.

The Roadless Rule saves money by not building and maintaining unnecessary roads. Less than .002 percent of national forest timber is in roadless areas; they are areas, rugged and wet, that do not support roads. Less than 2 percent of the land mass is roadless, yet this harbors 25 percent of our endangered species.

Tom Tiffany says we need new roads for fire control, yet there are way more fires in areas with roads.

Repealing the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would be a step backwards into a time of fiscal unsustainability and reckless oversight. The overwhelming majority of Americans care about the last few remaining back-country places in the national Forests. 99 percent oppose rescinding the rule. They want these areas kept wild.

The Roadless Rule is a conservative issue; it saves money. The Trump-Tiffany proposal is not conservative, but a wasteful looting and usurping of natural resources. 

Joe Hovel Partners in Forestry Cooperative

Conover