Forest Service proposal could change protections in California for roadless areas

The U.S. Forest Service is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, a move that could change how some undeveloped forest areas in California are managed.

The proposal comes as the Forest Service says deteriorating forest health and wildfire risk require more flexibility in managing the nation's forests.

"Forest health has been at a decline for the last 30 to 40 years," said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. "We have overstocked stands, we have unhealthy stands, and we have stands that are primed for catastrophic fire."

To get a closer look at what's at stake, we took an EcoFlight from Truckee-Tahoe Airport over the Tahoe National Forest and Lake Tahoe Basin.

From the air, the scale of the forest is clear.

About 147,000 acres of the Tahoe National Forest are designated as Inventoried Roadless Areas, with another roughly 45,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Noa Banayan with Keep Tahoe Blue says there is broad agreement that forest management is needed.

"Managing the forest responsibly, treating it, doing forest thinning projects and looking at it at an ecosystem level, a landscape scale, is really critical to the future health of Tahoe," Banayan said.

The debate centers on how that work should be carried out.

Shannon Friedman with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency says restoration efforts can be expanded without opening roadless areas to new roads.

"There is a recognized need to increase the pace and scale of restoration work, including forest health restoration work," Friedman said. "I think there are other ways to do that than just opening up roads everywhere."

Friedman also pointed to potential environmental impacts, including habitat fragmentation and water-quality concerns associated with new roads.

"The potential for habitat fragmentation, the potential for water quality impacts for new roads, and then you open up areas for maybe more people to access it as well," Friedman said.

The Forest Service says wildfire risk is another important consideration.

Schultz said about 60% of California's Inventoried Roadless Areas have a high or very high risk rating for potential catastrophic wildfire, based on the agency's analysis.

He emphasized that rescinding the Roadless Rule would not automatically mean roads would be built in every roadless area. Instead, he said, it would give forest managers additional flexibility.

"Our focus is going to be on forest health, protecting communities and just making sure we have opportunities to be flexible as we go forward, whether that's for public access, for people to recreate, whether that's for firefighting," Schultz said.

For now, the Roadless Rule remains in place.

The public is being asked to weigh in on the Forest Service proposal before any changes are made.