Jeff Swayze has always believed being out in nature does wonders for the body and mind.
That belief, along with his outdoor experience and adventure therapy education, has culminated in his role as a mental health counselor at White Mountains Community College, where he encourages students to engage in recreational activities to help their mental hurdles.
In the White Mountain National Forest, 235,000 acres of land are protected under the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prevents road construction and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of land across the United States.
When the rule came under threat earlier this year, Swayze said it was only a matter of time before that threat actualized.
“The impact, if it is rescinded, is going to be dramatic,” he said.
The U.S. Forest Service proposed Tuesday to wholly rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a move the U.S. Department of Agriculture initially announced in June.
The USDA argued that the Roadless Rule limited the Forest Service’s ability to actively manage land for fire risk and timber production. About 30% of the National Forest System falls under the rule.
“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement on Tuesday. “Today, we filed a proposal to restore authority to local forest managers who know the land best, removing the barriers that have kept them from doing the work the land demands.”
Local advocates sounded the alarm after the USDA’s first announcement — and then they got to work. Several in-person public comment sessions, including one in Concord, drew many people to speak about their connection with New Hampshire’s wilderness.
“There were people that stood up, and the White Mountains was such an important part of their lives that several people cried while they gave testimony because they were talking about something that’s so unbelievably valuable to them and has changed their lives,” said Jerry Curran, the public lands committee chair for New Hampshire Sierra Club.
Before the rule was enacted in 2001, there were over 600 public hearings around the country that garnered 1.6 million largely positive comments in the span of 18 months. It was one of the most extensive public rulemaking processes in U.S. history.
The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests initially opposed the rule in 2001, but its ultimate position comes down to following the White Mountains’ management plan and promoting the health and resiliency of its forests.
Matt Leahy, the public policy director for the Forest Society, said other impacts to the U.S. Forest Service — such as staff layoffs and the potential closure of the Bartlett Experimental Forest — gave him pause as to the trust between the federal administration and forest stakeholders.
“I acknowledge that the current administration doesn’t believe in climate science, but the science is a fact, and so again we would strongly urge the Forest Service to be active participants in trying to get the federal government to start better addressing climate change,” Leahy said.
The public comment period about the Roadless Rule opened this week and will be open for 30 days. Swayze said he hopes to see the same mobilization this time as there was 25 years ago and that it could be possible with the concerted effort of environmental organizations.
“Nothing about this decision makes good sense,” he said. “It doesn’t make good environmental protection sense. It’s not good economic sense. It just seems to be a way just simply for the administration to take a type of agency away from the American people.”
Public comments will be accepted until Sept. 21. More information about how to submit a comment can be found at https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/planning/roadless.
