Trump erases the protection of over 23 million hectares of national forests (including the largest secular forest of the USA)

The Trump Administration is canceling a historical conservation rule, which dates back to President Clinton, which today prevents the construction of roads and therefore the deforestation of about 58 million acres of Federal Forest and Wild Lands.

It is a real repeal of the Roadless Rule of 2001 (“without road”, which had actually created natural protections for dozens of forests in the west and Alaska), which arrives while the forest service has already received the order from Trump to increase the thinning of the forests to face the threat of fires.

As announced a few weeks ago, therefore, in the middle of a series of executive acts that leave the bitterness in the mouth, Trump now says ready to raze everything, also strong in the support of the secretary to agriculture Brooke Rollins according to which “Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to the management of common sense of our natural resources by repealing the excessively restrictive rule of the roadless“.

What could disappear

The uncontaminated land targeted by Trump includes the National Forest of Tongass in Alaska, the largest temperate rainforest of North America; RiSisth Knob in the Shenandoh Mountains, one of the highest points in Virginia; And millions of beat the Frank Church-Roner of No Return Wilderness in Idaho.

Most of the Americans appreciate these uncontaminated areas for their sense of wild nature, for the clean water that provide, for fishing, hunting and habitat of wildlife, declares Chris Wood, managing director of Trout Unlimited, an environmental group.

When President Bill Clinton used theExecutive AuthorityThat is, the power to issue executive orders, to protect forests weeks before leaving the assignment in 2001, was greeted by environmentalists as the most significant step since President Theodore Roosevelt laid the foundations for the national forest system.

Then, Clinton managed to block the deforestation, the construction of roads, the mining extraction and the drilling out of 58 million acres of the unlawful national forest lands. Wood, who worked as a senior political consultant of the head of the United States forestry service when the rule entered into force, recalled that he had a broad public support.

I don’t think the timber industry wants to enter these areas – he explains. They are very controversial and they are too expensive to access it. I believe that when they bring this to the regulation, they will realize how wildly unpopular it is to get rid of that rule and how little profit there is to be drawn.

If the Trump administration actually revokes the Roadless rule, we will see them in court, concludes Drew Caputo, a lawyer from the Earthjustice group.

For almost a quarter of a century, that Roadless Rule that Trump now wants to disappear has contributed to safeguard lands that offer abundant life opportunities and are the essential habitat for the wildlifelike the Condor of California, the bears grizzly and wolves Of the Yellowstone area, the salmon and the native trout in the north-western Pacific, the migratory cherry birds of the rides of the applications and a myriad of other species that depend on areas without roads to survive. Not to mention the centuries -old trees, which in these areas act as a buffer against climate change.

Eliminating all this would be a real damage for everyone, even for us who are from this other end of the world.