On Wednesday, June 24, Los Padres Forest Watch, Sierra Club, Cal Wild, Latino Outdoors, and The Wilderness Society hosted a public town hall in San Luis Obispo.
The evening’s subject was the future of our national forests in the face of an attack on the Roadless Rule by the Trump administration, an attack that would significantly impact Los Padres National Forest.
For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has protected nearly 45 million acres of undeveloped backcountry public land managed by the U.S. Forest Service – nearly a quarter of the entire national forest system. These forests have only remained undeveloped and intact because of the Forest Service's decades-old commitment not to build roads in these areas, thus preventing industrial activities like logging, mining, or oil and gas extraction. More than 635,000 acres of those lands are in and around Los Padres National Forest, including Inventoried Roadless Areas around Black Mountain, Garcia Mountain and Machesna Mountain.
As noted in the June 19 New Times Down to Earth column by the Sierra Club’s Gianna Patchen and Andrew Christie, the Roadless Rule was passed in 2001 after 600 public meetings were held and 1.6 million people submitted comments, with 95 percent in support of this landmark environmental measure.
Last year, when the Trump administration announced its intention to do away with the Roadless Rule, more than 600,000 people voiced their support for the rule, but the administration is steamrolling ahead and ignoring the voices of the American public.
Now, the U.S. Forest Service is proposing to roll back these protections while limiting public input.
After several informative presentations, attendees filled out postcards for delivery to the Trump administration. The Forest Service is expected to open a very limited 14-day comment period soon. We are collecting signatures and comments now to prepare for that window. Please join thousands of others by submitting your comments today to protect our public forests from irreversible damage. You can help in the project of inundating the administration with opposition to its plan.
History is clear: Trump’s appointees will move ahead with their extremely unpopular attempt to undo an extremely popular policy. So why should you send a comment? “The comments do matter, and it’s the substance of the comments that matters the most,” says Aaron Weiss, Deputy Director of the Center for Western Priorities. “Whether it’s from your own life and your experience, or the science that’s involved, the substance is what they have to respond to. And if they ignore the substance, that’s what ends up getting these actions thrown out in court.”
Together, we can show that our communities are paying attention—and that we will fight to protect our forests.
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Thanks to our co-hosts: Ecologistics, Estero Bay Indivisible, Cal Poly Initiative for Climate Leadership and Resilience, California Native Plant Society - SLO Chapter, Morro Coast Audubon Society, and One Cool Earth.