A message from Wayne Chamberlin, President of MCE

 There is mystery and magic beyond the road. You know this if you hunt, hike, fish, camp or just plain enjoy being in or near land still wild enough to be beyond dozer cut roads. Clean air, pure water and unblemished vistas provided by these special places. Our unroaded  sanctuaries are biodiversity strongholds and carbon sinks that play a vital role in climate resilience.  What you may not know is that the Trump Administration plans to rescind the 2001 Roadless Conservation Rule which prohibits new road construction in 58 million acres of  unroaded national forest land, six million of which are in Montana, more than any other state outside of Alaska. These blank spots on the map are truly the best of what remains of the Real Montana. Their value as refuges for both humans and wildlife will only increase as growing urbanization and absentee hobby ranches.  For the most part these public wildlands have remained roadless because they lacked enough valuable timber and minerals to justify their development. This is still true today. So new roads to harvest marginal resources will require huge taxpayer funded subsidies. Having to pay to lose the intrinsic values of these last vestiges of the Last Best Place would truly add insult to injury.  When the Roadless Rule was proposed 25 years ago it garnered more than 1.6 million comments—the most of any rule—with 90% in favor. The support was even higher in Montana. This makes the current fast track effort by Trump 2.0 to repeal this popular rule especially troubling and extreme.  This attempt to rescind is based on the false premise that more roads will reduce the growing hazard of wildfire by providing more access for fire control. In fact, the opposite is true.   Roads actually increase fire risk with more than 90% of all wildfires within 1/2 mile of a road.  Once a fire starts to burn roads make little difference. “The odds of high-severity fire on private industrial lands were 1.8 times higher than on public lands.” The mantra of reducing fuels to reduce fire risk misses the real cause of “mega fires”, which is increasing aridity from climate change. Ever more intense drought, high temperatures, low humidity and, most of all, wind are the critical factors.  More roads mean more fire risk, but they also mean more sedimentation that harms fisheries, more weeds, and more fragmented habitat that disrupts wildlife. Sound public policy calls for maintaining the Roadless Rule which generations of Montanans have taken for granted because it’s been there for them and their families. This thin but crucial veil protects the Great Burn, Scotchman Peaks, East Pioneers, the Gallatin Range and so much more. The Roadless Rule embodies the most powerful action we as a society can take restraint based on humility and respect.  With only a 3-week comment period on the scoping document the deadline of September 19 is fast approaching. Email comments to Docket Document (FS-2025-0001-0001 Of course there is no deadline to reach out to Sens. Daines and Sheehy and Reps. Zinke and Downing and they need to hear from you in support of the Roadless Rule.   Signed by members of Montana Conservation Elders (MCE). Montana Conservation Elders is mentoring the next generation of Montana conservationists by sponsoring youth summer camps across the state. We want our young people to experience the same mystery and magic beyond the roads as we have. 

  Sincerely, Wayne Chamberlin President, Montana Conservation Elders