Colorado Keeps Its Roadless Rule. Utah and Wyoming Don’t.

What the Colorado Roadless Rule actually protects

The Colorado Roadless Rule took effect July 3, 2012, after negotiations begun under Republican Gov. Bill Owens and finished by his successors. It covers roughly 4.2 million acres across the state’s national forests, and about 1.2 million of those carry what the rule calls upper tier status, where the exceptions allowing roads and tree cutting are narrower than the 2001 federal rule allowed. In a real slice of Colorado, the state rule is not a watered-down substitute. It is stricter than the thing being repealed.

Roadless is also not Wilderness, and the difference matters when you read a map. Wilderness is created by Congress, is the strongest protection there is, and is untouched by any of this. Roadless is a regulation, permits more activity, and is the connective backcountry stitching the wilderness areas together. Maroon East sits at the base of the Bells, a short walk from the Four Pass Loop. Tenmile sits above Summit County.

The catch is the map you road-trip

Here is what the “Colorado is exempt” headlines skip. More than 95 percent of inventoried roadless areas sit in ten Western states, according to USDA: Alaska, Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Colorado is not on that list. Colorado is also not the only state Coloradans hike in.

Corey Fisher, public lands policy director for Trout Unlimited, gave the Sun the ecological version: “Fish and wildlife don’t know state boundaries. Big game needs big land.” Herds move between Colorado and Wyoming across summer and winter range, and a road cut on one side of a state line does not respect the other.

The simpler version: the San Rafael Swell, the Winds, the Gila. If your fall trip involves any of them, this proposal is about your trip.

The wildfire case, and the government’s own numbers

USDA’s central argument is wildfire, and it deserves stating fairly rather than waving off.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our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,” Rollins said. Chief Tom Schultz added specifics: “More than 40% of inventoried roadless areas, primarily in the West, have high or very high wildfire hazard potential. And only 5% of those areas have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014.” The notice adds that 9.8 million roadless acres, about 24 percent, overlap the wildland-urban interface. After the summer Colorado just had, that is not a frivolous argument.

Fisher reads the same math differently, telling the Sun the agency still treated two million acres for hazardous fuels with the rule in force. Put the two figures together and they may be the same acreage from opposite ends: five percent of the 44 million acres USDA cites is roughly 2.2 million. Whether that is a failure or a floor is the actual argument.

He also points at ignitions. “[A]s for ignitions, humans are the biggest cause of wildfires, and we tend to spark wildfires along roads. More roads means more ignitions.” Josh Hicks of The Wilderness Society told CPR much the same: “Opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development, and therefore more ignitions, is also not a wildfire solution, and never will be.”

Two more numbers from the government’s own filing cut in opposite directions. More than a quarter of inventoried roadless land, 11.3 million acres, already sits within a half mile of an existing road, so this is not pristine country becoming highway overnight. But the federal analysis also concedes that lost recreation benefit “could be an estimated $6.1 million annually,” and reports that the majority sentiment among Tribal governments consulted is opposition.