SWEETWATER COUNTY — Sweetwater County wants to see more local control in areas managed by federal agencies according to a letter that was unanimously approved by the Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners Tuesday.
The commissioners voted to support a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service commenting on the rescission of the 2001 roadless area conservation rule proposed by USDA.
Eric Bingham, the county’s land use director and author of the letter, said the rule restricts access to 58.5 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land. The rule was enacted during the final days of the Clinton Administration, which aimed to prohibit development of access roads to protect wilderness areas and the plant and animal species living within them. However, the rule has also been criticized, including by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins when she announced the filing of a proposal that would rescind it completely.
“Our forests can’t afford another decade of inaction. Across the country, we’ve watched preventable conditions – overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease – turn healthy landscapes into tinderboxes,” she said in a press release.
Bingham said the letter tells the two federal agencies Sweetwater County wants local decision makers to have a greater say over what is done on federal lands.
“We’re not encouraging roads everywhere with this, that’s not what this does,” Bingham said. “What it does is says, ‘We want land use decisions and travel management decisions done locally, where they should be and where the stakeholders are.’”
Bingham said the reason why the county is commenting on the issue is because the roadless rule is mentioned in the county’s Federal Lands and Resource Plan, though he admits the county doesn’t have roadless inventoried lands. However, the county is a cooperator with the Ashley National Forest, which Bingham said has more than 30 inventoried areas. The U.S. Forest Service also manages land around the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
Commissioner Taylor Jones agrees with local control being needed for management decisions, saying he recently was on Union Pass with people who hadn’t been in the area and heard comments about the dead trees there.
“It’s just a sea of dead trees and of course, people in Washington, D.C. have no idea what’s going on here and will never set foot in these forests,” Jones said.
