New Mexico environmentalists host ‘people’s public hearing’ to decry Roadless protection removal

The United States Agriculture Department’s move to repeal protections for roughly 45 million acres of federal forestland nationally without a public hearing prompted New Mexico environmentalist groups to host their own forums across the state this week, including one Wednesday evening at a basketball gymnasium in Albuquerque’s Barelas neighborhood.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins on Aug. 18 announced that the department had formally proposed repealing the 2001 Roadless Rule, which currently protects federal forestland, including roughly 1.6 million acres in New Mexico, from road construction and timber harvesting. She unveiled the proposal last year in Santa Fe during the Western Governors’ Association annual convention.

Rollins said the roadless rule has “frustrated” local forest managers and impeded wildfire suppression and prevention, though studies show that wildfires, most of which are human-caused, occur less frequently in protected “roadless” areas than in unprotected forestland.

The USDA’s announcement made no mention of public forums to host public feedback on the proposal. Instead, the department is accepting online comments on the repeal through Sept. 21. 

A USDA spokesperson did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment Thursday about why the department is not holding public forums.

Such public forums are typical for USDA rule changes, according to leaders of environmentalist group New Mexico Wild.The proposed enactment of the Roadless Rule 25 years ago featured hundreds of such public forums across the country, according to the Federal Register.

The USDA has also opted to hold public hearings for other recent proposed rule changes, including those about reducing salmonella in poultry products and regulations for South Texas onion growers.

Approximately 80 people, including U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) attended the “people’s public hearing” on Wednesday in Albuquerque, hosted by New Mexico Wild and other local environmentalist groups. Organizers said they would submit testimony from speakers at the hearing to the USDA. Other forums will be held in Pecos, Las Cruces and Silver City in the coming days. 

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Heinrich told those gathered Wednesday that he attended the public forums in the late 1990s regarding implementing the Roadless Rule. Those forums improved the eventual policy that has remained widely popular for the last 25 years, he said. 

“Let this administration know that it’s not okay not to have a public forum,” Heinrich told attendees. “That public process is at the heart of good democracy, good governance, and we won’t accept anything less than that.”

Other speakers said they were concerned that repealing the rule will increase light pollution, harm wildlife, damage watersheds, impede Indigenous cultural practices and remove the experience of solitude from the outdoors, all in service of profit for timber companies. 

Emmet Yepa is a Jemez Pueblo member and government affairs director at Semilla Project, a youth environmental justice group. He said the Roadless Rule has protected lands sacred to his people in the Santa Fe National Forest.  

“As public lands, these areas should remain protected for the public good rather than open for development,” Yepa said. “We have a crucial opportunity to preserve these ecosystems while they are still healthy. Once lost, they cannot easily be restored.”