[Episcopal News Service] The Green Team, a creation-care ministry at All Saints by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, California, is environmentally active in ways you might expect, and some you might not: beach clean-ups, outdoor choruses at dawn, birding trips, boat outings, bat walks, Sunday prayers for endangered species and promotion of efficient energy use.
“We try to get people out and really experiencing creation right here where we live,” Amanda Sparkman, a ministry leader, told Episcopal News Service. Ideally, those experiences in the Santa Barbara area also inspire parishioners to take better care of the natural world, including the nearby Los Padres National Forest.
Now, All Saints’ Green Team and other Episcopalians who care about federally protected wilderness are joining Americans across the country in speaking out in opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to reverse a policy that for more than 20 years has kept large swaths of federal land off limits to automotive traffic, development and resource extraction.
The so-called “Roadless Rule” was established in 2001 to prohibit road construction and timber harvesting in nearly 60 million acres in the National Forest System, including Alaska. Although not all national forest land is covered by the policy, it applies to some of the last remaining undeveloped wild land on the continent.
Much of that protected land is located in the Los Padres National Forest, which totals nearly 2 million acres from Ventura to Big Sur parallel to the Pacific Coast. Its hills and mountains are a popular attraction for hikers, and the Roadless Rule protects much of it from road construction and development.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture under President Donald Trump wants to change that, saying that ending the Roadless Rule is justified because roads are needed to assist with fire suppression and forest management.
“For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in an Aug. 27 news release announcing a three-week public comment period on the change.
Input on the proposed change was received through Sept. 19 in what Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins hailed as “one step closer to common sense management of our national forest lands.”
That contrasts sharply with how Sparkman and other conservation advocates describe the proposed change. “There’s so much science that shows what a bad idea this is,” she said.
Opening federal wilderness to roads could threaten animal populations, reduce biodiversity, disrupt recreational uses of the land and – contrary to the Trump administration’s stated goals of fire suppression – might even make wildfires more common, Sparkman said. More human activity in national forests creates more opportunity for humans and machinery to ignite fires there.
People who live in the Santa Barbara area feel a close connection to the Los Padres, Sparkman added. “It’s our backyard. It’s right here,” she said. “We see it every day. It’s the mountains we live in.”
Rick Eggerth has a similar appreciation for the Cascade Mountains near his home in Bellingham, Washington, just south of the Canadian border. He and other members of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church are also speaking out against the proposed change to the Roadless Rule and what it could mean for wilderness in their state.
“The potential impact on those lands would be significant,” Eggerth said in an interview with ENS.
Someone from Bellingham in search of wildlands, Eggerth said, can take Highway 542 east about 60 miles and eventually reach a prominent tourist destination, Artist Point, known as one of the region’s most photographed locations because of the natural beauty of the surrounding mountainous landscape.
Then, after reaching Artist Point, leave the car behind.
“The road ends there, so if you want to go further east,” he said, “you basically have to walk or get on a river. All that area is pretty much roadless.”
Eggerth is opposed to changing the Roadless Rule partly because he doubts the Trump administration is sincere in justifying the change as prudent for forest management. “The only reason to do that would be for extracting industries or logging industries,” he said.
Conservationists call the Roadless Rule “one of the most important conservation policies in U.S. history.” It was first issued in 2001, in the final days of the Clinton administration, out of concern that urban and agricultural expansion was consuming more and more undeveloped land in the United States. At that time, the Department of Agriculture cited estimates that 3.2 million acres of forest, wetland, farmland and open space were being lost each year.
Those concerns remain top of mind as the Trump administration now tries to roll back the Roadless Rule. More than 600,000 people commented on the proposal during the three-week period, and nearly all supported leaving the rule unchanged.
“Roadless areas globally have been recognized as repositories of biodiversity, clean water, carbon sequestration and storage, and unsurpassed natural values,” the Society for Conservation Biology North America said in a written comment on behalf of its nearly 3,000 members. “The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the preservation of these areas for the protection of biodiversity, the enhancement of wildfire resilience, and the long-term health of our ecosystems for future generations.”
The organization concluded that the Trump administration was pursuing “a dangerous and misguided policy that runs counter to sound conservation and environmental health science.”
In addition to the ecological arguments for keeping the Roadless Rule as is, there are plenty of human reasons, too. Experiencing untouched wilderness is a pleasure for many Americans like Eggerth, who hikes in the Cascades.
“I enjoy very much when I can get out in nature,” he said, often with a camera. “There’s already too much that’s been taken away.”
The Los Padres are a frequent hiking destination for Sparkman and others in the Santa Barbara area. Opening some of that forest to motorized traffic could be devastating, she said.
“This is a pretty big deal,” Sparkman said, and she feels Episcopalians should raise their voice to oppose the change, “if we profess to be people of God and care about his creation.”
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.