Dear editor:

This past summer, Wyoming hunters, anglers and outdoors enthusiasts from all backgrounds and political persuasions banded together to help keep public lands in public hands. Rightfully so, public lands are central to Wyoming’s way of life and outdoor traditions that we cherish. 

While the fight over large-scale selloffs of public land may be behind us — for now — another issue has emerged, this time over the management of the last remaining roadless areas on our national forests

I’ve spent my career dedicated to the wise management of public lands, including 35 years working with the Forest Service, culminating as the forest supervisor of the 3-million acre Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho along Wyoming’s western border. Managing millions of acres of public lands requires a lot of compromise to balance multiple uses, and the management of roadless areas has long been a flash point — but it need not be.

In 2001, the Forest Service put in place a policy called the Roadless Rule. In essence, this regulation prevents new road construction and industrial scale logging activities in unroaded portions of our national forests. It made a lot of sense. With over 370,000 miles of roads on our national forests and a growing maintenance backlog, we couldn’t take care of the roads we had, so why build more? 

For over two decades the Roadless Rule has worked well to balance conservation with other uses in roadless areas, including motorized recreation, grazing and even mining — none of which are prohibited by the Roadless Rule. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently initiated a new regulatory process to repeal the Roadless Rule. I won’t suggest that the Roadless Rule is perfect, but repealing the policy nationwide is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And in this instance, the “baby” is some or our best fish and wildlife habitat and the public lands we hunt and fish. 

In Wyoming, over 60% of roadless areas are home to native trout and they are the headwaters of some of our more popular fisheries, providing cold, clean water to rivers like the Snake, Shoshone and Clarks Fork. Moreover, these public lands provide intact habitat for big game, with 70% of roadless areas serving as spring, summer and fall habitat to elk. The Roadless Rule keeps these lands and waters healthy by preventing new impacts that sully streams and fragment habitat.  

According to the Forest Service, the reason they are proposing to repeal the Roadless Rule is because the policy has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management. If there is anything I’ve learned in my career managing public lands, it’s that it’s not that simple — these are complicated issues, especially when it comes to reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire during an era of hotter, longer and more intense fire seasons.  

It is important to recognize that the Roadless Rule has exemptions built in that allow active management to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire and to restore forest health. These exemptions have been used numerous times. In fact, 32% of national forest lands in Wyoming with hazardous fuel reduction projects have been in roadless areas.  

A lifetime of service on behalf of public lands and public land users has instilled in me a deep commitment to the health of our natural resources for future generations. Instead of repealing the Roadless Rule, I encourage the administration to maintain safeguards for intact fish and wildlife habitat while also focusing forest health projects where they will do the most good to keep communities safe. Typically, that means in the wildland urban interface, not backcountry roadless areas. 

That doesn’t mean that some targeted changes aren’t warranted to better manage some roadless areas, but let’s work together to improve land management where it’s needed most, not create a new fight over public lands that is entirely avoidable. 

In my experience, often the good hunting and fishing begin when the road ends. Let’s keep it that way. Comments on the proposed rule are due by Sept. 19 and can be posted at regulations.gov/document/FS-2025-0001-0001.

Lawrence Timchak

President, East Yellowstone Trout Unlimited 

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