ELKINS, W.Va. \u2014 The roadless designation for about 20 percent of the Monongahela National Forest could be considered for a rollback if the President\u2019s desire to end the roadless rules is put into effect.<\/p>\n
President Trump has sought to remove the roadless designation which he said would enable better access to some federal lands to battle forest fires. Daria Jones, Chair of the Sierra Club West Virginia\u2019s Public Lands Committee disagrees. Jones said having roads in those areas of the National Forest would actually create more fires by enabling more access.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the roadless rule does is it\u2019s one of the most successful conservation efforts ever and it protects nationwide our National Forests everywhere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Sierra Club will have an open meeting Tuesday night at Davis and Elkins College to talk more about the roadless rule and explain why it should be maintained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want this meeting to be more educational, so we\u2019re going to talk about the history of the roadless rule and why it\u2019s special because we want to keep it and what the rollbacks would mean for our Mon forest,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
There are far larger tracts of federal land in the western United States which have roadless rules. Here in West Virginia the amount of space is considerably smaller. About 200-thousand acres of the 1-Million acre Monongahela National Forest is under roadless protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of this acreage is all of our special places like Spruce Knob, Seneca Creek, Canaan Mountain, Roaring Plains, Cheat Mountain, Tea Creek and the Gauley. The forest service has announced plans to roll back the protections,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese roadless areas are some of the last intact wild forests we have\u201d said Daria Jones, Public Lands Committee Chair for the WV Sierra Club. \u201cThey protect clean drinking water, provide critical wildlife habitat, and offer unmatched opportunities to hunt, fish, hike, and camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meeting will include several presenters to talk about the history of the rule and why it is important. It\u2019s slated for Tuesday, April 14th at 7:00 \u2013 8:30 PM in Elkins, WV at the Robert Byrd Center, Conference Room B at Davis & Elkins College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ELKINS, W.Va. \u2014 The roadless designation for about 20 percent of the Monongahela National Forest could be considered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-582224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}