Dismantling the Roadless Rule threatens to disrupt wildlife and water in US
by Mariah Meek and Travis Belote, The Conversation from Ars Technica - All content on (#77VY4)
Pause for a moment and listen. What do you hear? Chances are, somewhere in the background, is the ever-present hum of a road.
More than 4.2 million miles of public roads crisscross the lower 48 states-enough to reach the Moon and back almost nine times. This vast network of roads spiderwebs its way across the contiguous US, leaving only about 5 percent as an inventoried roadless area or wilderness.
Now, some of those last remaining lands free of roads are under threat from the Trump administration's proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule. That includes southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest, where eagles, bears, salmon, and many other species thrive in old-growth coastal forest along the Inside Passage.