This article is from Tennessee Lookout

The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to open up more than 58 million acres of previously protected national forests to development, including 85,000 acres of Tennessee backcountry. 

In a Wednesday announcement, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the federal government is giving the public three weeks to weigh in on the proposal to rescind the federal government’s so-called roadless rule. 

Adopted in 2001, the rule has restricted logging, mining, oil drilling and gas extraction in some of the nation’s most remote and untouched public lands – restrictions that the Trump administration is seeking  to lift.

The three-week comment period, which began on Friday before the Labor Day holiday weekend, ends Sept. 19. Public comment periods for similar federal rule changes have previously been open for a month or more. 

Rollins, in a news release, said rescinding the rule was a “common sense” step to remove “burdensome, outdated, one-size-fits-all regulations” that have limited industries that could boost local economies adjacent to public lands.  

The rule, Rollins said, is aligned with President Donald Trump’s executive order to “get rid of overcomplicated, burdensome barriers that hamper American business and innovation.”

Conservation groups, who advocated for the roadless rules for decades before it was adopted, said eliminating the protections places wildlife, clean water, recreation and old-growth forest in peril. 

Of Tennessee’s 698,000 acres of national forested lands, 85,000 have protections under the current roadless rule. 

They include portions of Land Between the Lakes in northern Tennessee and pockets within the Cherokee National Forest that stretches for 660,000 acres across the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Beaver Dam Creek, Slide Hollow, Elk Creek, Bald Mountains, Horse Cove and Sycamore Creek are among the popular backcountry areas currently protected by the roadless rule.

_ Anita Wadhwani