Several dozen people gathered Tuesday in Santa Fe with a message for the feds: Keep wilderness wild.
The U.S. Forest Service is not set to hold any public meetings on the proposed rollback of the decades-old “Roadless Rule,” which limits road building and logging across millions of acres of wilderness areas, including the Pecos Wilderness. So, the nonprofit New Mexico Wild has opted to host several of its own town hall events, dubbed “People’s Public Hearings,” in collaboration with a statewide coalition of environmental groups.
At the first event Tuesday evening, held at Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery on Agua Fría Street, members of the public were encouraged to step up and share their thoughts on the planned repeal of the rule, which organizers said would rescind protections for 1.6 million acres of New Mexico forests. Many attendees and guest speakers described the proposal as a veiled mechanism to make way for more mining and oil and gas drilling.
“I want my children to experience real forests, not just places where roads and development have replaced a lot of landscapes that never existed before them,” said 21-year-old Mariana Garcia. “We have a responsibility to think beyond what is convenient today and consider what we have [left] behind for the people that come after us.”
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Tuesday’s testimony — addressed to three empty chairs labeled “President Trump,” “Secretary Rollins” and “Chief Schultz,” the last two referring to the heads of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, respectively — will be submitted to the agencies before the public comment period on the proposal ends Sept. 21. More than 118,000 comments had been submitted as of Wednesday, according to the Federal Register.
President Donald Trump, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz were all invited to attend Tuesday’s event, said New Mexico Wild Conservation Director Bjorn Fredrickson.
Another event was scheduled Wednesday in Albuquerque. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, who has been a persistent critic of efforts to repeal the rule, was scheduled to speak. Others are set to take place next week in Southern New Mexico and in Pecos.
‘Moving in nature’
The Forest Service last month filed a proposal to end the Roadless Rule, enacted in January 2001 in the waning days of President Bill Clinton’s administration. Rollins announced the planned rollback of the rule a year ago during a visit to Santa Fe.
The agency says the reversal would help mitigate wildfire risk, but speakers Tuesday pushed back on that idea, arguing data shows most wildfires in the United States are started by people and are more likely to start near roads.
One such human-caused fire off a forest road in New Mexico was the 2022 Black Fire in the Gila National Forest, according to Fredrickson, which was the second largest fire in state history, burning 327,263 acres northwest of Truth or Consequences.
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“If wildfire prevention is one of the reasons for rescinding the rule, we should be asking whether opening currently roadless landscapes to additional roads actually increases the risk we’re trying to reduce,” said Teresa Martinez, executive director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition.
Alexi Charter, who is based in Santa Fe but works for a survival school in southern Utah, said she “sees through” the argument there will be more wildfires without increased road building. She also encouraged Trump to take a wilderness survival course.
“People who are on the land, making fire, know how to tend that fire and not let it get out in full,” Charter said.
Others expressed concerns about the potential impact on recreation.
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Alex Gibson, president of the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, said cyclists would not have trails such as the Winsor or Borrego trails which start outside Santa Fe and head into the Pecos Wilderness, without healthy forests — which the Roadless Rule is a critical part of.
“It’s also really great for demonstrating that recreation and conservation can be in a symbiotic relationship,” Gibson said. “I also think now more than ever, all human beings need to be moving in nature. I think that’s critical to our well-being, and it’s something that we’ve really lost sight of.”
Lily Alexander is a state accountability reporter for The New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico, focusing on equity and transparency. Her position is part of the New Mexican Public Service Journalism Fund, and her stories are available to all readers without a paywall.
