craig, suspending the roadless rule removes protection for over 6 million acres of federal land in Montana alone. It will lead to logging and development which fragments habitat, especially habitat needed for grizzly bears and elk though 56% of other endangered species are also affected. It will increase wildfire danger and degrade water quality. Opening more and more public land to commercial exploitation makes outdoor recreation less and less possible. The general quality of hunting and fishing is in serious decline. What i mean by healthy habitat is what sustains healthy populations of game-- for their own sake and for our pursuit of them. Don't take my word for it. Read Aldo Leopold.
A few years ago, Rocky Mtn Bill was shrieking and crying that Trump would threaten access to Federal lands for hunters. Now he is whining that opening up millions of acres of Public land and building some road access is going to make outdoor recreation less possible. It will only provide more opportunities and reduce hunting pressure on neighboring lands. A few roads will help older and disabled hunters like Rocky Mtn Bill to reach some of these areas. Billy is simply fear mongering again, and imagining widespread road building and exploitation of habitat when nothing of the sort has even been proposed.
Access roads and sustainable logging creates different stages of habitat and forest growth. A few roads also makes it much easier to fight wildfires where there is now little or no access. If Billy was even a little bit knowledgeable about healthy habitat, he wouldn't be arguing for vast tracts of unharvested and mature timber that supports very little wildlife. Billy apparently knows nothing about Aldo Leupold, because Leupold absolutely supported sustainable logging activities.
I for one do not believe that Billy did a good job of preparing his students for college, unless he is talking about indoctrinating them to drink Liberal Democrat Kool-aid and become good little Democrat Socialists. Until I told him he needed to get his grandkids to activate Spell-Check, this former English teacher kept me in stitches with all of the words he misspelled. He is questioning Ted about the meaning of a monoculture, when Ted provided him a link from the Ruffed Grouse Society explaining the benefits of logging. You can try grouse or deer hunting in old growth forests, but you won't do well. I'm betting that Biden importing over 20 million Illegals has put a lot more pressure on our overall environment than Trump opening up land that was restricted for no good reason to hunters and fishermen. It's all about the TDS for this bird.
