In light of the attacks on the environment coming out of Washington DC, here is an older article that discusses the importance of roadless areas in support of biodiversity, specifically referring to Utah:
The article in turn references this report which concluded that roadless protections are crucial to sustaining the health and diversity of more than 100 at-risk species. Yet the state of Utah was at that time fighting to reduce the restrictions into those protected areas.
Potential impacts to the Ashley National Forest in Utah are of particular concern in this latest misguided effort to increase logging in our forests.
Old and older growth forests have largely already been decimated in the U.S. and need protection, not roads and logging. This will not "fix our forests." It is estimated that only a very few remnant old-growth forests remaining the United States (less than 1% in the East and 5% in the West (see Why old-growth forests?).
The current administration shuns science and in fact seems to instead revile it. You can't use "common sense" (even if that normally even applies to you which it doesn't to our current administration) to figure these things out and take appropriate management action. Not understanding climate change (which is real) and instead referring to it as a "hoax" is code for avoiding the truth. And the truth can be inconvenient, but it is still the truth.
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