The Trump administration’s proposed Roadless Rule rescission — which The Smoky Mountain News has covered at each stage — dominated part of the Sept. 15 Swain County meeting when Kimberly Smith, an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians enrolled member and The Wilderness Society’s southeastern states conservation specialist, urged commissioners to give public comment. She used an Indigenous perspective to frame the sites a rescission would impact.
“The forest, rivers, and wildlife were here before us, and if we make the right choices, they will be here after us. We often think about stewardship as something to do to a place, but stewardship is also about understanding we have a relationship with a place, and with that comes responsibilities,” she said.
U.S. Forest Service road building, if allowed in all 20 Western North Carolina roadless areas, would affect runoff, water supply, and endangered species. In Swain County’s two roadless areas — Cheoah Bald and Wesser Bald — rescission-induced changes to sedimentation and water quality are expected to lead to a 31-70% eastern hellbender population decline. Other local road construction threats include habitat fragmentation, canopy removal, invasive species encroachment, and plant and amphibian habitat disruption.
Smith added that a rescission would financially harm the county, which, based on a 2023 Made by Mountains WNC Outdoor Recreation Participation Survey, received $23,660,693 in labor income from outdoor recreation visits. The outdoor recreation industry employed 729 people in 2023, or 5.2% of all Swain County residents, far above Haywood’s 2.2%, Jackson’s 3.2%, and Macon’s 2.1%. According to the report, 50% of respondents hiked while 46% participated in nature viewing, activities likely affected amid a roadless rollback.
Despite the rescission’s acute local impacts, commissioners were largely unaware of it before the meeting.
“I’ll be honest. I did not know that this was even a thing coming down until it was shared with us,” said Commissioner Tanner Lawson.
Smith assured the policy “is not a part of general knowledge,” mentioning education sessions she’s facilitated.
She’d been at Swain East Elementary earlier that day to explain roadless areas to 80 students, all of whom submitted a public comment.
She shared a few examples. From one student, “Don’t cut the trees down, please. Trees are so pretty; they give us air. Trees give us medicine. Please don’t cut them down.”
Another had said, “Please protect our future, our water, our species, our trees, our roadless areas.”
A third had commented, “Please, please, please keep our nature, our wildlife safe. Roads in these wilderness areas will ruin so many things.”
The public has written around 7,000 comments daily, with outliers on Aug. 21, Sept. 14, and Sept. 16, each with nearly 20,000 submissions.
Most comments are boilerplate; daily unique submissions are closer to 2,000. Of all comments, 99.1% oppose rescission, 0.7% support it, and 0.2% are neutral or have an unclear stance. Of unique comments, 97.7% oppose rescission, 1.7% support it, and 0.6% are neutral/unclear.
Smith referenced several WNC governing bodies — Boone, McDowell County, Hendersonville, Henderson County, Franklin, and Buncombe County — that had submitted joint public comments in hopes commissioners would make the same decision.
“I think one of the big issues here would be logging on the forest, and we need timber, and the way the Forest Service, the places that’s been logged in the past, I’ve visited, and they seed the roads down. They’re green. It creates a good area for wildlife,” said Commissioner Bobby Jenkins. “You can’t tell it’s been logged.”
Smith emphasized the differences between those sites and old-growth roadless areas, one of which is home to a 426-year-old tree, and explained how roadless protections interact with timber harvest.
“When it comes to commercial logging in these forested areas, one of the things that the Roadless Rule does is add clarity on process and location, which allows for more efficient means of going into public lands for logging,” she said.
Commissioners ultimately tabled the decision until their Oct. 6 meeting, the final day of public comment. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sept. 11 extended the public comment period by 15 days through a federal register notice that itself has garnered over 4,000 comments.
“I would like to do a little research. It’s pretty interesting to me,” said Commissioner David Loftis, noting that the hellbender lives within Swain County’s “two virgin stands of timber.”
Commissioners then briefly debated whether a water dog is a hellbender, which Smith answered affirmatively.
“They’ve got, like, 15 different names, like snot lizard, lasagna lizard, mud puppy. I love a hellbender,” she said.