In mid-September, Kimberly Smith, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and The Wilderness Society’s southeastern states conservation specialist, presented the Roadless Rule rescission to commissioners and recommended that they give public comment.
That would have required merely signing a document as a governing body to indicate opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed rollback. They declined to sign and tabled the decision until Oct. 6, the next meeting. Swain County has two roadless areas — Cheoah Bald and Wesser Bald.
Smith sat in the audience Oct. 6 — hours before the U.S. Department of Agriculture would close public comment on the Roadless Rule — as County Manager Tommy Dills suggested commissioners revisit the subject. When the board discussed the rescission, it didn’t mention or respond to any point Smith had made earlier.
“The disappointment I had most in how yesterday’s gathering took place was that government leadership is to model the behavior they expect of their citizens, and what was modeled was not the best way to have an effective dialogue on a topic that matters so much to so many people,” Smith said on Oct. 7.
The entire conversation, including the vote, lasted just over a minute.
“It’s jobs, and it’s money for people here. Timber business used to be. My family was raised that way,” said Commissioner David Loftis.
“The big timber standing there. It’s going to fall and rock. Nobody’s going to get any use out of it,” said Commissioner Bobby Jenkins.
Any amount of timber harvest puts countless species at risk and raises the likelihood of more frequent and severe wildfires. The Cheoah Bald Salamander, noted Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Sam Evans during later public comment, exists only within roadless areas. Roadbuilding means losing it.
The vote to not submit a comment was unanimous; Commissioners Tanner Lawson and Phil Carson, as well as Chair Jay Kirkland, raised their hands without offering a reason. That said, Kirkland did explain his stance during an earlier Sept. 29 public forum.
“I don’t really like the Roadless Rule. You talk about all the recreation around here. You wouldn’t have no recreational if it wasn’t for them roads. All these bicycle trails you’re riding on around here, every one of them’s logging roads. Every one of them,” he’d said.
Smith said she was curious why public comment, typically toward the beginning of the meeting, was moved to the end of this agenda.
“Knowing that there were going to be people in the audience to speak to that topic, and then you could just feel a deflation in the room of hope (when they voted),” she said. “I was still really proud and respectful for the voices that still chose to speak, even when we felt like it would fall on deaf ears.”
Evans said the National Forest in NC can quintuple its timber harvest without entering roadless areas, and that in the east especially, roadless areas are the few places one can visit without logging roads — which change permanently. He rebuked Jenkins’ claim that roads disappear with time, especially given continuous usage.
“It’s true that if you leave a road long enough alone, it will eventually start to fade away…. But … You can still see the roads from 100 years ago, 120 years ago, on those satellite views of the landscape,” he explained.
Fred Crawford, commission chair candidate, didn’t attend the meeting but submitted an anti-rescission public comment, which commissioners read as a statement.
“Protecting forested slopes and streams is sound stewardship and good economic policy. Healthy watersheds support fishing, wildlife, tourism, and the businesses that depend on them. Keeping the rule preserves public recreation,” it read.
Swain County resident Lori Heinsman noted that the Roadless Rule was implemented because the Forest Service couldn’t maintain the roads it did have, creating an erosion problem.
She mentioned the spot fin chub and hellbender, which, because they breathe through their skin, will suffocate if there’s too much sediment in the water.
“I encourage you to rethink Swain County’s statement, or clarify Swain County’s statement,” Heinsman concluded. “You don’t have to say much. There’s lots of templates to help you prepare.”
Resident Garret Lagan said, “They’re trying to build roads into these parks so that our developer real estate baron in chief can sell off the park to his rich buddies. If you want more billionaires buying the park up in Swain County, by all means, build a bunch of roads.”
Smith described the post-meeting fallout and how hard it was to tell her kids what had happened.
“I had to go back to my daughters and tell them the outcome of a conversation with leadership that impacts their grandchildren’s life,” Smith said.
“That’s a heavy thing to do as a parent, as a friend, as a mentor, as a community member, to look at a kid and say, ‘What we promised to protect for you is no longer protected, or not valued to protect,’” she noted.
She said one realization from this experience was the gap in how EBCI and Jackson and Swain counties relate to one another and advocated that one Swain and Jackson County commissioner attend each tribal council meeting and a tribal council member attend each county commissioners’ meeting.
Swain County can still present its opinion on the rescission past the Oct. 6 deadline, even if it likely won’t be considered alongside public comment submissions.
“If midterms shake out differently, then we’re planning to bring the resolution back in a way in which it could be heard again,” she said.
But what struck Smith most was how easy it was to explain the impacts of the roadless rule to elementary school children.
“It’s not difficult at all for them to say, ‘Oh, this is bad,’” she noted. She added that her advocacy and service work aligns with what kids believe in, without complicating it.
“It goes back to the whole principle of being Cherokee. You do the work not for yourself, not for your own kids, but for the people you never met that came before you, and the people that you’ll never meet that come after you,” she explained.