As wildfire season approaches in the West, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) is raising the alarm, claiming an outdated federal rule is fanning the flames.
Speaking Thursday before Wyoming’s Select Federal Natural Resource Committee, Hageman blamed the Clinton-era Roadless Rule for the state’s worsening wildfire devastation.
“We talked about not having roads, and they looked at us like we had 17 heads,” Hageman said, describing a recent trip to Japan, where forest roads are common and wildfires are much less common.
The Roadless Rule, enacted in 2001, just days before President Bill Clinton left office, restricted road construction on 58.5 million acres of national forest land, including 3.2 million acres in Wyoming.
According to Hageman, the result has been reduced access for logging and forest management, allowing overgrowth and beetle-killed trees to transform forests into tinderboxes.
Clinton’s Rule and Hageman’s Fight
Hageman, whose family homestead near McGinnis Pass was destroyed in one of last summer’s fires, once helped win an injunction against the rule while serving as a special assistant attorney general.
However, political changes allowed the rule to stand. Since then, she claims the consequences have been dire, as evidenced by the 2024 Elk Fire, which burned 100,000 acres in the Bighorn Mountains.
Forests that Fight Back
Hageman praised Japan’s model, in which older trees deemed “parasitic” are routinely logged and a dense network of forest roads allows for rapid response and healthy regrowth.
She claims it’s no coincidence that Japan’s annual wildfires have decreased from 8,000 in 1973 to only 2,100 by 2023.
