When it comes to constructing roads to manage national forests, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton doesn’t think the Colorado Roadless Rule goes far enough.

While calling the latest draft of the rule “a vast improvement” of the one created a decade ago, the Republican congressman from Cortez says he has “serious concerns” over some of its stipulations.

“While the rule, in large part, addresses the need for access and use in lower tier areas which was absent in the 2001 rule, the implementation of ‘upper tier’ areas could have serious consequences for our ability to maintain healthy and secure ecosystems and to provide fire mitigation to ensure safety and to prevent the loss of life,” he told The Colorado Independent. “By prohibiting the construction of new roads in upper tier areas, even in the case of emergencies, management agencies will be hamstrung from providing much needed access to manage these lands in a safe and responsible manner.”

Tipton’s outlook starkly contrasts with that of U.S. Rep Diana DeGette, a Democrat representing Denver, who recently asserted that “while my constituents and I are working with the Forest Service to keep the best of our backcountry forests protected, some in Congress are pushing on behalf of special interests to take those protections away entirely. Coloradans depend on these areas for our drinking water, our outdoor economy and our cherished way of life, and they must be preserved.”

Colorado is one of only two states — Idaho is the other – to create its own state-specific rule as authorized by the Bush administration in 2005 as an answer to the U.S. rule in 2001. Colorado’s proposed rule would offer strict protections for about 13 percent of the state’s 4.2 million acres of remaining roadless national forests with exceptions for mining, logging and ski-area expansion.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which Tipton has worked to weaken during his short time in office, came out

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