IRAs

Forest Service Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) are areas of National Forest land that are managed according to specific “Roadless Rules” generally limiting timber harvesting and road building. IRA’s account for roughly 30%, or 58.2 million acres, of all National Forest land in the United States and are highly concentrated in the western states.

Wild Characteristics. IRAs are lands that are deemed to have Roadless Area Characteristics, which include: high-quality or undisturbed soil, water, or air; sources of public drinking water; diversity of plant and animal communities, habitat for threatened, endangered, proposed, candidate, and sensitive species and for species dependent on large, undisturbed areas of land; primitive, semi-primitive nonmotorized, and semi-primitive motorized classes of dispersed recreation; natural appearing landscapes with high scenic quality; and traditional cultural properties and sacred sites.

RARE landscapes. After the passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the Forest Service (FS) conducted two inventories of all FS land to determine its suitability for Wilderness designation. These Roadless Area Review and Evaluations, known as RARE I and RARE II, recommended over 15 million acres be designated as Wilderness, and another 47 million acres for other uses. The evaluations were challenged in court.

2001 Rule. In the years after the RARE I and II lands were inventoried, Congress enacted a number of state-specific wilderness laws, designating millions of acres of these lands as Wilderness. Then in 2001, the FS enacted the first Roadless Rule, known as the 2001 Rule. Based on the lands inventoried in RARE I and II that had not received Wilderness designation, the 2001 Rule prohibits timber harvesting, road construction, or road reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas except under specified conditions. Currently 48 of the 50 states manage IRAs based on the 2001 Rule.

State Specific. Idaho, where the majority of the Great Burn ecosystem’s IRAs are located, is one of two states that has state-specific rules for managing IRAs. In Idaho, IRAs are split into five different categories, each with its own management priorities. The state also has more specific rules on things like energy and resource development.