The Trump administration is rolling back decades-old protections for nearly 60 million acres of national forest.

The so-called roadless rule had prevented logging, mining, and road building in designated areas

across more than 40 states. The new changes would open those sites. It's about a third of

national forest land up for development. Environmental groups quickly denounced the plan,

but the administration called the move common sense

and said it would jumpstart timber production

and aid and fire prevention.

For more, we're joined now by Kirk Sigler,

a national correspondent for NPR who covers the Western U.S.

Kirk, it's great to see you.

So it was President Clinton in his final days in office

who used his executive authority to protect tens of millions of acres of national forest.

Do you give us a sense? How vast was the area that this rule covered? And what's at stake now

if these protections are rolled back? Well, this at the time was huge. And it's interesting for

those of us who've been covering public lands for so long.

This issue had kind of gone away, and then suddenly, like a lot of things in the Trump administration, here it is back.

When President Clinton first cited as he was leaving office, this was a huge decree of protections.

We should say added protections for national forestland

across the country, largely across the west here and in Alaska. And when he signed the decree,

it of course then was litigated for years and years. But I think looking back on it,

it's interesting to think that this really did set a precedent for future Democratic presidents anyway.

President Obama went on to use his patent executive order to protect large national monuments in Utah and other states.

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