Outcry as Trump plots more roads and logging in US forests: ‘You can almost hear the chainsaws’

Tongass national forest in Alaska has the largest area covered by the roadless rule introduced by President Bill Clinton in 1999. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

In 1999, Bill Clinton ascended one of the highest summits in Virginia to announce that “the last, best unprotected wild lands anywhere in our nation” would be shielded by a new rule that banned roads, drilling and other disturbances within America’s most prized forests.

But today, this site in George Washington national forest, along with other near-pristine forests across the US that amount to 58m acres, equivalent to the size of the UK, could soon see chainsaws whir and logging trucks rumble through them amid a push by Donald Trump to raze these ecosystems for timber.