Speak up to protect Roadless Rule and preserve our national forests

By Amy Anderson
Reader Contributor

The Roadless Rule protects 58 million acres of our most intact, unlogged national forests from road building ,which facilitates industrial logging, mining, drilling and other industrial activities.

The Trump administration recently announced its intention to repeal the Roadless Rule and we only have until Friday, Sept. 19 to speak up.

Twenty-five years ago, roads were banned in these precious 58 million acres and the Roadless Rule was adopted and embraced by our legislators for a number of far-sighted reasons. (Note: roadless areas are, for the most part, open to the public for camping, mountain biking and other uses).

It has long been understood that roads are bad for wildlife for a number of reasons, the primary one being habitat fragmentation. These protected roadless areas are often home to the headwaters of major river systems, as well as the last undeveloped watershed, wetland and forest complexes left in the contiguous continental U.S., which are critical to conserve in the face of global climate change.

Roads also increase human caused wildfire, which accounts for the vast majority of wildfires globally. In the U.S., approximately 85% of wildfires are attributed to human actions. As for recreation, the need for roadless areas is self explanatory.

The primary reason the Roadless Rule was passed was because of the extreme burden on the American taxpayer related to the massive cost of building and maintaining existing roads, which included a huge maintenance backlog on existing roads. Building and maintaining millions of miles of roads in our remote national forests is not cheap.

Make no mistake: If this rule is repealed it will be another bonanza for billionaires paid for by the American people into perpetuity.

It is important to submit individual comments, mentioning specific places that are important to you, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture at regulations.gov, Docket Number FS-2025-0001.

Please copy all of your legislators as well, and let them know loud and clear that you support the Roadless Rule Conservation Act. 

To help with your comment submission, below is a template from the John Muir Project:

“I strongly oppose the administration’s proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule. Eliminating these protections will harm our water, wildlife and public lands. Roadless areas safeguard the headwaters that provide drinking water to millions of Americans. They are critical wildlife corridors, cultural and spiritual sites and some of the last intact ecosystems in the U.S. The USFS has acknowledged it ‘makes little fiscal or environmental sense’ to keep building new roads, especially when nearly 95% of human caused wildfires start within a half-mile of existing roads. Removing the Roadless Rule would open the door to logging and road construction that fragment habitat, degrade water quality and increase taxpayer cost for building and maintaining unnecessary infrastructure.

“Instead of rolling back protections, the administration and Congress should strengthen them: close all logging loopholes, ban destructive activities in roadless areas and ensure permanent protection in law. I urge you to keep the Roadless Rule in place and pursue stronger, permanent protection for these irreplaceable landscapes.”

Amy Anderson is executive director of the Selkirk Conservation Alliance. Learn more at scawild.org.