Roadless Rule Rescission

On June 23, Secretary of Agriculture Rollins announced that the USDA is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, threatening 58 million acres of our country’s national forests. 

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule was adopted with massive public support to protect 58.5 million acres of roadless national forest land in 39 states from new road construction, and prohibits the logging of roadless areas in the National Forest System.

This rescission represents yet another attempt by the Trump Administration to sell off and sell out our public lands under the guise of forest management and economic development. Under a repeal, 58.5 million acres will be vulnerable to private logging interests. Roadless areas in our national forests provide essential habitat connectivity for over 2,100 threatened, endangered, or sensitive animal and plant species. Roadless areas are unparalleled in biodiversity and sustain essential ecosystems for wildlife, such as the salmon in southeast Alaska and Grizzly Bears in the Yellowstone region, which are both vital to the fishing industry and subsistence traditions alike.  

More than 60 million Americans get their clean drinking water from our national forests, and roadless areas contain all or portions of 354 municipal watersheds. Repealing the Roadless Rule is bad climate science – mature and old-growth trees are natural carbon sinks that store carbon dioxide and provide shade for cooler temperatures. Essentially, these forests fight climate change simply by existing, and Roadless Areas include huge amounts of our remaining mature and old-growth trees.

For recreation, this rescission puts at risk: 11,337 rock climbing routes, 1,000 river miles for paddling, 43,826 miles of hiking trails, and 20,298 miles of mountain biking trails. Large swaths of the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest, and Appalachian National Trails traverse protected roadless areas.

Although roads do play an important role in managing fire on the national forests, wildfires are nearly 4x more likely to start in areas that have roads because roads are known to increase ignition frequency. Therefore, building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires. Recent advances in risk-based wildfire management propose using existing roads and natural fuel breaks to delineate Potential Operational Delineations or “PODs,” polygons of land that can be managed specifically for community protection, ecological restoration, or wildfire maintenance where it is safe to do so. Roadless areas remaining within the existing road network, now protected by the Roadless Rule, can contribute to this risk-based strategy by providing areas of low ignition density where fire can reduce fuels without endangering homes or firefighters.

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Call to Action

1. Find who your Representatives and Senators are HERE, and call them and ask them to oppose and condemn this latest attack on public lands.

   1. Once you know your Reps / Senators' names, you can call the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to reach the offices of the U.S. Senators and Representatives. 

Call your members of Congress and ask them to co-sponsor the Roadless Area Conservation Act (which would codify the roadless rule).