Roadless forests offer habitat to wildlife, purify our drinking water, and filter the air we breathe. Now the rule that protects them could be erased.
The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule is one of America’s most popular and successful conservation strategies. For a quarter century, the “roadless rule” has protected about 45 million acres of our public national forests from most logging and new road construction. Roadless areas preserve the best wildlife habitat, protect our clean drinking water, and provide unmatched opportunities for recreation.
Sadly, last fall, the administration began the process of rescinding the roadless rule. Now it’s time to raise your voice. A short 30-day comment period is open until September 21, 2026, and it’s up to us to speak out for our last remaining forests without roads.
Yes, I’ll take two minutes to defend our roadless national forests before the September 21, 2026 deadline. Act now
Great trails and clean water? Thank a roadless area
Roadless areas help local economies thrive as people visit them to hunt and fish, ski, birdwatch, hike, camp, mountain bike, and more. Places without roads provide some of our best year-round recreation opportunities. Utah’s roadless areas alone protect over 1,300 rock-climbing routes, 1.2 million acres of backcountry skiing terrain, and about 2,000 miles of hiking and mountain-biking trails.
With persistent drought in the West, safeguarding places without roads on our national forests is more important than ever in light of a hotter, drier world. Our mountain forests in Utah and Arizona catch and hold snow and rain from passing storms and release that water when we need it for drinking and growing food.
Places without roads naturally filter out pollutants by acting as natural sponges. But when natural forests are stripped bare by logging, soil runs off and pollutant levels in water increase, dirtying our rivers, streams, and reservoirs. In the West, our communities literally depend on our roadless forests for the water we drink and the food we grow.
Roadless areas and fire
It’s been an intense fire season, as record-breaking heat is compounded by years of extreme drought. Political appointees are trying to capitalize on this by claiming that axing the roadless rule will allow new roadbuilding and logging that will reduce wildfire risk, but that isn’t true. The majority of wildfires are started by people on or near roads. More roads mean more people in the backcountry, and more people means more fire starts. In fact, wildfires are four times more likely to start in areas with roads than without.
Many wildland firefighters oppose efforts to erase the roadless rule. Shaun Opp, a retired wildland firefighter wrote in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle: “After years of serving as a firefighter, I know what works and what doesn’t. … Rescinding it [the roadless rule] won’t prevent a single fire or save a single home. It will increase fire risk, waste taxpayer money, and make fire prevention and suppression even harder.”
The roadless rule already allows for road construction to address fire risk and allows for thinning of young trees to reduce hazardous fuels.
The administration’s rush to repeal the roadless rule isn’t about fire safety, it’s about selling out our national forests for logging and mining. The rule also protects roadless national forests from new mining and oil and gas drilling. Mining and logging industry lawyers favor repealing the rule because without it, it would be easier to exploit millions of acres of public land.
Keeping the roadless rule is fiscally responsible
The roadless rule preserves natural areas while also saving taxpayer money. The U.S. Forest Service already hosts over 371,000 miles of roads — more than double the entire U.S. National Highway System (161,188 miles).
We the taxpayers already face a massive deferred-maintenance backlog of almost $5 billion for transportation. In this era of shrinking budgets, mass layoffs, and staff reductions, our tax dollars are best spent fixing and maintaining the vast road network that we already have, not building more roads.
Carson States, a wildland firefighter said: “Expanding [the road system by rescinding the roadless rule] means adding even more infrastructure into a network that agencies are already struggling to maintain. I’ve spent enough time on fire assignments to see what that looks like on the ground. Failing drainage systems, brush growing into the roadway, and road surfaces breaking down to the point where travel slows significantly, especially for heavier vehicles. It’s worth noting a road can still technically exist on a map while being unreliable for real fire operations. That becomes a firefighter safety issue very quickly.”
The roadless rule is popular
The roadless rule was popular when it was adopted in 2001, and it’s still popular today. When the Forest Service was considering the original rule, 97% of the more than 1.6 million public comments favored protecting roadless areas. When the administration weighed gutting the roadless rule during a short public input period in 2025, more than 99% of the 600,000 comments opposed eliminating the rule.
Many Native American tribes strongly oppose reversing protections for roadless areas as well. Representing hundreds of tribes and Indigenous communities, the National Congress of American Indians has twice passed resolutions opposing the repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. These resolutions represent the collective voices of sovereign tribal governments across the country that oppose the rescission as a violation of treaty rights, trust responsibilities, and federal law.
Help protect roadless areas for future generations
The roadless rule is popular, it’s conservative, it’s responsive to local and national needs, and it’s working. The majority of our national forests are already open to development, so protecting what remains of our roadless national forests should remain a high priority.
Please take action by September 21, 2026 by submitting your comment to keep the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
