Secretary Rollins,

I urge you not to rescind the Roadless Rule. The 45 million acres of remote, wild and roadless forests across our country are the few pockets of unbroken forest where nature can flourish undisturbed.

The longer that forests are left alone and the longer that trees are left to grow, the more time a fully-fledged, interconnected forest ecosystem has to develop. The older trees in these forests support endangered wildlife and filtered clean water. People rock climb, hike, bike, hunt, fish and ski in these remote places.

Rolling back the Roadless Rule will only lead to more wildfires. Wildfires are four times as likely to start in areas with roads than in roadless forest tracts and 90 percent of all wildfires nationwide occurred within half a mile of a road. 

We shouldn’t jeopardize the wildlife habitat, recreation and clean water that these beloved local forests provide by opening them to road-building, commercial logging, mining and drilling. Please leave America’s last wild forests alone.

Sincerely,

By providing my email address above, I consent to have organizers from organizations working to protect roadless forests contact me with information about this and future public comment periods regarding the proposed recission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

This action is hosted by Environment America.Your name, zip code, letter and personal comments will be uploaded by Environment America staff to the Forest Service rulemaking docket by the September 19 deadline .

Background about the Roadless Rule

Find the roadless area nearest you using this map (credit: Outdoor Alliance)

On June 23, Secretary Rollins announced that the USDA is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. 

On Aug 29, the USDA published a notice of intent, kicking off a 21 -day comment period which ends September 19. The scoping period sets the stage for the rulemaking. This is our opportunity to inform the USDA about which issues we think are important and therefore, which issues they should address when developing the EIS.

The proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule jeopardizes nearly 45 million acres of undeveloped backcountry forestland managed by the U.S. Forest Service, comprising around a third of the territory in our national forest system. These forests have only remained intact because of the Forest Service’s nearly 25-year-old commitment not to build roads in these areas for harmful activities like major logging operations or oil-and-gas drilling.

Since 2001, protected roadless areas have offered abundant outdoor recreation opportunities such as hunting, fishing, camping or other activities. Every year, millions of people take advantage of the free (or extremely affordable) access to these public lands. According to maps from Outdoor Alliance’s GIS Lab, roadless areas protect 11,337 climbing routes and boulder problems, more than 1,000 whitewater paddling runs, 43,826 miles of trail, and 20,298 mountain biking trails. Large sections of the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest, and Appalachian National Trails traverse protected roadless areas.