Keep America’s Wildest Forests Wild

For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has helped protect some of America’s last large, intact national forests from new roads and major industrial development. Those protections have given grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, salmon, migratory songbirds, and countless other animals something increasingly rare: room to live.

Now the Trump administration has formally proposed repealing the rule, putting nearly 45 million acres of undeveloped national forest at risk.

For wildlife, that could be devastating.

Roads don’t just cut through forests. They carve connected habitat into smaller pieces and bring traffic, noise, pollution, logging, and more human activity into places animals depend on for refuge. Roadless areas provide important habitat for more than 2,100 threatened, endangered, or sensitive animal and plant species — from grizzly bears and wolves around Yellowstone to native salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest and migratory songbirds in Appalachian forests.

These forests matter to people, too. More than 60 million Americans get drinking water from our national forests. Roadless lands provide places to hunt, fish, hike, camp, and find solitude. They support recreation and tourism economies, Indigenous subsistence and cultural traditions, and vast stores of carbon in a warming world.

More roads would also mean more costs. Taxpayers already support a staggering 370,000-mile Forest Service road system with billions of dollars in deferred maintenance.

And opening intact forests to roads is not a solution to wildfire. The Roadless Rule already allows hazardous-fuels reduction and emergency action, while recent research found fires were four times more likely to start near roads than in roadless forests.

We have until September 21 to speak out against this rollback and help save America’s roadless forests.

Once a road cuts through a wild forest, everything changes. We should not sacrifice some of our last intact public lands — and the animals who depend on them — for more logging and development.

Please sign the petition to oppose the Trump administration's plan to repeal the Roadless Rule and open nearly 45 million acres of wild national forests to new roads, logging, and development.

The petition to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz reads: Withdraw the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule and preserve strong protections for America’s roadless national forests. Keep these irreplaceable landscapes intact for wildlife, clean water, Indigenous and cultural values, outdoor recreation, local economies, and future generations.
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Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/climate/trump-ends-roadless-rule-forests.html