Pause for a moment and listen. What do you hear? Chances are, somewhere in the background, is the ever-present hum of a road.
More than crisscross the lower 48 states – enough to almost nine times. This vast network of roads spiderwebs its way across the contiguous U.S., as an inventoried or .
Now, some of those last remaining lands free of roads are under threat from the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of the . That includes southeast Alaska’s , where eagles, bears, salmon and many other species thrive in old-growth coastal forest along the Inside Passage.
In , the administration said rescinding the rule would remove prohibitions on road construction and logging on nearly 59 million acres of national forest, arguing that the rule slowed economic development.
In Congress, another effort is underway to try to change the law through an amendment to the . That change, if approved, would both the U.S. Forest Service from reinstituting it in the future, despite overwhelming public support for the rule.
As who have spent decades and the animals and ecological functions that depend on undisturbed habitats, we believe it’s important to understand that preserving roadless areas has value for environmental health, clean water, wildlife survival and people’s own well-being.
What is the Roadless Rule?
The National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Policy, better known as the Roadless Rule, was by President Bill Clinton. It has had and received more public comments than any other rule in history.
The rule prohibits road construction, maintenance and commercial timber harvest in inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System. , excluding Idaho and Colorado, which have their own state-specific roadless rules. While most of these are in the western states and Alaska, 38 total states as well as Puerto Rico host roadless areas.
The of the Roadless Rule is to maintain forest health and productivity for future generations. It also helps avoid exacerbating the U.S. Forest Service’s by not making new roads.
The Roadless Rule prohibits new road construction, with very limited exceptions, as well as commercial logging in designated roadless areas. It does not restrict other uses that are compatible with the management plan, such as hiking and mountain biking, or resource uses such as grazing livestock and working existing mining claims.
Beyond providing vital habitat for species and enabling healthy forests, the rule protects drinking water for the millions of Americans whose water flows from national forests. It also preserves high-quality recreation opportunities – hiking, camping, hunting and fishing – that Americans cherish.
The problem with roads in national forests
While roads can provide benefits, such as access to forests, they can also do ecological harm.
Roads enable invasive weeds to spread by being carried on vehicle tires and deposited in exposed soils, erode sediments into streams and fragment habitat that wildlife rely on. Vehicles directly kill and injure animals through collisions. They occasionally start fires, too. that fires are more likely to start in areas with roads than in areas without.
that road noise displaces wildlife, and can affect wildlife behavior patterns at distances of over a mile from the road.
And roads don’t just cause problems for species on land. Most roads cross streams and rivers, which requires building a way for those waters to keep flowing under the road (structures called culverts). While culverts can be designed to allow fish to pass through and maintain ecological connections, . This leads to declines in the health of fish populations and can .
The benefits of roadless areas
are among the most ecologically intact and wildest places left in the United States, yet – unlike Wilderness Areas and National Parks – there are no signs acknowledging their boundaries when you enter one.
Most are , directly adjacent or ecologically connected to better known national parks and wilderness areas. Removing Roadless Rule protections would erode ecological buffers to these more famous protected lands.
For some species, roadless areas . For instance, over half the suitable habitat for relictual slender salamander, a critically imperiled species native to the Sierra Mountains of California, occurs in a roadless area. Nearly 40% of Mount Pinos, lodgepole chipmunk, an imperiled subspecies of the lodgepole chipmunk, also live in roadless areas in California.
that every formal roadless area provides habitat for at least two wildlife species of conservation concern – those facing risks to their long-term survival – with the median roadless area supporting 10 of these imperiled species. Some Arizona roadless areas contain habitat for up to 62 of these species.
Roadless areas also that supply drinking water to 47 million Americans.
Without this protection, these watersheds would still provide water, but their long-term health and hydrological sustainability could be compromised if roads block stream flow and increase sediments flowing into waterways. The result can be higher costs for water purification.
The Forest Service’s own watershed health assessment, known as the , uses road density as a key indicator of conditions that can disrupt water quantity and quality.
What is at risk in rescinding the Roadless Rule?
The Trump administration’s proposed rollback, expected to be formalized in 2026, would open these last wild places to development, fragmenting habitats that can never be restored.
The American public spoke loudly in 2001 when they supported the Roadless Rule. Two decades later, comments on the recission notice , a review by the Center for Western Priorities found, reaffirming that U.S. roadless forests remain as vital and valued as ever.
Protecting these areas is about promoting healthy ecosystems on public lands so they can provide hiking, hunting and fishing opportunities for generations to come to enjoy the tranquility of being in nature.
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