The USDA is moving to rescind the Roadless Rule, and we've been hearing a lot of people talking about it. We'd heard of the rule before, but weren't all that familiar with what it does or what losing it would mean. Here's what we found, and where we land.
What is the Roadless Rule?
It's a federal rule from 2001 that applies to Inventoried Roadless Areas, or IRAs: specific, mapped areas of National Forest inventoried through the 1990s as still roadless, totaling close to 58 million acres nationwide. Inside them, the rule blocks new road construction and logging, which also keeps out most new mining, since that work needs roads. It does all this without creating Wilderness, closing existing roads or trails, or restricting hiking, hunting, or grazing. It just keeps new roads and timber sales out unless the rule itself changes.
How it helps
IRAs serve as habitat and migration corridors for wide-ranging wildlife, protect water quality at the headwaters, and preserve the backcountry recreation we and our customers enjoy. They're also cheap to maintain: no new roads means no new costs for an agency already behind on the roads it has.
Where it gets criticized
The main argument for rolling back the rule is wildfire mitigation: without road access, some say it's harder to do the thinning and prescribed burns that reduce fire risk. Rule supporters point to most fires being human-caused and starting near roads; opponents note those fires tend to be smaller and put out faster, while most burned acreage happens in roadless country.
What's at stake
This year, the USDA proposed rescinding the rule entirely, opening the roughly 45 million acres still covered by the national rule to new roads, logging, and the mining that comes with them. Idaho and Colorado now run their own state roadless rules, so the national rule covers about 45 million of the original 58 million acres. These are lands that feed a $1.3 trillion national outdoor recreation economy.
We support responsible land management, and we'd like future rulemaking to improve the rule, especially on fire mitigation. Right now, though, the choice on the table isn't reform; it's rescission, and we're against that: a rescission that opens this much land to mining and logging without a plan to protect the habitat that depends on staying roadless.
Twenty-five years ago, more than 1.6 million public comments helped bring this rule into effect, and now we risk losing it. The public comment period closes September 21st, and it takes two minutes to add your voice.