Tell Your Senators: Let the People Speak on Roadless Forests

For 25 years, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has kept new roads and logging out of the wildest 45 million acres of our national forests. That includes roadless country in Oregon's coastal forests, like the Siuslaw National Forest that wraps around Waldport and Alsea Bay.

On June 10, 2026, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced the Wildfire Prevention Act (S. 140). Tucked inside it is an amendment from Senator Mike Lee of Utah that would permanently repeal the Roadless Rule. The bill now heads to the full Senate floor, and a vote could come any day.

Here is the part that should bother all of us. Last fall the public got just 21 days to comment on a separate plan to undo the Roadless Rule. More than 600,000 people wrote in, and over 99% of them said keep the protections. Now Congress is trying to erase the rule through a backroom amendment, cutting the public out of a decision we already weighed in on.

The bill is sold as wildfire prevention, but the science runs the other way. Recent studies found that wildfires are about four times more likely to start near a road than in a roadless area. Roadless forests are where our cleanest drinking water starts, where elk and coho and the quiet still live, and where a lot of us go to walk off a hard week.

Senator Ron Wyden voted against the repeal in committee. Both of Oregon's senators need to hear that their neighbors on the coast are paying attention.