Comment by October 6 to keep the Roadless Rule

Why this Matters

The comment period has been extended. It was going to close September 21. It now closes Tuesday, October 6 at 8:59 p.m. Pacific. The Forest Service published the extension on September 11, 2026, after sustained public pressure and a letter to Secretary Brooke Rollins and Chief Tom Schultz signed by 164 members of Congress and led by Oregon's Rep. Andrea Salinas. That is fifteen more days than we had. A longer comment is a better comment, so use them.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has filed a proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in its entirety, along with a draft environmental impact statement. Conservation groups describe this as the last scheduled chance for the public to weigh in before the rescission is finalized.

The rule covers about 45 million acres of national forest. The Forest Service says more than 95 percent of inventoried roadless areas sit in ten western states, Oregon among them, and that Colorado and Idaho are excluded because they have their own state rules. Nearly 2 million of those acres are in Oregon. The Sierra Club's Oregon chapter counts more than 13,000 acres around Mount Hebo in the Siuslaw National Forest that the Roadless Rule protects and nothing else does. Oregon Wild puts 91 percent of Oregon's roadless forest, about 1,659,000 acres, inside municipal watersheds serving roughly 800,000 people. Marbled murrelets nest in unfragmented old-growth like this and fly out to the ocean to feed.

USDA is framing the rescission as wildfire policy. The Forest Service's own research does not support that. A 2020 study by Forest Service scientist Sean Healey, published in Environmental Research Letters and posted on the agency's research site, found that roadless and roaded forests have burned at similar rates since the rule took effect, that fuel management work in roadless areas has actually been more frequent per square kilometer than elsewhere in the National Forest System, and that non-native invasive plants are twice as common within 500 feet of a road. Its conclusion, in the agency's own words: the idea that eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly twenty years of monitoring data. The Forest Service's Smokey Bear campaign also says nine out of ten wildfires are caused by people, and Earthjustice points to newer research finding fires are roughly four times more likely to start near a road than in roadless forest.

Keeping the rule is not a fringe position. A national poll commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts in February 2026 found 76 percent of American voters want the Roadless Rule kept, including 77 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Trump voters. The money runs the same direction. The Forest Service already carries a deferred maintenance backlog of roughly 11.2 billion dollars on the roads it has, up from 8.4 billion in 2000, and the administration's own 2027 budget request would cut capital improvement and maintenance from 153 million to 99 million while proposing to allow more road building.

More than 625,000 comments came in during the 2025 stage of this rulemaking. Volume matters. So does specificity. A comment that names a place and says what you do there is harder to set aside than a form letter.

Three roadless actions live on this one page: comment on the docket before October 6, ask Rep. Val Hoyle to co-sponsor the Roadless Area Conservation Act, and tell both senators to strip the Roadless Rule repeal out of S. 140.

Would you like to learn even more before taking action?

Why We Need the Roadless Rule, a half-hour documentary by Aidin Robbins

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Build Your Comment

Choose the points that matter to youThe wildfire rationale does not hold up. The agency calls this wildfire policy, but its own 2020 research found roadless and roaded forests burn at similar rates, and fires are far likelier to start near a road than in roadless forest.This is about our drinking water and fish. About 91 percent of Oregon roadless forest, some 1.66 million acres, sits in municipal watersheds serving roughly 800,000 people, and roads send sediment into the cold streams that marbled murrelets and coho depend on.The public already weighed in, and the money runs the other way. More than 625,000 comments came in during 2025, a 2026 Pew poll found 76 percent of voters want the rule kept, and the agency faces an 11.2 billion dollar road-maintenance backlog while proposing to build more.These forests are a last stronghold for wildlife. Roadless national forests are among the best remaining habitat for species already in trouble, giving refuge to hundreds of vulnerable wildlife species (Dietz et al., 2021). On the Oregon coast that means salmon, elk, and seabirds like the marbled murrelet, all of which depend on unroaded, unfragmented forest and the cold, clean streams that roads degrade.These are some of the best forests we have for the climate. Roadless forests store carbon far out of proportion to their size. On national forest lands, inventoried roadless areas hold about 22 percent of the mature-forest carbon and 27 percent of the old-growth carbon (Birdsey et al., 2025). Logging them releases carbon we cannot afford to lose and cannot quickly get back.Protecting these forests protects Oregon jobs. Outdoor recreation is a major Oregon industry, supporting about 192,000 jobs, 16 billion dollars in spending, and 12.4 billion dollars of the state economy (Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, 2022). Roadless backcountry is the setting for much of the hunting, fishing, and hiking that sustains it, and new roads and logging trade a recurring economy for a one-time cut.

What is your connection to these forests? Name a place you know, a creek you fish, a trail you walk.

Your full name

Your city

Your state

Your name, city, and state appear in the comment and become part of the public record. A comment signed by a real person from a real place is far harder to set aside than an anonymous form letter.

Your draft comment. Edit it freely before you send it: it is yours to change.

Your Comment Is Copied

Open the comment form, paste your comment into the box, and click the submission site's Submit button. That last step happens on their site, so it only counts if you finish it there.

Open the comment form to submit

More Ways to Help

Watch the film first if you want the background. Aidin Robbins' half-hour documentary Why We Need the Roadless Rule plays on this page and walks through what the rule does and what losing it would mean.

Read what is actually being proposed. The Forest Service's Roadless Areas page is the hub for this rulemaking. It links the Federal Register notice from August 20, the rulemaking documents and supporting analyses in the agency's public folder, and an interactive map with layers for all three alternatives. The extension notice, published September 11, is the document that moved the deadline to October 6. To see what the proposed action would change in the Siuslaw specifically, open the map with its data layers switched on and turn on Alternative 2. For a plainer read of the same news, Our Public Lands and Waters covers the history, the money, and the wildfire claim in one sitting.

Learn what makes a comment count before you write one. Roadless.org's learning map is the best single resource anyone has found for this: what is at stake, why roads are the enabling condition for most other harms, how to connect to a specific roadless area, and a guided path to a comment in your own voice, with a bibliography behind it. Regulations.gov also publishes tips for submitting effective comments. The short version: say who you are and what ties you to the place, be specific, raise an effect the draft did not analyze, and do not send an identical form letter. A thousand identical template comments can be counted as one.

You are allowed to send more than one. Nothing limits you to a single comment, and the advocacy groups working this docket are all saying the same thing: file several, each one substantive, each on a different main point, each with its sources named. The three sample texts on this page are built that way on purpose, one on the wildfire rationale, one on water and fish, one on cost and the public record. Send them as separate comments if you want, in your own words. The extension makes this easier than it was.

Submit your comment on the Regulations.gov comment form, which opens straight to the writing box. That is the extended filing, so it shows the October 6 date rather than the old September 21 one. If you would rather read the documents first, the draft environmental impact statement volumes, the economic analysis and the tribal summary are on the docket page for FS-2025-0001. The window closes Tuesday, October 6 at 8:59 p.m. Pacific, which is the exact time Regulations.gov displays on the docket.

Name your place. Mount Hebo, the Siuslaw, the creek you fish, the trail you walk. Cascadia Wildlands names the Oregon Dunes among the Oregon places this would put at risk, along with Hardesty Mountain east of Eugene, the Pacific Crest Trail near Waldo Lake, and Larch Mountain in the Columbia Gorge. The Roadless Areas Explorer maps all 2,331 inventoried roadless areas with their boundaries, wildlife, ecosystems and recreation, the Outdoor Alliance map is the quick Oregon view, and Defenders of Wildlife maps the at-risk species that live in roadless areas.

Comment on the travel management rule, and do that one first. The Forest Service filed a second rulemaking four days after this one, which would presume forest roads are open to motor vehicles unless someone documents a reason to close them. It was not extended. It still closes September 23, which is now almost two weeks before this one. Separate docket, separate deadline, and commenting on one does not comment on the other. See our call to action on the travel management rule.

Write to Congress as well, which is the part that outlasts this fight. Two bills decide whether roadless protection survives the next administration, and neither has a deadline the way this docket does. Our five-minute congressional call to action covers both: asking Rep. Val Hoyle to co-sponsor the Roadless Area Conservation Act, and telling both senators to strip the Roadless Rule repeal out of S. 140. Save it for after the comment windows close if today is already full.

Sign the petitions and pass it on. Cascadia Wildlands and KS Wild are both collecting signatures, gathered together in our roadless petitions call to action, about two minutes for both. Then send this to your neighbors, bring it up at your next gathering, and consider writing a letter to your local paper. The extension happened because enough people made noise; the same is true of what comes next.

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