Comment by September 21 to keep the Roadless Rule

Why this Matters

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. The comment period opened August 20 and runs thirty days. Conservation groups responding to the announcement describe it as the last scheduled chance for the public to weigh in before the rescission is finalized.

Comments close Monday, September 21. The Forest Service says midnight without naming a time zone, so treat the deadline as 8:59 p.m. Pacific and do not leave it to the last hour.

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.

This page covers the docket comment, the action that carries the most weight. Two related roadless actions live on their own pages and are linked throughout: the travel management rule, a second Forest Service docket closing September 23, and writing to Rep. Hoyle and your senators, which does not share the comment deadlines.

Steps to Take

Step 1

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.

Step 2

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, published August 20, the rulemaking documents and supporting analyses in the agency's public folder, and an interactive map with layers for all three alternatives. 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.

Step 3

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.

Step 4

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.

Step 5

Submit your comment on the Regulations.gov comment form, which opens straight to the writing box. 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 Monday, September 21 at 8:59 p.m. Pacific, which is the exact time Regulations.gov displays on the docket. Thirty days sounds like plenty and it is not.

Step 6

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.

Step 7

Comment on the travel management rule as well. Four days after this one, the Forest Service filed a second rulemaking that would presume forest roads are open to motor vehicles unless someone documents a reason to close them. Separate docket, separate deadline of September 23, and commenting on one does not comment on the other. See our call to action on the travel management rule.

Step 8

Write to Congress too. Filing a comment fights this particular rescission. Legislation could make roadless protection permanent, and a rider on an unrelated bill could undo it for good. See our call to action on writing to Rep. Hoyle and your senators, about five minutes total and no hard deadline.

Step 9

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 2025 round drew more than 625,000 comments because people heard about it in time.

Sample Text

Option 1

POINT ONE: the wildfire rationale, answered with the agency's own research.

I am writing to oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and to ask the Forest Service to select the no-action alternative.

The stated rationale is wildfire risk reduction. The agency's own research does not support it. Healey, S.P. 2020, "Long-term forest health implications of roadlessness," Environmental Research Letters 15: 104023, published by a Forest Service scientist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station and hosted on the agency's Treesearch site, found three things directly relevant here. Roadless and roaded forests have burned at similar rates since the rule took effect. Fuel management activities in roadless areas have been more numerous per square kilometer than elsewhere in the National Forest System, so the absence of roads has not prevented fire prevention work. And non-native invasive plants are twice as common within 152 meters of a road as farther away. The study concludes that the idea eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly twenty years of monitoring data.

The draft environmental impact statement should engage this study directly. If the agency disagrees with its own published findings, the record should say why.

I ask the Forest Service to retain the 2001 Roadless Rule.

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Option 2

POINT TWO: drinking water and fish habitat on the Oregon Coast.

I am submitting this comment in opposition to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, docket FS-2025-0001.

I live on the Oregon Coast. Oregon Wild's analysis finds that 91 percent of Oregon's roadless forest, roughly 1,659,000 acres, lies within municipal watersheds supplying drinking water to about 800,000 Oregonians. The Sierra Club's Oregon chapter counts more than 13,000 acres around Mount Hebo in the Siuslaw National Forest protected by this rule and by nothing else.

Roads deliver sediment to streams. Marbled murrelets, listed as threatened, nest in unfragmented old-growth on this coast and forage offshore, and Oregon Coast coho depend on cold, clean water in headwater streams. Fragmenting the stands and sedimenting the streams are foreseeable effects of road construction, and both bear on species already listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The draft environmental impact statement should disclose, watershed by watershed, which municipal source watersheds would lose their current protection, and should analyze effects on listed anadromous fish and on marbled murrelet nesting habitat at the scale at which those effects actually occur.

I ask the Forest Service to retain the 2001 Roadless Rule.

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Option 3

POINT THREE: cost, and a public record the agency already has.

I am commenting on the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The fiscal case runs against this proposal. The Forest Service's deferred maintenance backlog on its existing road system has grown from roughly 8.4 billion dollars in 2000 to approximately 11.2 billion dollars, according to the Department of Agriculture's own fiscal year 2027 budget request. That same request proposes reducing capital improvement and maintenance funding from 153 million dollars to 99 million. Removing the prohibition on new road construction, while the backlog on existing roads grows and the maintenance budget shrinks, is not a coherent plan. The environmental impact statement should analyze the cost of maintaining any road mileage the rescission would enable, and identify the funding source.

On public support, the agency already has a record. More than 625,000 comments were submitted during the 2025 stage of this rulemaking. A national poll commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts in February 2026 found 76 percent of American voters favor keeping the Roadless Rule, including 77 percent of Republicans. The record does not show a public asking for this.

I ask the Forest Service to withdraw the proposal and retain the 2001 Roadless Rule.

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Comment by September 21 to keep the Roadless Rule

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