Comment by September 21 to keep the Roadless Rule

Why this Matters

On August 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture filed a proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in its entirety, together with a draft environmental impact statement. Public comments must be received by midnight on September 21, 2026. The conservation groups responding to the announcement describe this as the last chance the public gets before the rescission is finalized.

The rule covers about 45 million acres of national forest, including nearly 2 million acres 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 Smokey Bear campaign says nine out of ten wildfires are caused by people, and Earthjustice points to research finding that fires are roughly four times more likely to start near a road than in roadless forest.

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.

Steps to Take

Step 1

Read what is actually being proposed. The USDA announcement lays out the agency's framing in a few paragraphs, and the proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement are posted in the Forest Service rulemaking docket at Regulations.gov, docket FS-2025-0001.

Step 2

Submit your comment through the Forest Service docket on Regulations.gov. Comments must be received by midnight on September 21, 2026. That is a thirty-day window, so do not save it for the last week.

Step 3

Write it in your own words. The sample texts on this page are a starting point, not a script. Name your place: Mount Hebo, the Siuslaw, the creek you fish, the trail you walk. Say what you would lose. A comment that raises a specific effect the draft did not analyze carries more weight than one that only registers opposition.

Step 4

Join the emergency briefing on Thursday, August 20, 2026 at 9 a.m. Pacific. Environment America and the PNW Forest Climate Alliance are hosting a Zoom call to share early analysis of the draft, answer questions, and pass out materials. Join the Zoom call, or use meeting ID 96824033833 with passcode 5d+tTU@X. The call is open to community members and groups opposed to the rollback. It is not open to press.

Step 5

Pass it on. Thirty days is not long, and the 2025 comment round showed what turnout looks like when people hear about it in time. Send this to your neighbors, bring it up at your next gathering, and consider writing a letter to your local paper.

Sample Text

Option 1

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.

I live on the Oregon Coast. The Roadless Rule is the only thing protecting more than 13,000 acres around Mount Hebo in the Siuslaw National Forest, and nearly 2 million acres across Oregon. Most of that acreage sits in municipal watersheds that supply drinking water to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians.

Rescinding the rule will not reduce wildfire risk. Most wildfires are started by people, and new roads bring people, vehicles, and ignition sources into forest that currently has none. New roads also add to a maintenance backlog the agency already cannot fund.

Please withdraw this proposal and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place.

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Option 2

I am submitting this comment in opposition to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The roadless forest in the Siuslaw National Forest is part of the watershed my community drinks from. Marbled murrelets, a threatened seabird, nest in old-growth stands on this coast and fly to the ocean to feed, and they need forest that is not cut through with roads. Coho need cold, clean streams, and roads deliver sediment into them.

The announcement says this change would not require any timber cutting or road construction. If that is true, the rescission accomplishes nothing and should be withdrawn. If it is not true, then the draft environmental impact statement needs to disclose what will actually be logged and roaded, and where.

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