Deadline: September 17, 2026 at 6:00pm PDT
Why this Matters
The Sierra Club is hosting a free hour-long webinar on the Roadless Rule, Thursday, September 17 from 6 to 7 p.m. Pacific, online. It is aimed at two kinds of people at once: anyone who keeps hearing about Roadless and is not sure what it means, and anyone who has already filed a comment and wants to do more.
The first half is context. Speakers from the Sierra Club, the Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance, Save Our Wild Salmon and others cover what the rule does in the Northwest specifically, and what the rescission would change. The Forest Climate Alliance is the same network that ran the emergency briefing in August, which is where much of what is on our Roadless page came from.
The second half is a working session. They help you draft your own public comment or a letter to the editor, live, with people who know the material sitting there to answer questions. If you have been meaning to write a comment and keep not doing it, this is the version of that task where somebody helps.
The timing is good. The comment deadline was extended to October 6, so a webinar on the 17th leaves you nearly three weeks to file what you draft.
Steps to Take
Register on the Sierra Club event page. It asks for name, email and optionally a zip code and mobile number. The form also asks which you want help with, a comment or a letter to the editor, or whether you are just there to learn, so pick whichever is true.
Know what the RSVP signs you up for. Registering affirms you want to receive regular Sierra Club communications, and there is a separate unchecked box for text alerts that you can leave alone. That is normal for an event RSVP, where they need a way to send you the link, but it is your inbox and worth knowing before you click.
Come with a place in mind. The working session goes better if you already know which roadless area you want to write about. Mount Hebo in the Siuslaw, the Oregon Dunes, a creek you fish, a trail you walk. Our Roadless Rule call to action has the maps for finding one by name, along with three sample comments and the Forest Service's own research on why the wildfire argument does not hold.
Then actually file it. A draft that stays in your notes app is not a comment. The window closes Tuesday, October 6 at 8:59 p.m. Pacific, and the comment form opens straight to the writing box.
There is another one the evening before, if Thursday does not work. Oregon Wild runs a similar webcast on Wednesday, September 16 at 6 p.m. Pacific, with their staff walking through the same task. See our call to action for the September 16 webcast. Going to both is not a waste; the hands-on half of each is where the value is and you can draft a different comment at each.
Bring somebody. It is an hour, it is free, it is online, and it is the lowest-effort way anyone has offered to turn not-knowing-where-to-start into a filed comment.
Related Links
- Register: Saving the Northwest's Last Wild Forests, Sierra Club webinar, September 17 at 6 p.m. Pacific
- ECC: the Oregon Wild comment webcast the evening before, September 16
- ECC: Comment by October 6 to keep the Roadless Rule, with maps and sample comments
- Submit your comment: the Regulations.gov comment form, extended to October 6
- Roadless.org learning map, if you would rather work through it on your own