Save the Roadless Rule

What the Roadless Rule actually does

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule was finalized in January 2001, after three years of hearings and 1.6 million public comments, around 95 percent of them in support. It is a short rule and it does one thing. Across 58.3 million acres of national forest that had never been roaded, it prohibits new road construction and most commercial timber harvest.

It is not wilderness, and it cannot be, because only Congress designates wilderness. Existing roads stay open, and so does hunting, fishing, grazing, hard-rock mining under the 1872 law, motorized travel on established routes, and every kind of fire operation. What the rule says is that the Forest Service will not cut new roads into the last unroaded third of the system it manages.

Forest roads are the largest single source of sediment pollution in national forest streams, and a road is also the thing that makes a stand of 700-year-old cedar worth cutting, because without one most of these places sit too far from a mill to log at a profit.

A road is also the thing that makes a stand of 700-year-old cedar worth cutting.

What the rescission would do

In June 2025 the USDA announced it would rescind the rule outright rather than amend it. The action runs under docket FS-2025-0001 and RIN 0596-AD66, published in the Federal Register as notice 2025-16581. The first comment period ran from August 29 to September 19, 2025, and the agency counted more than 220,000 comment letters, representing over 625,000 submissions.

Nothing has been repealed yet. On August 18, 2026 the Forest Service filed its proposed rule and Draft Environmental Impact Statement, opening the second public comment period. Comments close September 21, 2026. From here the sequence is a final rule, and then almost certainly years in court.

The second comment window is the one that carries legal weight. Under the Administrative Procedure Act the agency has to respond in writing to substantive comments, and substantive in practice means you named a specific place and a specific effect. That is what this map is for.

Twenty-five years, in sequence

1. 2001
   The Roadless Area Conservation Rule is finalized in January, after three years of hearings and 1.6 million public comments, around 95 percent in support.
2. 2001
   The incoming administration suspends the rule on its first day. Timber and mining interests sue to overturn it.
3. 2002
   A federal appeals court reinstates the rule nationwide.
4. 2005
   A new rulemaking replaces the rule with a voluntary state petition process.
5. 2006
   A federal court strikes down the replacement and reinstates the 2001 rule.
6. 2008
   Idaho petitions for and receives its own roadless rule, codified at 36 CFR 294 Subpart C.
7. 2011
   The 10th Circuit upholds the 2001 rule against its biggest legal challenge. The Supreme Court declines to hear the case the following year.
8. 2012
   Colorado follows with its own rule, Subpart D.
9. 2020
   The Tongass National Forest is exempted from the rule.
10. 2023
    Tongass protections are restored.
11. 2025
    In June, the USDA announces it will rescind the rule outright, under docket FS-2025-0001. The first comment period runs August 29 to September 19 and draws more than 220,000 comment letters, representing over 625,000 submissions.
12. 2026
    The proposed rule and Draft Environmental Impact Statement are filed August 18, opening the final public comment period. Comments close September 21. The rule stays in force until a final rule issues.

How much land is actually at stake

Two figures get used interchangeably and they are not the same figure.

The difference is Idaho and Colorado. Both states have their own roadless rules, codified at 36 CFR 294 Subparts C and D, and the notice says those rules "will be retained and are excluded from this notice." Take Idaho's 9,285,371 acres and Colorado's 4,433,325 acres out of the inventory and the remainder is what is on the table.

Both numbers are true and they answer different questions. Anyone who says this action opens 58 million acres to logging has handed the Forest Service an easy correction, so we do not say it.

If you live in Idaho or Colorado, the rest of it matters. Those state rules permit road construction in management categories the 2001 rule did not, they were written by the same agency running this rescission, and a rule an agency wrote is a rule an agency can rewrite. Both states' areas stay on this map, marked as retained rather than at stake.

Anyone who says this action opens 58 million acres to logging has handed the Forest Service an easy correction, so we do not say it.

Where the roadless areas are

Every inventoried roadless area in the country, by state, with the national forests that hold them. Click a state to open it on the map, or use the ZIP search above to go straight to the ones near you. This is not a Western story: 38 states and Puerto Rico hold inventoried roadless forest, from the Tongass to a single 2,835-acre area in Kentucky.

Questions people ask

Where the numbers come from

• Docket FS-2025-0001, RIN 0596-AD66, Federal Register notice 2025-16581. Scope, exclusions, comment counts.
• USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas, 2001 FEIS. Every area, boundary and acreage on this map.
• USFS Economic Contributions Dashboard, FY2020. National forest recreation at $13.5 billion in GDP and 161,000 jobs, against roughly $300 million for the federal timber program.
• USFS Forests to Faucets. Surface drinking water systems downstream of national forest land.
• USFS Tongass National Forest. Over 12,930 miles of salmon-producing stream.