Tell the Forest Service to Keep Bulldozers and Chainsaws Out of Protected Public Forests: Defend the Roadless Rule
The Trump administration is attacking public forests… Again.
The anti-conservation federal administration is proposing to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (commonly called the “Roadless Rule”), a bedrock conservation policy protecting nearly two million acres of Oregon’s public forests and nearly 45 million acres nationwide from logging, road building, and destructive extractive practices. The Roadless Rule, adopted in 2001, preserves many of the last unroaded swaths of public lands as a home for wildlife, havens for quiet recreation, drinking water sources, and a lasting legacy for current and future generations. Amidst the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to undermine foundational environmental laws and policies, as well as explicit directions to ramp up commercial logging in national forests, we have to take every opportunity to push back.
Rolling back the Roadless Rule puts some of Oregon’s most iconic places at risk: Larch Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge, Tumalo Mountain outside of Bend, Lookout Mountain in the heart of Oregon, the forests around Lost Lake on Mount Hood, Hardesty Mountain east of Eugene, sections of the Pacific Crest Trail near Waldo Lake, the Oregon Dunes, and many more special places throughout the Cascadia bioregion and beyond. Check out this map of Roadless Areas created by the Outdoor Alliance to see what’s at risk. When roads are carved into these areas, they fragment wildlife habitat, spread invasive species, increase wildfire risk, hinder recreation opportunities, introduce noise, and literally pave the way for industrial logging and mining activities to degrade these last wild public forests.
Please join us in speaking out against Trump’s latest brazen attack on public lands by signing the petition below. The petition, including your name, will be submitted to the USDA Forest Service and become part of the public record.
Please note that this petition does not allow edits, but we anticipate an opportunity to submit unique comments to the agency in the coming months. The Forest Service is expected to publish a Draft Environmental Impact Statement analyzing the environmental impacts of repealing the Roadless Rule later this year. Keep an eye out for updates – we’ll let you know when the comment period opens and provide comment guidance. Thank you for speaking up for public forests!
