In rescinding the Roadless Rule, the USDA will shatter habitats and upend decades of conservation gains

By Dave Werntz, Science and Conservation Sr. Director

For nearly a quarter of a century, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, commonly referred to as the Roadless Rule, has been a foundational component of American conservation policy. It protects habitat for wildlife, preserves carbon-storing forests in the face of climate change, and offers solitude and clean water across 58.5 million acres of national forest lands. Even as partisan gridlock has made Wilderness designations and national monuments harder to achieve, the Roadless Rule has been a quiet and effective workhorse, safeguarding some of our most cherished landscapes for the benefit of all Americans. 

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced plans to rescind the Roadless Rule, stripping away the longstanding protections it provides. This move sets back decades of hard-earned progress, undermines collaborative forest management, and robs future generations of their shared legacy: intact public lands that support wildlife, provide clean water, offer recreation, and foster climate resilience without exploitation. 

The Roadless Rule is a simple, sensible policy. It protects Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs), unroaded public lands larger than 5,000 acres, by limiting new road construction and restricting logging to smaller-diameter trees for restoration and fire resilience. IRAs provide critical ecological functions, including the retention of high-elevation snowpack, provision of clean water for downstream communities, and landscape connectivity for wide-ranging wildlife. They also support cultural practices, backcountry recreation, and long-term carbon sequestration. Roadless protections have enjoyed broad support nationwide since their inception in 2001 and have been central to collaborative forest planning in the years since, guiding projects where timber, recreation, and conservation interests have worked from a shared playbook. Undoing the Roadless Rule doesn’t just erase a regulation; it upends the collaborative tables where shared management decisions have been negotiated for decades. 

In Washington state, more than two million acres of roadless areas span some of our most scenic and ecologically important landscapes. In Northeast Washington, the remote, high-elevation Kettle Range and the forests surrounding the Salmo-Priest Wilderness would lose protections, putting at risk critical habitat for Washington’s only resident grizzly bears and a reestablishing lynx population. Iconic backcountry destinations, such as Liberty Bell at Washington Pass and Maple Pass in the North Cascades, would also be vulnerable. Without the Roadless Rule, these landscapes could be opened to road-building and aggressive industrial logging, splintering critical wildlife habitat and unraveling protections on public lands that are already delivering clean water, carbon storage, biodiversity refuge, and climate resilience. 

“This is a full-scale demolition of the conservation principles that protect our forests, our watersheds, and our climate. But it’s more than just an ecological attack, it’s a betrayal of the social contracts we’ve built across communities to manage these lands together. It erases decades of hard work and trust, and it leaves the future with far less than we were given.” 
— Dan Wilson, Community Partnership Manager 

The U.S. Forest Service already manages a 380,000-mile road system with a maintenance backlog that runs into the billions. Building new roads in remote, rugged terrain will not balance any budget or benefit forest-reliant communities. In fact, the distance-to-mill makes logging in these areas economically impractical unless projects are large and aggressive in scale, the opposite of sustainable and restorative forest practices. New roads also increase human traffic, raising the risks of wildfire ignition, invasive species spread, deteriorating water quality, and habitat degradation that affect us all. 

This decision does not support timber communities. It does not improve wildfire resilience. It does not strengthen the Forest Service. It simply opens the door to more habitat fragmentation, more ecological damage, and fewer tools for shared forest solutions. By stripping protections from intact landscapes, it accelerates habitat loss, weakens our climate defenses, and chips away at the ecological systems we all depend on for clean air and water, carbon storage, and a livable future. 

Forest policy must be grounded in science, shaped by collaboration, and accountable to the generations that will inherit these lands. The Roadless Rule has delivered that for nearly 25 years, but this rescission isn’t reform. It’s a retreat that betrays the ecological limits of the natural world. Conservation Northwest will continue to stand firmly with communities, partners, and advocates, using every tool available to defend these irreplaceable landscapes and the shared future they represent.