The Trump administration proposed to eliminate longstanding protections for more than 44.7 million acres of roadless areas in national forests, including those bordering national parks. Dismantling the rule would open these lands to logging, drilling, and road construction, while threatening clean water, wildlife habitat, and broad recreational opportunities.
America’s remaining roadless areas are rare, wild, and irreplaceable — and they must remain protected for the wildlife that depend on them, the parks they sustain, and the generations yet to come.
We must speak up to protect the wild borders of our national parks.
Dear Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins,
As someone who deeply values the lands, waters, and wildlife of our national parks, I urge you to leave the 2001 Roadless Rule in place. This critical rule safeguards roughly 44.7 million acres of our most ecologically intact multiple-use national forest lands—many directly bordering iconic national parks like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Great Smoky Mountains. These wild areas provide essential habitat for wildlife, protect clean drinking water, and shield our parks from the damage caused by logging, drilling, and new roads.
Removing this Rule would open these irreplaceable lands to permanent harm—fragmenting habitats, polluting watersheds, and undermining the ecological health of our parks and public lands. Only about 30% of National Forest lands have this protection, making it especially important to keep these rare places intact for future generations.
There are already tens of millions of acres of public lands open to logging and energy development and hundreds of thousands of miles of roads on US Forest Service land. The Roadless Rule provides opportunities for recreation, supports conservation, and even allows for road building and tree removal to reduce wildfire risks. The Roadless Rule preserves these few remaining landscapes and their uses under the multiple-use and sustained yield framework to support societal needs of today and the future. This proposed rollback is not only unnecessary—it is reckless.
Do not harm the wild lands that help our national parks—and wildlife—thrive.
