FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Jon Maunder, Media Relations Specialist, [email protected], 708-694-9121
Dan Xie, Political Director, [email protected], 858-353-1452
St. Petersburg, FL – Americans have made their support for the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (or ‘Roadless Rule’) clear through a public comment period that closed on Tuesday, Oct. 6. More than 150 organizations and tens of thousands of individuals submitted more than 1 million comments, including postcards, petitions, transcribed verbal comments and multi-page comment letters.
“The Roadless Rule has kept logging out of America’s last remaining wild forests for decades. These are truly special areas where you can still find trees older than America, hundreds of feet tall and too big to wrap your arms around. Young people overwhelmingly supported enacting the rule in 2001, and their support continues today,” said Dan Xie, Student PIRGs Political Director.
The Roadless Rule designates forests across the country as “inventoried roadless areas,” prohibiting the building of new roads and commercial logging. The rule safeguards 58.5 million acres of undeveloped land, including 45 million acres of forests, from the Tongass in Alaska, to the Gila in New Mexico, to the Nantahala in North Carolina. Since 2001, additional federal roadless rules have been enacted for Colorado and Idaho. In 2025, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a plan to rescind the Roadless Rule for all states except Colorado and Idaho.
“This proposal ignores science, public opinion, and our obligation to preserve our best public lands for my generation,” said Kali Kleven, University of Oregon student and Chair of OSPIRG Students. “The USDA should be working on plans to keep our forests growing, protect our drinking water and preserve habitat for wildlife for future generations.”
Without the protections the rule provides, 45 million acres of forests that currently provide recreation, wildlife habitat and clean water would be open to new roads, commercial logging, mining, and drilling. A 2025 comment period on the notice of intent attracted 625,000 public comments. Ninety-nine percent of those comments opposed the proposal to rescind the rule. Despite the nearly universal opposition, the USDA proposed it’s rule and published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) in August 2026.
The USDA must now finalize the proposed rule.
