Aug 27, 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Haleemah Atobiloye (she/her) | Communications Strategist | haleemaha@cehn.org | (202) 350-1372
WASHINGTON, DC — In response to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Shantha Ready Alonso, America the Beautiful for All Coalition Executive Director, issues the following statement:
“This decision to remove protections from 45 million acres of our nation’s forests will carelessly hand these lands over to corporate interests for logging, mining, and drilling, jeopardizing the water we drink, the air we breathe, the trails and vistas that inspire, and the natural habitat that sustains so many species.
While many of the rest of the world’s leaders are acting to address the climate and biodiversity crises, the Trump Administration is taking the United States – and our communities – backwards. This is a decision with generational impacts. Americans do not want this. We will fight for our communities’ access to life-sustaining nature.”
GreenLatinos Founding President and CEO, Mark Magaña, said: “The USDA is manufacturing controversy around a policy that, for decades, has enjoyed broad public support. The Roadless Rule is backed by supermajorities across the country because it protects healthy forests, clean water, wildlife habitat, and the watersheds millions of Americans depend on. The real threats to our national forests come from cuts to Forest Service staffing, the closure of offices across the country, and the loss of the capacity needed to manage our forests and reduce wildfire risk. Weakening the Roadless Rule puts forests and watersheds at risk, and could ultimately threaten access to safe, clean drinking water for Latino communities and communities across the country.”
Los Padres ForestWatch’s Director of Advocacy and Field Operations, Benjamin Pittlere said: “This is Donald Trump’s gift to the commercial logging industry, which has been trying to eliminate the Roadless Rule for decades. Making this about wildfire risk is just a political tactic. The Forest Service already has the authority it needs to respond to wildfires and manage fuel in roadless areas. The Roadless Rule merely protects the biggest, old-growth and mature trees from commercial logging. This action is a core part of the Trump administration’s agenda to industrialize America’s public lands.”
League of Conservation Voters’ Conservation Program Director, America Fitzpatrick said: “For the last 25 years, the Roadless Rule has protected America’s most pristine and ecologically intact forests. Now, in a clear giveaway to billionaire industry executives– and against the wishes of the millions of people who have voiced their support for these protections over the last three decades – Trump and his allies want to gut protections for more than 44 million acres of our national forests. The lands protected by the Roadless Rule provide important wildlife habitat and clean drinking water for millions of people, and are critical to fighting the climate crisis. We cannot allow the Trump administration to bulldoze our public lands, national forests, and bedrock environmental protections – all to pad the profits of their industry donors.”
Continental Divide Trail Coalition’s Executive Director, Teresa Martinez said: “Repeal of the Roadless Rule threatens so many of the elements that are at the very heart of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail (CDT): the water that flows from the spine of the continent; the wildlife that inhabit unfragmented ecosystems; and the communities that depend on roadless places for recreation, healing, and connection. Hiding repeal of the Roadless Rule under the guise of ‘local management’ and ‘wildfire prevention’ belies what we know to be true, that the real threats to our trails, our forests, and our communities are the underfunding, understaffing, and systematic dismantling of federal land management agencies.”
The Wilderness Society’s Director of Conservation Campaigns, Josh Hicks said: “Americans cherish their public lands and deserve leaders who protect them now and for future generations. Gutting the Roadless Area Conservation Rule is simply not an option – too many communities, ecosystems, wildlife species and local economies depend on keeping these wild forests healthy and undisturbed. Opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development, and therefore more ignitions, is also not a wildfire solution, and never will be. The Administration needs to hear us loud and clear: our roadless forests are some of the most important ecosystems across this country and must be managed as such.”
Endangered Species Coalition’s Organizing Director, Dalton George said: “The Roadless Rule is one of our country's most effective safeguards for public lands, protecting vast landscapes that are home to hundreds of our nation's endangered and threatened species. While conserving natural habitats, these roadless areas also provide clean drinking water to millions of Americans, supporting communities that rely on water sources flowing from these lands. Attacking this rule threatens to open up 44 million acres of public lands to industry, at the expense of our most vulnerable wildlife, drinking water, and recreation areas. We must organize to defend this rule and demand action from our Members of Congress.”
Voices of the Land’s Executive Director, KJ Burrola said: “A repeal to the roadless rule will turn our public lands over to the hands of billionaire logging, drilling, and mining industries while undermining the power of the Forest Service to maintain its protections over these sensitive ecosystems. Our animal relatives should be allowed to remain in undisturbed areas without habitat destruction and pollution from construction, noise, and drilling. Similarly, the public should be able to rest easy knowing there are still undisturbed natural areas near them that allow the beauty of our planet to continue as it always has. We stand firm against the repeal of the roadless rule.”
America the Beautiful for All Public Lands Workgroup Co-Lead, Kara Matsumoto said: “Our last wild, undeveloped public lands are irreplaceable. Undermining the Roadless Rule hands over our shared heritage to destruction, and we cannot afford to let these protections be erased."
Wildlife for All Executive Director, Michelle Lute, PhD, said: “Roadless forests are some of the last places where wildlife can live free from roads, development, and relentless human disturbance. Opening them to development would destroy habitat, fragment wildlife corridors, and undermine ecological integrity. Our public lands belong to all of us—not to extractive industries. We will defend these irreplaceable wild places and the wildlife who depend on them, and continue standing in the way of anyone who would sacrifice them for short-term interests.”
Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen said: “For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has kept our wildest forests intact. The benefits have been incalculable for people, for water, for wildlife, and for the climate. Now, the Trump administration wants to gut the rule and open up 45 million acres of roadless forest to clear-cutting and other harmful development enabled by roading. Scientists, wildland firefighters, and hundreds of thousands of Americans have fiercely opposed this attack on our public lands. Earthjustice has successfully defended the Roadless Rule for a quarter century, and we are not going to stop now.”
Illinois Environmental Council's Chief Executive Officer, Jen Walling, said: “Protecting our public lands means protecting the clean water, healthy ecosystems, and natural resources that our communities depend on. Roadless forests provide critical watershed protections and preserve some of our country’s most important remaining natural areas. The Trump Administration choosing to recklessly and dangerously roll back the Roadless Rule puts those resources at greater risk and threatens to destroy the conservation progress communities across the country and in Illinois have worked for decades to achieve. We should be investing in the protection and restoration of our public lands, not opening them up to more development and extraction.”
