Reps. Salinas and Ansari Lead 37 Colleagues in Demanding Secretary Rollins Reinstate the 2001 Roadless Rule
Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Andrea Salinas (OR-06), alongside Congresswoman Yassmin Ansari (AZ-03), led 37 of their colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins urging her to reverse the decision to fully rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule and to reinstate full roadless protections.
Since its inception, the Roadless Rule has protected 58.5 million acres of forestland by preventing road construction and ensured consistent, dependable protections for these critical landscapes. Earlier this year, Reps. Salinas and Ansari, alongside Sens. Cantwell and Gallego, introduced legislation to enshrine the Roadless Rule into law.
Click here or see below for the full letter:
Dear Secretary Rollins,
We write to express profound concern with your recent decision to fully rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This critical environmental safeguard ensures the protection of 58.5 million acres of our nation’s most pristine wild forestlands and provides durable climate benefits; protects watersheds that provide drinking water to millions of Americans; preserves critical habitats for threatened species; and supports recreation opportunities for American communities.
In your announcement, you claimed that this rule is overly restrictive and limits our ability to protect forests from devastating fires. However, the Roadless Rule already includes commonsense provisions to allow road construction to protect public health and safety and timber harvests when needed to maintain healthy ecosystems and reduce wildfire risks. Moreover, evidence shows that roads actually increase the risk of fire. According to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS):
“Building roads into inventoried roadless areas would likely increase the chance of human-caused fires due to the increased presence of people. Fire occurrence data indicates that prohibiting road construction and reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas would not cause an increase in the number of acres burned by wildland fires or in the number of large fires.”
Additionally, recent analysis of wildfire data shows that fires are nearly four times as likely within 50 meters of roads as in roadless areas. Further, USFS has stated that “the agency rarely builds new roads to suppress fires.” It is simply untrue to assert that repealing the Roadless Rule will necessarily result in fewer or less damaging fires or that the USFS lacks the flexibility to respond effectively to these disasters.
This also represents a significant potential burden on USFS resources at a time when your Administration has pursued staff reductions and proposed spending cuts that threaten the agency’s ability to effectively carry out its mission. This Administration has already put more Americans at risk from wildfire as a result of dismantling the Forest Service. Rescinding the Roadless Rule will only exacerbate the wildfire crisis facing our western communities. Now is not the time to ask this critical agency to do more with less.
USFS already has an enormous backlog of maintenance needs for the existing 368,102-mile road system, which will cost $5,980,000,000 to eliminate. One of the many reasons the Roadless Rule was adopted 25 years ago was to stop the excessive and fiscally irresponsible road construction that was happening across our national forests at American taxpayer expense. Forcing the recission of this policy to allow more roads to be built is an irresponsible distraction and massive waste of taxpayer funding.
Beyond these realities, repeal is deeply unpopular. More than 1.6 million comments were submitted in favor of the Roadless Rule – more than any other rulemaking in our nation’s history at the time it was adopted– and the rule has survived decades of attacks. This is precisely because millions of Americans are clear-eyed about the value of these protected ecosystems. These include anglers and hunters, hikers, tribal communities, and so many more Americans who use and cherish our country’s incredible natural resources. That includes the outdoor recreation and tourism industry. A 2019 analysis of the economic values of roadless area conservation found that the recreational and passive uses of inventoried roadless areas yielded a total of nearly $9 billion in economic benefits each year – benefits our country and forest-adjacent communities cannot afford to lose.
The Roadless Rule keeps these wild ecosystems intact, sustaining critical habitats for threatened species such as native salmon populations that provide immense economic value in the Pacific Northwest and represent significant tribal cultural resources. In Alaska, the Tongass National Forest is the largest national forest, with 9 million acres of roadless areas and mature and old-growth rainforest, storing more than 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent and sequestering 10 million metric tons a year. These forests protect clean drinking water for American communities, particularly rural communities which cannot afford to pay for drinking water infrastructure. They also serve as carbon sinks, making them an important tool in our work to address climate change, which agricultural producers depend on to sustain their businesses.
For over two decades, the Roadless Rule has served as dependable protection for some of our nation’s most valued public lands. We urge you to reverse course and retain full roadless protections for these 58.5 million acres.
###