#roadless rule

Excerpt from this Op-Ed from Blue Ridge Outdoors:

You are the co-owner of 45 million acres. These public lands are called Roadless Areas, and they are some of the wildest places left. 

For the past 25 years, they have been protected under the Roadless Rule, which you helped create. More than 1.6 million Americans submitted comments supporting the Roadless Rule—the most comments ever submitted on a conservation policy—and it remains overwhelmingly popular today. The Roadless Rule prohibits most logging, roadbuilding, mining, and drilling in these areas.

Now, you and the other co-owners of Roadless Areas are about to lose them all. 

The Trump administration recently proposed ending the Roadless Rule, which would remove protections for Roadless Areas nationwide and open them to logging, fossil fuel extraction, roadbuilding, and development.

Roadless Areas protect our drinking water, scenery, economy, and recreational oases. Most Roadless Areas are adjacent to national parks, including Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. Here are a few of the places we stand to lose:

Coconino Rim and Big Ridge Roadless Area, next to Grand Canyon National Park, which protects panoramic vistas, the Arizona National Scenic Trail, and Tribal sacred sites.

North Mountain Roadless Area, which protects the Merced River adjacent to Yosemite National Park. 

Lionhead Roadless Area, adjacent to Yellowstone National Park and home to grizzly bears, wolves, elk, and wolverines.

Tuolumne River Roadless Area, which safeguards California’s most popular Wild and Scenic River.

The Badger-Two Medicine Roadless Area near Montana’s Glacier National Park, a sacred site for members of the Blackfeet Nation.

Kupreanof Roadless Area in the Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest old-growth forest.

Nearly all the Roadless Areas in the East are concentrated in Appalachia. More than one million acres of Appalachian forests and rivers are currently protected by Roadless Areas, which provide the best remaining fish and wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities. In the Southeast, a few of the iconic and beloved lands and waters that will lose protections include: 

The rim of the Linville Gorge—the Grand Canyon of the East.

The Black Mountain Crest Trail—the toughest trail in Appalachia that tops out at the summit of Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the Eastern U.S.

The headwaters of the Chattooga River, made famous by the movie Deliverance.

The edge of the Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness and home of Joyce Kilmer Forest—the largest old-growth in the East.

Beloved trout streams and paddling on Wilson Creek and South Mills River.

World-class mountain biking trails in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest.

West Virginia’s Cranberry Glades bogs, beloved for backpacking.

Three Sisters Roadless Area protecting the headwaters of the James River, a drinking water source for millions of Virginians.

Sections of the Appalachian Trail, Benton Mackaye Trail, Bartram Trail, and Mountains to Sea Trail corridors.

To summarize what KOSA is, It is essentially a censorship bill that if passed would force online platforms to self censor and target anything that the government considers not safe for children, which would target sexual health information, LGTBQ+ resources, and other pieces of info that the government don't like.

Senator Blumenthal is trying to push KOSA again. This time, he is bringing Blackburn and meeting with House Republican leadership to try to convince them to support it THIS WEEK. This is VERY bad since House GOP leadership is the reason this bill hasn't moved forward so far. We NEED to blow up those phones of those members all week and make sure this is the poison pill it is.

Please, leave voicemails to HOUSE GOP leadership today, and call them this upcoming week. Their phone numbers are here as well as the call script. Spread this EVERYWHERE. I do not know which day specifically they are meeting.

P.S. make sure you are using the correct script for republicans when calling them! It's all in the call script

CALL SCRIPT: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0

SOURCE: https://ctmirror.org/2025/09/26/kids-online-safety-act-meta-research-blumenthal/

The U.S. Forest Service today posted notice of its intention to roll back significant protections on some 45 million acres of mid-elevation forestland, and will accept public comments through Sept. 19 to gauge Americans’ appetite for the change.

Specifically, the Trump administration plans to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, proposed by the Clinton administration and enacted under the George Bush administration, that generally prohibits new road construction on millions of acres of U.S. Forest Service land. The rule was adopted after hundreds of public meetings and 1.6 million public comments, 95 percent of which supported the roadless protections as a tool to conserve wildlife habitat, improve watershed health, and importantly, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires on America’s public timberlands.

The Republican War on the Environment Continues. If you want to complain, I suggest stressing things like hunting and fishing.

Government Cuts endanger people and animals so that a handful of Billionaires can get tax cuts.

Well right now there is something else you can do to help keep a USDA measure in place that the president has been working to quietly cut - the Roadless Rule, which states that the areas of national parks are safe from timber harvesting, road construction, and other interferences. They want to try and cut this.

What can you do? Leave a public comment on the federal registry! This will be an open forum until September 19TH (TOMORROW!) so this is a timely thing!! Please be sure to write a thoughtful informed comment in full sentences (I know that seems obvious, but you never know).

Additionally, call your reps about this! You can use this format to find your area: https://5calls.org/issue/national-forest-public-land-logging-deforestation/