Do Not Gut the Roadless Rule — Protect Our Public Lands

I am writing to demand—clearly, urgently, and without qualification—that you keep the Roadless Rule fully intact and immediately abandon any attempt to weaken, undermine, or dismantle it. The Roadless Rule is one of the most important conservation protections this country has ever enacted. It safeguards nearly 60 million acres of America’s last remaining wild national forest lands—lands that belong to the public, not to corporations, not to special interests, and not to short-term profit schemes. These places are irreplaceable. Once roads are cut and extraction begins, the damage is permanent. Weakening the Roadless Rule is not “management.” It is exploitation. It means opening pristine forests to logging, mining, drilling, and industrial development. It means fragmenting wildlife habitat, increasing wildfire risk, polluting clean water sources, and accelerating climate destruction. It means sacrificing long-term ecological stability for short-term corporate gain. That is reckless. That is irresponsible. And it is indefensible. These lands are part of our national inheritance. They provide clean drinking water to millions of Americans. They store massive amounts of carbon. They support biodiversity that is already under extreme pressure. They offer future generations the chance to experience true wilderness—something that is vanishing at an alarming rate. YOU have a duty to protect the public interest. Allowing the dismantling of the Roadless Rule would be a direct failure of that duty. The American people overwhelmingly support conservation. We do not want our forests carved up, sold off, or industrialized. We do not want to watch one of the last meaningful environmental safeguards quietly gutted to appease extractive industries. This is a line you must not cross. I expect you to publicly and unequivocally oppose any effort to weaken the Roadless Rule and to defend it as the critical protection it is. History will remember who stood up for our public lands—and who stood by while they were destroyed. Protect our forests. Protect our water. Protect our future.