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cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/52128

Why Roadless Areas Matter for Wilderness Preservation

Salmon-Huckleberry Roadless Area, Mt Hood National Forest, Oregon Cascades. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

We should all be deeply concerned about the most recent challenge to the integrity of America’s national forests—the proposed repeal of the 2001 U.S. Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This could open up nearly 45 million acres of our public lands to road-building, logging, mining, and development.

Roadless wildlands protected under this rule provide abundant benefits to nature and to people. In their current status, roadless areas provide critical wildlife habitat, mature contiguous forests, magnificent scenic vistas, clean water, carbon storage, and recreation opportunities. However, one often overlooked and very important benefit is that roadless areas are critical to the preservation of wilderness character, including the “qualities” and “values” in Wilderness.

On August 29, 2025, under direction from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the Forest Service announced the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule. Inventoried Roadless Areas are wild areas within national forests where new road building, reconstruction, and logging are generally prohibited, with some notable exceptions. The general prohibition on roadbuilding allows these places to remain in a mostly natural condition with limited development and infrastructure. These roadless areas are not currently designated Wilderness but are often located adjacent to Wilderness areas. Tens of millions of acres of these roadless areas are also currently recommended as Wilderness in the Forest Service’s own forest plans or proposed for wilderness designation via legislation currently pending in Congress, such as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

Roadless areas provide a de facto buffer to protect Wilderness from the impacts of industrial forest management and other resource extraction occurring on nearby National Forest System lands. The Wilderness Act is silent on the issue of buffer zones around designated Wilderness where activities detrimental to the preservation of wilderness character could be limited. However, many subsequent wilderness laws have specifically prohibited the establishment of protective buffer zones. While not perfect, and with notable loopholes, Inventoried Roadless Areas provide an elegant solution to the issue of buffers that meet this need for protection from impacts occurring outside the wilderness boundary to preservation of wilderness character inside, “as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled” by humans.

Critical to this reasoning is that wilderness character inside designated Wilderness can be, and often is, impacted by activities that occur outside Wilderness. Those impacts are many. For example, they include impacts to solitude from the sights and sounds of development and activities occurring outside the wilderness boundary—from things such as logging, mining, road construction, gravel pits, shooting ranges, motorized recreation, and highly developed trailheads for recreational access. 

Additionally, natural conditions and wildness inside the Wilderness boundary line can be damaged or enhanced by the presence or absence of suitable wildlife habitat in adjacent areas. Animals and plants located inside Wilderness need habitat beyond the administrative boundary of Wilderness to move within their home range or for adaptation to climate change. Roadless areas provide these natural conditions and offer the benefit of an expansion of their available habitat.

Inventoried Roadless Areas have been serving as buffers that often prevent the most egregious, as well as many lesser, insults to wilderness character. The absence of Inventoried Roadless Areas adjacent to Wilderness would make it much more likely that industrial forest management would take place right up to the wilderness boundary. In Wilderness areas that do not have this de facto buffer, industrial forest management already does often occur right up to the line. 

To dig in deeper and think about how repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule might impact a Wilderness near you, check out this map showing the location of Inventoried Roadless Areas across national forests. Click on the layer list to add Forest Service Wilderness areas. Think about what these areas mean to you in their current, roadless condition and then imagine how they and adjacent Wilderness areas would change if roads and related development were allowed. It’s shocking to see how much of America’s remaining wildlands on national forests would be threatened by industrial development if the Roadless Area Conservation Rule is repealed.      

The public comment period for this proposal is open until September 19. Click here for talking points and to submit your own public comments. We all must tell the Forest Service what roadless areas on our national forests mean to us, why they are important, and why roadless area protections need to be retained and strengthened, instead of repealed. We must keep these places roadless—for their own sake and for their contribution to the preservation of Wilderness.     

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