The Roadless Rule is under threat.

Sep 11, 2025
Libby London, Save the Boundary Waters
Roadless Rule and the Boundary Waters.

The Roadless Rule is under attack—and with it, America’s most intact forests.

For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has protected 58.5 million acres of national forest across 39 states from roadbuilding, logging, and fragmentation. These lands—some of America’s most intact and healthy forests—provide clean drinking water, store carbon, safeguard wildlife habitat, and offer unmatched opportunities to hike, camp, hunt, fish, and explore.

Now, the federal administration is moving to repeal the Roadless Rule. On August 29, 2025, the USDA published a Notice of Intent to rescind the policy and open up 45 million acres of public lands to new road construction and commercial logging. Even worse, the public has just 21 days—until September 19—to weigh in. 

For more information, please join us for a webinar this Sunday, September 14 from 6-7 pm CST, hosted by the Sierra Club, Environmental Law and Policy Center, and Environment America. ,

Register for the webinar

Repealing the Roadless Rule would irreversibly damage forests across the country and here in Minnesota. The Boundary Waters has been managed as a roadless area since 1902, and losing this protection would open the door to roadbuilding in some of the last intact wildlands in the eastern United States—lands where generations have paddled, hunted, fished, and found peace in true wilderness. Once these places are gone, we can’t get them back.

Now is the moment to act. Submit a comment today and tell the Forest Service: Keep the Roadless Rule in place. Protect America’s wild forests.

Submit a comment

 

Roadless Rule and the Boundary Waters.

Roadless Rule and the Boundary Waters.

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Superior National Forest, and shortly after, the Minnesota Legislature created the 1.2 million–acre Superior Game Refuge, encompassing much of what is now the Boundary Waters.

As road development expanded in the forest, concerns grew about preserving its wild character. In response, U.S. Agriculture Secretary W.M. Jardine set aside 640,000 acres as a roadless wilderness, declaring the need to “retain as much as possible of the land which has recreational opportunities of this nature as a wilderness.”

Today, portions of these Roadless Area Conservation Rule lands border the Boundary Waters. With the Administration attacking this Rule, that means that now, this land is vulnerable to roadbuilding and development that could fragment some of the last intact wildlands in the eastern United States.

Submit a comment and tell the Forest Service to leave the Roadless Rule in place. 

Submit a comment