On June 23, 2025, USDA Secretary Rollins announced the Administration's intent to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (also known as the Roadless Rule). The Roadless Rule is a nearly 25-year-old national conservation measure that protects over 45 million acres of the USA’s undeveloped forest and grassland backcountry from new roads, which in turn protects them from commercial logging, mining, and drilling.
The Roadless Rule was created in 2001 after the agency held 600 public meetings and received 1.6 million public comments supporting strong protections for unroaded national forests.Today, a large portion of the United State’s remaining old-growth forests are found in Inventoried Roadless Areas, making the environmental stakes for saving the Roadless Rule high. The current Administration wants to open up roadless forest areas to support commercial extraction activities such as logging, mining and drilling.
If the Roadless Rule is repealed, over 4 million acres of undeveloped roadless forests in California could be opened up to commercial logging, including large portions of the Eastern Sierras, northern redwoods, and national forests in Southern California, such as Los Padres and San Bernardino.
You can check out the federally owned roadless areas in California via this site and see the areas in map view here.
TAKE ACTION TODAY
We invite you to submit a public comment in defense of the Roadless Rule!
Sign Sierra Club’s letter and add your own personal comment here.