August 19, 2026 – Yesterday the Trump Administration formally proposed rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, putting important protections for some of our nation’s wildest national forests on the chopping block.

The Roadless Rule protects roughly 2 million acres of national forest land in the state of Washington – more than 45 million acres of across the country – from most new road construction and commercial timber harvesting. Here in the Methow Valley, those protections include roadless areas along the Highway 20 corridor over Washington Pass and significant portions of the Sawtooth Range, including Maple Pass Loop, Blue Lake, Cutthroat Lake, Tatie Peak and Grasshopper Pass, Angel Staircase, Cooney Lake, and Sawtooth Lakes. This interactive map shows exactly which areas stand to be impacted.

MVCC opposes rescinding the Roadless Rule and encourages everyone who cares about our public lands to submit a comment asking the Forest Service to keep these protections in place.

The public comment period opens tomorrow and runs through Monday, September 21, 2026. The Forest Service is accepting comments on both the proposed rule and its draft environmental impact statement.

What’s being proposed?
The Roadless Rule has protected large, relatively undeveloped areas of national forest from new roads and commercial timber harvesting for 25 years.

The Forest Service, under the Trump Administration, now wants to rescind the bedrock rule. If it does, protections against road construction, road re-construction, and timber harvesting in Inventoried Roadless Areas would be removed. Decisions about these activities would instead be governed by individual forest plans and other applicable laws.

The Forest Service argues that rescinding the rule would give forest managers more flexibility to address wildfire risk and forest health. But removing roadless protections is not the same thing as preventing wildfire.

The existing Roadless Rule already allows exceptions for certain activities, including some road construction and timber harvesting intended to reduce wildfire risk. At the same time, research has found that fires are four times more likely to start near roads. Additional roads can also increase human access to remote forests, fragment wildlife habitat, affect watersheds and create long-term maintenance costs.

The Forest Service already faces a huge backlog of road maintenance. We don’t need to build more roads into our remaining wild forests before we have even caught up with the roads we already have.

Why this matters in the Methow
The Methow Valley is surrounded by national forest lands that provide wildlife habitat, clean water, recreation opportunities, and many of the remaining undeveloped landscapes in our region. Experts say that:

• The Roadless Rule helps protect clean drinking water
• Rescinding the rule will lead to more human-caused wildfire
• Inventoried Roadless Areas provide habitat for more than half of the wildlife species of conservation concern assessed in the lower 48 states.

Road construction can also affect salmon and other fish by increasing sedimentation, altering stream conditions, and creating barriers to fish passage.

The public overwhelmingly opposes rescission
When the Roadless Rule was adopted in 2001, the Forest Service conducted one of the most extensive public involvement processes in federal rulemaking history. The agency held more than 600 public hearings across the country and received 1.6 million public comments, with 95% supporting protections for roadless areas.

The process underway now looks very different. Last fall, the administration gave the public just 21 days to comment on its proposal to rescind the rule. More than 600,000 people submitted comments, and over 99% opposed rescinding the Roadless Rule.

Now the Forest Service is giving the public just 30 days – through September 21 – to comment on the proposed rescission and draft environmental impact statement. There are no official public meetings scheduled.

What you can do
Submit your comment through Regulations.gov by midnight September 21.

1. Tell the Forest Service you oppose rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
2. Ask the agency to keep protections for Inventoried Roadless Areas in place.
3. Request that public meetings be part of this process.
4. Explain why roadless forests matter to you. Talk about wildlife, clean water, recreation, hunting and fishing, wildfire resilience, or the character of the Methow Valley – whatever you care most deeply about.
5. Make your comment personal. If there is a particular roadless area you have visited or care about, name it and explain why it matters to you.

You don’t need to be an expert or write a long comment. A few thoughtful sentences about why these places matter can help demonstrate the importance of keeping them protected.

Sample comment:

I oppose the Forest Service’s proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Roadless forests are some of our most valuable public lands, providing clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, carbon storage, and places where people can experience the beauty of undeveloped forest.

I am particularly concerned about the potential loss of protections for roadless areas in the Methow Valley and throughout Washington. These lands are important to our communities and should remain protected from new roads and commercial timber harvesting.

I urge the Forest Service to keep the Roadless Rule in place and protect these remaining wild forests for future generations.

Make it your own: Tell the Forest Service about a place you have hiked, hunted, skied, fished or otherwise enjoyed. Explain why keeping it roadless matters to you.