For 25 years, one rule has quietly kept the wildest corners of our national forests wild.

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, finalized in 2001, protects 45 million acres of National Forest System land from new road construction and large-scale logging. It doesn’t lock the land away. Hunters, anglers, paddlers, and hikers use these forests every day. Land managers can still do responsible management, including wildfire prevention work. The rule simply says that the last undeveloped stretches of our public forests should stay that way.

Now the federal government wants to erase it entirely.

What’s happening with the Roadless Rule

For the past year, the administration has been working to rescind the Roadless Rule despite overwhelming public opposition. On August 18, the USDA released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement proposing to strike the rule from the books. No modifications. No carve-outs. Full rescission.

We are now in an open public comment period, and the clock is running. Comments are due September 21.

What Minnesota stands to lose

In Minnesota, 62,000 acres of the Superior National Forest fall under Roadless Rule protections — undeveloped forest that sits alongside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and shares its watershed, its wildlife, and its character.

These areas provide critical habitat for the Canada lynx, one of the Northwoods’ most elusive residents. Lynx need large, unbroken tracts of forest to hunt and den. Roads fragment that habitat. Once a road goes in, the wild character of a place rarely comes back.

Roadless areas also protect something even more fundamental: clean water. Undeveloped forest filters rain and snowmelt before it ever reaches a lake or stream. In a landscape defined by water, where water from the Superior National Forest flows into the Boundary Waters, that protection isn’t abstract. It’s the reason many will dip a cup over the side of their canoe and drink straight from the lake.

A rule built the right way

The Roadless Rule came out of one of the most robust public processes in the history of federal rulemaking, with hundreds of public hearings and millions of comments. The public asked for these protections, overwhelmingly, and the public has defended them at every challenge since.

The rule saves taxpayers money, too. The Forest Service already maintains hundreds of thousands of miles of roads with a maintenance backlog it can’t afford. Building new roads into remote forest means new costs, borne by all of us, to open up land most Americans want left alone.

Make your voice heard

This is a proposal, not a final decision. The Forest Service is legally required to consider public comments before it acts. And comments from people who know and love these forests carry real weight.

You have until September 21 to weigh in.

Take action: Submit a comment today. File online at regulations.gov under docket FS-2025-0001. Tell the Forest Service that the Roadless Rule works, that Minnesotans want the Superior National Forest’s wild places protected, and that rescinding 25 years of protection is the wrong direction for our forests, our water, and our wildlife.

The wildest places we have are the ones we can never get back. Speak up for them.