For 25 years, the National Roadless Area Conservation Rule has helped protect 58 million acres of our last intact national forest wildlands by limiting road construction and logging, which safeguards clean drinking water and crucial habitat for imperiled wildlife like grizzly bears. Now those protections are under threat.

What’s Happening

In August 2025, the Trump administration proposed rescinding Roadless Rule protections across 45+ million acres in 36 states and Puerto Rico. The proposal excludes Idaho and Colorado since those states have their own version of the Roadless Rule. The Forest Service is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement and another public comment period is coming. We must be ready.

Why This Matters for Grizzlies

Grizzly bears need large, connected, secure habitats to survive and recover.

Roads and motorized use:

• Fragment habitat

• Increase human-caused deaths

• Disrupt females with cubs emerging from dens

• Push bears out of secure areas

Roadless protections:

• Limit new road construction

• Place sideboards on new oil and gas development

• Restrict new livestock allotments

• Curtail logging impacts

• Create connected security zones

• Keep landscapes unfragmented

Talking Points

• The Roadless Rule helps protect the large, secure, low-road-density landscapes that grizzly bears need to survive and recover.

• Grizzlies do not just need habitat, they need secure habitat that many Roadless Areas provide by keeping road densities low. 

• High road density is one of the strongest predictors of grizzly bear mortality.

• Grizzlies need secure habitat outside of official recovery zones in order to connect with other core populations to prevent inbreeding, and to establish one unified population within the region. 

• Roadless Areas provide some of the highest value areas for grizzly bear connectivity, for female bears that includes roughly 7.7 million acres, and for male bears that includes 6.7 million acres. This represents 48% and 44% respectively of the highest value connectivity pathways needed to reconnect isolated populations.    

• Rescinding the 2001 National Roadless Area Conservation Rule threatens grizzly bear recovery by stripping away protections in Montana and Wyoming, including habitat grizzlies need for connectivity. This includes roughly 4.4 million acres within female connectivity pathways, and 4.3 million acres for males. 

• Rescinding roadless protections across more than 45 million acres would reduce secure habitat, increase mortality risk, and erode years of grizzly bear recovery progress.

• Roadless Areas provide essential stepping stones of intact habitat for grizzly bear connectivity, which federal land managers cite when approving forest plans and projects. Removing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule will make such approvals more difficult. 

• You cannot claim grizzly recovery while removing the habitat protections that make recovery possible.