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

The Trump administration just released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for its proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. As anticipated, the proposal completely abolishes the Roadless Rule, which would open nearly 45 million acres of National Forest lands to damaging road construction, logging, and other industrial extraction.

Comments on the DEIS will only be accepted until September 21, so there is a very short window for the public to stand against this senseless attack on public lands.

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.