Forest Service Next Step in Roadless Rule Rescission

General Discussion
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Is anyone in legacy media talking about this?
Is anyone besides @pyrogeography in New Media / Digital Media talking about this?

Small window of time to provide public feedback..

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I’ve seen it in a few news media spots. The amount of change and upheaval this Administration has done since Jan 20th is overwhelming to keep up with for everyone.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/g-s1-74136/trump-to-rescind-roadless-rule-which-protects-58-million-acres-of-forest-land

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The problem is, from looking at the maps and knowing what’s out there, most of these aren’t actually “roadless” areas. They’re simply areas where the Forest Service has decided they don’t want people driving. Or maybe they don’t want to be on the hook for maintaining the roads any more. One of the provided links lists “26,647 miles of trail, and 19,596 miles of mountain biking.” Probably some overlap there, but I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of that mileage is, in fact, old abandoned roads.

I posted this on another site discussing this topic:

The absolute worst possible thing you can do with a road is to simply close it. Put up a gate, dig a tank trap, set some “BFR’s” and walk away. That’s the worst option, and that’s what they’ve been doing.

Once the road was put in, it altered the hydrology of the landform basically forever. Inboard ditches, culverts, various wet drainage crossings, all changed the hydrology of the landform and, without maintenance, lead to massive sedimentation of creeks and streams.

There are only two options (sort of three):

  1. Maintain the road as designed, forever.

a. Re-engineer the road to reduce/eliminate inboard ditches, outslope the road surface, at least ensure the culvert crossings will “fail soft” when (not if) they clog and fail and not simply divert the entire creek a mile down the road to the next creek

  1. Totally remove the road. Excavate all the fill from all drainage crossings, re-contour the fill onto the bench and up the cut banks.

Note that I don’t discuss the value of having a road in the first place, only the obligation that building the road represents to public land stewards

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The Pacific Crest Trail Association is chiming in. https://www.pcta.org/2025/scrapping-the-roadless-rule-will-harm-the-pct-96600/. Many of the trails in these areas are maintained by volunteer groups, such as PCTA and Back Country Horsemen, for recreational enjoyment.

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The ‘roadless’ designation is actually mapped areas where roads have not been built. The original mapping for this designation was done in the late 1970s.
I did a livestream on this topic earlier this year. That video is on The Lookout, here:

Maps are at the bottom of the post…

And +1 on the comments about not walking away from built roads!

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