A final reminder to submit your comments opposing the Trump administration’s unnecessary and unwanted repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule by this Tuesday, Oct. 6th.
One of our nation’s most effective, beloved, and cost-effective conservation policies, which preserves the habitat, ecosystems, wildlife, and wild character of some 58 million acres of National Forest lands from coast to coast, the Roadless Rule has served Americans well for a generation since its implementation in 2001 following a three-year study from 1997 to 2000 that saw hundreds of public meetings facilitated by the Forest Service with neighborhood and community groups, town councils, and people around the nation.
To be clear, NO ONE is asking for the Roadless Rule to be overturned, only the billionaires, oligarchs, and autocrats of the Trump regime who want our untouched public lands to build more data centers, country homes, golf resorts, private hunting reserves, and of course to log, mine, and otherwise destroy and desecrate our federal public lands without having to answer to the public.
With the increased threat of bigger and even more severe wildfires, as well as the need to preserve habitat and wildlife with the Endangered Species Act now gutted by cruel executive inaction and callous rollbacks in an era of mass extinction, we need the Roadless Rule more than ever. To quote the great conservationist Harvey Manning, “insert into the heads of politicians what your feet already know.” Tell them to keep the Roadless Rule in place, as is, for good, and make clear to these destroyers of responsible policy what America’s public lands mean to you and your family.
There are several handy portals to submit your comments, but be aware you can’t submit comments anonymously. Even if you were submitting comments on paper or making some kind of political or nonprofit donation it’s entirely normal to ask your name, address, phone number, and email, so don’t be taken aback:
- You could go through the federal government’s Regulations.gov page for Roadless Rule comments, and if you have a wholly unique piece that you’ve written from scratch this may be the best portal to use. Original material and content is important, and in some ways is more valuable than pre-formatted letters (hand-written letters from grandmother to elected officials remains the gold standard).
- The grandfather of all conservation organizations in the U.S. is the Sierra Club, and their letter system allows you to modify their pre-formatted language, as do other conservation outlets.
- If you live in Oregon or are a registered Oregon voter, I recommend my friends and former colleagues at Oregon Wild, who always come up with excellent pre-formatted language, and have been at the forefront of preserving the Roadless Rule since its inception.
- Like Oregon Wild, I’m also a former employee at San Diego Audubon (now the San Diego Bird Alliance), and I recommend the Audubon Society portal as well. It will, of course, be somewhat focused on bird and avian species, but it has similarly malleable language and Audubon remains an outstanding conservation resource.
- The team at Los Padres ForestWatch, another excellent outlet, is focused on California’s Central Coast and have their language visible at their comment portal page. You can use the page they’ve provided, or copy and paste their material and give it your own spin.
- Friends of the Inyo has been leading local opposition in the Eastern Sierra against the Roadless Rule repeal and is a similarly outstanding conservation resource and outlet.
If you’re seeing this after Oct. 6th, we have a new task for you.
Please contact your U.S. senators (every state has two) and tell them to reject the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026.” If there’s anything honest in this bill’s name, it’s that the legislation is indeed bipartisan, sadly, with the help of otherwise decent and environmentally-minded Democrats taking the Vichy route to ensure this destructive policy that will only accelerate development without going through normal permitting or environmental processes. Essentially, the bill rewrites four bedrock environmental laws so data centers and extractive industries can more easily steamroll public input: the 1970 National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), 1972 Clean Air and Water Act (CWA), 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).
All of these longstanding and effective laws have been under assault by developers, billionaires, and tech oligarchs for years, with Republicans and Vichy Democrats doing their bidding in Congress to water them down and neuter them as best they can. But in particular, these laws have all been severely impacted by Trump 2.0 rollbacks in which laws are no longer being enforced. While it’s impeachable for the president not to enforce the spirit and letter of the law, Trump’s Justice Department isn’t budging — and the Republican Congress, after all, doesn’t want to hold Trump accountable because they don’t want Trump to enforce these laws either.
As a result, we’re now in a situation where the administration has broadly given developers the right to kill endangered species in their habitat — provided they’re not “targeting” the wildlife and, oops, we didn’t mean to cut that Douglas fir down with that nest of marbled murrelets in it. Essentially Trump 2.0’s most recent round of ESA rollbacks has gutted the very purpose of this otherwise benchmark law that has saved 99 percent of the species listed, including the American bald eagle. Trump, of course, famously hates eagles.
The changes made to all four of these laws by way of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 will simply make Trump 2.0’s destructive non-enforcement and unprecedented rollbacks to them permanent. And just as there isn’t public support or any public groundswell to undo the Roadless Rule, neither is there any appetite or interest among there public in undoing the public’s own ability to comment and have a say on development proposals of federal public lands, have their air and water polluted further, destroy endangered species, or tear down historic buildings and sites.
And to top it all off, the senator leading the charge on this is none other than repellent anti-public lands Senator Mike Lee, environmental enemy number one. Joining Lee are, sadly, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of the otherwise beautiful state of West Virginia, and two Democrats, Senator Martin Heinrich, who has been a public lands champion in the past and damn well knows better, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who should know better. The bill would require Democratic votes, but so far no Senate Democrat has spoken out against the bill.
To that end, go back to the words of Harvey Manning, and “insert into the heads of politicians what your feet already know.” As I’ve said before, politicians don’t realize there’s a problem until they’re getting punched in the face with it on the phone, in emails, and with letters. So don’t be shy. Let them know about your opposition to the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, as well as the dreadful HR 655, which is still before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The number for the Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121. All it takes is saying, “Please vote no on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. Don’t weaken NEPA, don’t weaken the Clean Water Act, don’t weaken the Endangered Species Act, and don’t weaken the National Historic Preservation Act. Leave these laws as they are.”
You can find this entry on my Substack as well.