Wild Places, Wild Benefits: Why the Roadless Rule Is Worth Defending

Backpacking in Colorado's high country

If you’ve ever hiked deep into Colorado’s high country, cast a fly in a cold stream that’s miles from the nearest parking lot, or called for an elk without hearing a single truck in the distance, you know the feeling of true wildness. These unobstructed natural areas are rare — and fragile. The moment a road is cut in, everything changes. Trees fall, heavy machinery scars the soil, sediment washes into creeks, and wildlife scatters. Once roads arrive, that sense of solitude and natural balance is gone. The Roadless Rule is about making sure those places stay wild.

What Is the Roadless Rule — in a Nutshell

• Enacted in 2001 by the U.S. Forest Service, it restricts new road construction and logging in “Inventoried Roadless Areas” of national forests — millions of acres nationwide and critical backcountry in Colorado.

• The rule was passed in response to decades long environmental damage from the mining and logging industry.

• The Roadless Rule does not close existing roads or trails; it just prevents new disruptive infrastructure in those zones.

  
  

Why It Matters If You Hike, Fish, Hunt, or Just Crave Solitude

• Fishing & water: Roadless zones help protect headwater streams—where many trout and native fish spawn—from sediment, runoff, and disruption.

• Hunting & wildlife: Big game like elk, mule deer, mountain lions, and other species depend on large, connected habitat. Roads fragment those habitats, disturb migration routes, increase human‐wildlife conflict.

• Hiking, camping & solitude: There’s something indescribable about packing into a place without traffic, without chain saws, without seeing vehicle tracks. That's hard to get back once lost.

  
  

Counter argument: More Roads = Better Wildfire Fighting

A common argument: if we build more roads, fire crews can get in faster, prevent big fires. Sounds reasonable — but data tell a more complex story.

• A recent study of wildfire‐ignition density in U.S. national forests shows that areas within 50 meters of roads have ignition densities of 7.4 fires per 1,000 hectares, whereas Inventoried Roadless Areas (sit more than half a mile from any road and remain largely untouched by development) have about 1.9 fires per 1,000 hectares.

• In other words, the closer to a road, the more fires start due to humans propensity to start fires.

So rather than preventing fires, lots of roads increase the risk of ignitions. Yes, some roads are useful for suppression, access, fire lines — but they’re already in existing usable areas. Building new ones into wild backcountry has serious trade-offs (erosion, habitat loss, water pollution) that often outweigh gains in suppression in those remote places.

Here is a link to Earthjustice's website where you can find the aforementioned study.

Mining, Logging, & the “Need for Resources” Argument

Proponents of resending the rule say: we need more roads so we can get more timber, minerals, etc. But:

We don’t need to bulldoze new roads into wild backcountry to meet our resource needs. The numbers tell the story: according to the Colorado State Forest Service, our state already has more than 20 million thousand cubic feet of merchantable timber standing. Three-quarters of that is on national forests, and over 80% sits on public land that’s already accessible for harvest. This remains true at the national level and even the White House recently stated the U.S. has “an abundance of timber resources … more than adequate to meet our domestic timber production needs.”

So if the timber is already there, why gamble with intact wilderness? We all know what happens when a drainage gets scarred with roads and cut up for logging — the hunting isn’t the same, the fishing isn’t the same, and the habitat never fully recovers.

And it’s not just about timber. When it comes to minerals, there are plenty of existing mines already in operation, plus inactive sites and brownfields where reclamation work could provide resources without opening brand new scars in the high country. In fact, Colorado is littered with abandoned mines that prove the risk. Anyone who’s fished the Animas River remembers the Gold King Mine disaster near Silverton, when a toxic spill turned the river orange overnight. That wasn’t just a fluke — it was a reminder that once a mine leaks heavy metals into a watershed, the damage sticks around for generations.

Opening roadless areas to new logging and mining doesn’t solve a resource problem — it creates a permanent habitat problem. And for those of us who hunt, fish, and hike these places, that trade-off just isn’t worth it.

Maintenance… & The Road Paradox

Nationally, The Forest Service is already responsible for about 370,000 miles of roads, and it has a deferred maintenance backlog of about $8.4 billion just for those (roads and reconstruction). At a time when the administration is attempting to cut back on spending for the Forest Service, do we really want to increase their responsibility even more — opening up new areas to roads and adding to the burden that’s already overwhelming?

So if we build new roads into roadless zones, we also build long‐term liabilities: erosion, sediment, impacts to aquatic habitat, costs that taxpayers pay, habitat fragmentation — not just “opening access.”

What Happens If We Let Protection Slide

• Loss of habitat for fish, big game, native plants.

• More sediment in headwaters → worse water quality downstream.

• Less wild hiking, fewer remote camping spots.

• Increased fire risk due to more human access/ignitions.

  
  

What You Can Do

The USDA is currently accepting public comments on proposed rollbacks to the Roadless Rule. This is your chance to speak up before the deadline on September 19th.

Take a few minutes to write a personalized, thoughtful comment explaining why these wild places matter to you — whether it’s fishing with your kids in a clear mountain stream, hunting elk in intact habitat, or hiking in true solitude.

Generic form letters help, but personal stories carry far more weight. Tell them why you oppose weakening the Roadless Rule, and remind them that once these areas are developed, we can’t get them back.

If you love fishing high-country streams, hearing bugling elk in undisturbed valleys, or finding yourself alone under a starry Colorado sky, defending the Roadless Rule is part of defending that way of life.

Submit a Public Comment