When most people think about national forests, they imagine vast Western landscapes: Alaska, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest. But millions of acres of federal woodlands dot the eastern half of the country, too. These great swaths of vibrant ecosystems have long been free of roads, protected by a policy called, appropriately enough, the “roadless rule.”

That may soon change.

Adopted in 2001 during the final days of the Clinton administration, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, as it is formally known, grew out of a realization within the U.S. Forest Service that it had built more roads than it could afford to maintain. Many were crumbling into streams, fragmenting habitat, and degrading drinking water, alarming even agency scientists. The rule barred road construction and logging in nearly 60 million acres of undeveloped national forest in 39 states. In the eastern …

Read More »