The Roadless Rule is facing its biggest challenge yet. But how does it impact runners?
What Is the Roadless Rule?
If you’ve run on a trail or participated in a race in a national forest and felt like you were really in a remote, backcountry location with gorgeous scenery, there’s a good chance you were in an “inventoried roadless area.” These areas cover about 58 million acres across 39 states and include some of the most rugged locations outside of congressionally designated Wilderness areas.
Roadless areas have long been protected from permanent road-building, industrial logging, drilling, and mining thanks to a U.S. Forest Service regulation called the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, or just Roadless Rule for short. It’s not a law put in place by Congress—rather, it was developed by the agency during a robust public input and environmental review process starting in 1999. By the time the rule was finalized and approved in 2001, millions of people had voiced their support for protecting roadless areas.
Roadless Area Protections Under Threat
This summer, nearly a quarter-century later, the Trump administration announced that it would be rescinding the Roadless Rule despite its broad public support. During the month of September, the administration provided a very short 21-day comment period for the public to weigh in on the proposal. Runners across the country voiced their support for the Roadless Rule and the need to protect the public lands we run from environmentally damaging activities.
Activating the Running Community
Runners for Public Lands helped organize runners and race directors to ensure that their concerns were heard during the comment period. We created an online hub of information about the issue where individuals could learn how to submit an official comment and where race directors could sign on to a joint letter to the administration. We analyzed over 30 major trail races that take place in national forests around the country and created an interactive map showing how these course routes intersect roadless areas. Many of the most beloved trail races in states like California, Oregon, Washington, and Montana are somewhat or mostly in roadless areas. For example, about 86% of the famous Waldo 100K Ultramarathon is within three separate inventoried roadless areas in Oregon’s Deschutes and Willamette national forests.
On the final day of the comment period, we submitted a letter to the administration signed by 92 race directors representing nearly 550 running events across 34 states. The letter details the importance of roadless areas and their protections to trail races in national forests. And once again, directors of road races joined the letter to stand up for trail races and public lands. While these types of issues may only affect a subset of public lands, they affect the running community as a whole—and we’re so stoked to see such broad support and solidarity among race directors.
We also submitted a separate comment letter outlining why Runners for Public Lands supports the Roadless Rule. Our president and founder, Vic Thasiah, submitted his own comment explaining why roadless areas in the national forest he lives near are so important to him and his family.
After my family and friends, the Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) in my community matter more than anything else to me. As a trail runner I’ve spent countless days and nights over the years exploring and enjoying the wild and rugged beauty of both the Sespe-Frazier and Nordhoff IRAs. Undamaged by drilling, logging, and mining, these places provide habitat for native plants and wildlife to thrive, and clean water for my community, even as we’ve faced long droughts. The Roadless Rule has kept these areas remarkably intact for recreational, ecological, cultural, economic, and social value.
Wookie Kim, another member of our Board of Directors, submitted an excellent comment as well. Wookie lives in Hawaii, which is one of the few states that lacks a national forest, but he regularly runs in roadless areas in other parts of the country.
Opening these lands to industrial logging, mining, and other development would permanently damage the very qualities that make these lands so special. The decision to allow such development will lead to irreversible consequences that will have a lasting impact on my generation and future generations to come.
We were also excited to see Runners for Public Lands Ambassadors submit letters during the comment period. Our Ambassador in Durango, Colorado, Sara Aranda, wrote about her experiences growing up in California and exploring unique places in southern California and Sierra Nevada national forests. She also highlighted the importance of ecosystems and landscapes to human health and to the Indigenous peoples who have long lived among them.
As a professional trail runner, I have visited many regions that the rescinding of this Roadless Rule will impact. Selling off public lands or leasing them for destructive extraction will never be the answer, especially in our current climate with so much already lost and destroyed. We cannot pretend that our very existence on this planet is separate from the health of these ecosystems.
What Comes Next?
The initial comment period was for a “notice of preparation” (NOP) of an environmental impact statement (EIS). So the next step in this process should involve the administration releasing a draft EIS that analyzes how rescinding the Roadless Rule will impact the environment in roadless areas. This would normally include its own public comment period.
However, the administration has been working hard to loosen environmental regulations, including how agencies like the U.S. Forest Service implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). For example, earlier this year the administration adopted an “interim final rule” that drastically overhauls NEPA policies, including the requirement that agencies publish a draft EIS and make it available for public comment. Fortunately, the NOP released this summer states that the “proposed rule, accompanied by a draft EIS, is expected by March 2026, along with a request for additional public comment.” Given the high visibility of this issue, we expect the administration to follow through on this commitment, but we won’t know for sure until next year.
In the meantime, we have joined with other organizations around the country in urging Congress to pass the Roadless Area Conservation Act (H.R. 3930 and S. 2042). This bill, introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, would make the Roadless Rule a law and insulate it from executive rollback efforts. This bill could be passed and signed into law in the future, even if the current administration rescinds the Roadless Rule. In other words, we encourage runners everywhere to continue voicing their support for roadless areas if and when additional public comment periods happen while also contacting their members of Congress asking that they co-sponsor and eventually vote for the Roadless Area Conservation Act.