Tell the administration: Keep our forest protections

What's At Stake

The U.S. Forest Service proposed major changes to the Travel Management Rule — the policy that determines where motor vehicles can travel on our national forests and grasslands.

For more than 20 years, the rule has laid out a common-sense approach: Local land managers work with communities to identify which roads, trails, and areas are open to motorized vehicles, with other areas preserved for non-motorized access. The result is a clearly mapped system that provides reasonable motorized access while protecting wildlife, clean water, recreation, and other uses of our public lands. Now the Forest Service wants to turn that system on its head.

The agency is considering an “open unless closed” approach that would presume national forests are available for motorized use unless individual roads, trails, or areas are specifically closed. It could also force local land managers to repeatedly defend existing protections, eliminate longstanding requirements to minimize damage and conflicts, and create new pathways for expanded off-route motorized use.

That doesn’t create better access — it creates uncertainty and conflict. Tell the Forest Service to change course.

This change cannot be separated from the administration’s proposal to eliminate the Roadless Rule. The revised Travel Management Rule would mandate consideration of new roads and trails in areas that don’t have them. With no Roadless Rule to act as a counterweight, this requirement could affirmatively force road and trail additions in some of our wildest places.

The Forest Service already faces a $9 billion road maintenance backlog, a $300 million trail maintenance backlog, and a $229 million recreation backlog. And it struggles to enforce the current rules due to insufficient personnel and funding. Expanding motorized use without addressing these shortcomings would put even more pressure on an overburdened system, increasing maintenance costs, pollution, and wildlife disturbance.

Tell the administration that its one-two punch on our forests is unacceptable and that it should abandon its proposed changes to the Roadless Rule and Travel Management Plan.

Aerial view of a beaver complex and Telephone Gap in Green Mountain National Forest, Vermont.
Aerial view of a beaver complex and Telephone Gap in Green Mountain National Forest, home to the largest roadless areas in Vermont. (Kurt Budliger for Earthjustice)

13 Days Remain

Delivery to U.S. Forest Service

Important Notice

Your message is delivered to a public agency, and all information submitted may be placed in the public record. Do not submit confidential information.

By taking action, you will receive emails from Earthjustice. Change your mailing preferences or opt-out at any time. Learn more in our Privacy Policy. This Earthjustice action is hosted on EveryAction. Learn about EveryAction’s Privacy Policy.

Why is a phone number or prefix required on some action forms?

Trouble Viewing This Action?

If the action form is not loading above, please be aware that ad blockers and VPNs may prevent the action form from displaying. Please add earthjustice.org as a trusted website in your ad blocker, and refresh this webpage. (Details.) If the action form still does not display, please report the problem to us at action@earthjustice.org with a screenshot image of the problem. Thank you!

Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.