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| Dear Friend, |
| Yesterday, the Trump administration launched yet another assault on our national forests, announcing plans to strip protections from 58 million acres nationwide. This rollback of a policy called the Roadless Rule is another example of the administration going out of its way to allow private companies to mine, log, or drill on national public lands. |
| We will stand for America’s national forests and the wildlife that depends on them. If the Trump administration follows through on this announcement and revokes the Roadless Rule, we’ll see them in court. |
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| What does this mean? |
| The administration’s plan would eliminate critical safeguards against industrial logging and damaging roadbuilding across many of the most pristine backcountry areas of our national forest system. It would lay the groundwork for the timber industry to cut down many more trees in our federal forests. |
| For a quarter of a century, the Roadless Rule has: |
- Helped safeguard lands that afford abundant opportunities for outdoor recreation, including hiking, hunting and fishing.
- Provided essential habitat for wildlife such as California condors, grizzly bears and wolves of the Yellowstone area, native salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest, and myriad other species that rely on roadless areas to survive.
- Protected clean drinking water that ultimately flows into the faucets of millions of Americans.
- Protected mature and old-growth trees in areas, serving as buffers against climate change by providing shade with cooler temperatures, and by absorbing and sequestering carbon dioxide.
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| What’s at risk? |
| This announcement is particularly significant for the Tongass National Forest, where eliminating the Roadless Rule would remove critical safeguards against industrial logging and damaging roadbuilding from over 9 million undeveloped acres within the 17-million-acre forest. |
| How will we fight back? |
| President Trump removed Roadless Rule protections from the Tongass once before in 2020. Earthjustice sued, and our lawsuit prevented illegal timber sales and devastating logging projects from moving forward until the Roadless Rule was reinstated by the Biden administration in 2023. |
| In that case, we represented a coalition of Alaska Native tribes, small boat tour businesses, and fishing and conservation groups alongside our co-counsel, the Natural Resources Defense Council. |
| Earthjustice advocacy and litigation has stood behind the Roadless Rule and the 58 million acres it protects ever since it was implemented 25 years ago. We will go to court as long as it takes and as many times as necessary to protect our forests. |
| June 30 is our fiscal year deadline, so what we raise now helps determine how many attorneys we can hire, how many lawsuits we can file, and the scope of our work for the next year. Please consider donating to Earthjustice today! |
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| Thank you for your partnership. |
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Sincerely,
The Team at Earthjustice |
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