JUNE 10, 2026 UPDATE: The backroom ambush on our national forests has cleared its first hurdle. This morning, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 11–9 along strict party lines to pass the Wildfire Prevention Act (S. 140) and advance it to the full Senate floor.
With this vote, the committee successfully attached Senator Mike Lee’s late-night legislative rider: the “Roadless Rule Nullification.” This sweeping amendment was deliberately tacked onto a must-pass wildfire bill at the last minute to bypass public debate and transparent scrutiny. If passed by the full Senate, it will completely nullify the historic 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule across 37 states, instantly stripping protections from 44.7 million acres of our wildest national forest lands. The crown jewel of our national forest system, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, remains the primary target for this corporate-backed development assault.
The False Premise of Fire Suppression
The politicians backing this rider are using the disingenuous cover of “wildfire prevention” to justify carving industrial logging corridors into pristine roadless terrain. However, decades of peer-reviewed data and agency experience tell a completely different story:
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Roads Multiply Fire Risk: Extensive data confirms that approximately 90% of human-caused wildfires start within half a mile of a road. Opening these remote backcountry lands to vehicle corridors directly increases, rather than decreases, the threat of catastrophic wildfire ignitions.
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An Insurmountable Fiscal Burden: The U.S. Forest Service is currently drowning in an $8.6 billion deferred maintenance backlog, unable to adequately maintain even a quarter of the 370,000 miles of roads it already manages. Forcing the agency to build and maintain new infrastructure in steep, fragile terrain is an act of fiscal insolvency that hands corporate entities a taxpayer-funded subsidy.
We cannot allow 25 years of hard-fought conservation history and established landscape science to be erased by a partisan committee vote. The Roadless Rule remains one of the most popular and scientifically sound environmental regulations ever written; it must not be dismantled on the Senate floor.
TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY: THE FLOOR FIGHT BEGINS
Because this bill has cleared the committee, every single U.S. Senator now has a vote on the fate of the Roadless Rule. We need a massive wall of public opposition to block this bill from getting the 60 votes it needs to pass the full Senate.
- Call Both of Your U.S. Senators Immediately: Regardless of what state you live in or what committees your representatives sit on, they will face a vote on S. 140. Call their offices and demand they vote NO on the Wildfire Prevention Act unless Senator Lee’s “Roadless Rule Nullification” rider is completely stripped from the text.
- Demand Fiscal and Scientific Sanity: Remind their staff that adding new roads inherently increases wildfire ignition risks and worsens the Forest Service’s current $8.6 billion infrastructure backlog. Tell them our public lands should be managed by sound science, sound economics, and public consensus, not late-night political riders.
Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to be connected directly to your senators’ offices.]
Photo: Tall Forb Meadows in the Bald Mountain Roadless Area, Caribou-Targhee National Forest.
