“Keep the Roads Out”: Why So Many Wyomingites Are Fighting to Save the Roadless Rule

The statehouse may hate it, but a whole lot of Wyomingites want to keep the 2001 Forest Service Roadless Rule right where it is.

During a short, 21-day comment window that closed Friday, the US Forest Service logged 625,737 responses on the Trump administration’s plan to scrap the rule. Conservation groups, hunters and anglers, small-town business owners, weekend hikers, and families with deep roots in Wyoming conservation flooded the docket — and wrote directly to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins — with a simple message: don’t pave over the last best places.

From Jackson Hole to the Bighorns, residents leaned on lived experience more than ideology.

“We see firsthand how roads are the single greatest threat to wildlife,” wrote Kathryn Turner, a fourth-generation Triangle X Rancher, wildlife artist, and Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation board member. “They fragment habitat, block migration corridors, and increase collisions.”

Turner’s conservation pedigree runs deep — her father, John Turner, ran the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1989–1993.

Lee Ann Inberg-Schuff, honoring her late brother Kirk Inberg, a Game & Fish warden who died in 1991 while tracking grizzlies, kept it blunt:

“Tourists do not come to look at clear cuts and strip mines. Recreation and tourism are a $4.9 billion industry in Wyoming. Extractive industries are boom/bust at best… Keeping Roadless areas makes the most financial sense.”

The Roadless Rule is one of modern conservation’s biggest wins, protecting 44.7 million acres of national forests from new roadbuilding and logging (Colorado and Idaho run their own versions). In Wyoming, the rule covers about 3.2 million acres across nine national forests — lands owned by all Americans.

A few things it doesn’t do: It doesn’t close existing roads, and it doesn’t ban motorized travel where it’s already allowed.

Wyoming’s political leadership has fought the rule since day one, suing to overturn it and losing for good when the Supreme Court declined the case in 2021. Now, the administration wants a full rescission, arguing that more road access is needed to tackle insects, disease, and wildfire risk in the wildland–urban interface.

Plenty of foresters say there’s a middle path. Former USDA undersecretary Robert Bonnie suggested updating the rule — allowing temporary roads near neighborhoods for thinning and restoration — instead of blowing it up entirely.

Many Wyoming agencies lined up with the rollback, saying local managers should get more discretion. The State Forestry Division “fully endorsed” rescission. DEQ promised to keep enforcing pollution limits. State Parks signed on too. The Saratoga-Encampment-Rawlins Conservation District wants states to craft their own roadless rules.

But county opinions split: Converse County pushed to hand more power to local forests; Teton County reaffirmed support for roadless protections (as it has since 2018).

On the citizen side, the theme was “tune-up, don’t total it.”

“In Wyoming, when things aren’t working quite right, we fix them — we don’t throw them away,” wrote the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, likening a full repeal to “buying a brand-new truck when all you really need is a repair.”

They also reminded the agency that the 2001 rule came after 430 public meetings and 1.6 million comments — not a 3-week sprint.

In Lander, Wild Iris Mountain Sports co-owner Jake Dickerson said his shop — and town — depend on protected public lands:

“The public lands around the Wind River Range are the driving force of our business and we need them to stay protected. Repealing the rule would hurt the entire economy of our town and thousands like it across the West.”

An 81-year-old commenter put it this way: the national forests already have 370,000 miles of roads — “enough to circle the Earth nearly 15 times.” Another family that’s run a sporting-goods store near the Bighorn National Forest for 56 years warned the rollback would “hurt tourism and recreation” with no guarantee of meaningful economic gain.

A resident from a “small rural community” said most neighbors won’t find the “obscure website” to comment — but “we will all vote.”

Hunters and scientists drilled into habitat math:

• ~70% of Wyoming’s roadless acres provide spring–fall range for elk, according to an analysis using Game & Fish seasonal range data.
• 60% of roadless areas hold irreplaceable native trout habitat, said Samantha Beard, chair of the Wyoming Council of Trout Unlimited.
• Recreation groups tallied 11,337 climbing routes and boulder problems, 1,000+ whitewater runs, and 43,826 miles of trail (including the Continental Divide Trail), plus 20,298 mountain-bike routes in areas safeguarded by the rule.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers called roadless areas “strongholds” for fish and wildlife, urging Congress to go beyond an administrative rule and pass the Roadless Area Conservation Act.

Scientists weighed in too. The Society for Conservation Biology warned rescission would “dramatically harm” wildlife and forest health, citing research showing roadless areas protect drinking water for hundreds of thousands and store significant carbon.

An early sample analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found 99% of commenters opposed rolling the rule back.

The Forest Service now sorts the mountain of comments — looking for specifics, data, and clear evidence — to inform an Environmental Impact Statement on rescission. The agency says to expect a final rule, EIS, and Record of Decision in late 2026.

Between now and then, the fight’s not going anywhere. As Lander hunter Nathan Maxon put it, roadless tracts are “the last best places to hunt in Wyoming, and probably the West.”

And once a wild place gets cut by a road? One commenter’s reminder was stark: it rarely goes back to what it was.

The original story by Angus M. Thuermer Jr. for WyoFile.