Roadless Rule Repeal Would Harm New England’s Last Wild Places

NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL OF MAINE • May 11, 2026

6,000 acres in the White Mountain National Forest are Inventoried Roadless Areas, meaning they have been protected from road-building and harvesting activities since 2001 by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Unfortunately, those precious acres could soon be subject to road construction and subsequent extractive activity because of the Trump Administration’s latest attempt to hand over our public lands to corporations and billionaires for profit. Once a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) is released this spring, the following comment period will be the last chance for the public to voice their dissent against the termination of the Roadless Rule. The threat is not only to the stunning cloak of forest across the mountains of western Maine, taken in from the peaks of Maine’s parcel of the White Mountain National Forest. The health of tens of millions of acres of forest—and their surrounding ecosystems and watersheds—is at stake.