A Look at Maine’s Caribou Speckled Roadless Area

ENVIRONMENT MAINE • September 28, 2026

Environment Maine recently organized local environmental organizations to tour the Caribou Speckled Roadless Area in the White Mountain National Forest west of Bethel to explore the ways that the attempted rollback of federal conservation rules might impact our public lands. This 6,000-acre ring of conserved forests around the high peaks of Caribou and Speckled Mountains is breathtakingly beautiful. Since 2001, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has protected this place — along with 58 million acres of similarly pristine national forests nationwide. Now, the U.S. Forest Service is attempting to open 45 million acres of protected, roadless national forests across the country to the heavy tracks of bulldozers and industrial logging equipment.