Support Local Forest Management and Responsible Access

The U.S. Forest Service is accepting public comments on its proposal to rescind the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule — a policy affecting more than 44 million acres of National Forest System lands, including significant areas across California's 18 National Forests.

Comments close September 21. CORVA recommends submitting by September 17.

CORVA supports rescission of the nationwide rule, provided that future decisions continue to protect real environmental resources while returning meaningful authority to individual National Forests. Conditions in the Sierra Nevada, the North Coast, Southern California and the eastern forests are not the same, and a single nationwide prohibition written more than two decades ago cannot account for local wildfire risk, forest health, transportation needs or recreation demand.

Be clear about what this is. Rescission does not automatically reopen a single closed road or trail. Existing Forest Plans, Motor Vehicle Use Maps, Travel Management decisions, Wilderness designations and environmental laws all remain in force. What it does is remove a national regulatory barrier that shapes future decisions — and it creates an opening for our community to be at the table when those decisions get made.

This takes two steps, and both matter.

STEP 1 — File your official comment in the federal docket. This is the only submission that enters the administrative record: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FS-2025-0001-223869

STEP 2 — Send your letter to your members of Congress using the form below.

Personalize it. Name the forest you actually use — Los Padres, Sequoia, Sierra, Stanislaus, San Bernardino, Plumas, Shasta-Trinity, whichever is yours — and say what you do there and what access, wildfire or route connectivity has looked like firsthand. A few honest sentences from a real user outweigh a thousand identical form letters.

Public Lands FOR the People — Not FROM the People!