Roadless rule rescission threatens highest integrity forest ecosystems in the United States

Earth's intact forests provide globally significant ecosystem services to humanity, but to maintain these services it is crucial to protect intact forests from road building and other types of anthropogenic degradation. In the United States, some of the most important intact forests were designated as Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) in 2001 under the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The current US administration wants to roll back designation of IRAs, arguing it is necessary for wildfire prevention and timber production. Here, we examine the integrity of forests within and outside IRAs, review the importance of intact forests and IRAs, and critique the arguments put forward to justify rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. We find IRAs have among the highest integrity forests in the nation, often rivaling even protected areas. Consequently, IRAs provide higher levels of many forest benefits, such as healthy watersheds and clean water, forest-dependent biodiversity, traditional forest use and cultural values, and climate regulation. Building roads into IRAs will degrade these forest ecosystem functions, increase fire risk, and is grossly uneconomic, especially given the Forest Service's current $10.8 billion backlog in deferred maintenance.