A decade after it was first adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has proven to be remarkably successful in protecting the 58.5 million acres of national forest roadless areas from road building and logging. Only about 75 miles of road building has occurred in the roadless areas – far less than the Forest Service had predicted a decade ago -- and just a miniscule fraction of the unroaded forests has been logged, mostly in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

• Tags: 2001 roadless area conservation rule, alaska, Bush administration, California, clean water, Colorado, Idaho, logging, mining, Montana, motorized recreation, national forests, New Mexico, Oregon, roadless area, roadless forests, Roadless Rule, Tongass National Forest, U.S. Forest Service, Utah, Washington, Wyoming
• Related Campaigns: Roadless Forests

Recognizing the importance, urgency and opportunity of developing alternatives to fossil fuel, The Wilderness Society and 7 conservation groups have signed onto a vision for the responsible development and transmission of renewable energy in Oregon. Our groups recognize that transitioning to renewable energy presents both challenges and opportunities, but are committed to working with the renewable development community for the cause of clean energy.

• Tags: Oregon, Renewable Energy, renewables, siting, transmission, vision
• Related Campaigns: Energy

An overlooked opportunity to sequester carbon on National Forests rests with its massive road system. Preliminary analysis by TWS has indicated that returning unneeded Forest Service roads back to a natural state would be equivalent to revegetating an area larger than Rhode Island. We estimate that carbon storage from decommissioning and revegetating unneeded roads on our national forests is 39.5 — 48.5 million metric tons.

• Tags: alaska, California, Carbon, Colorado, Forest Service, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, revegatation, U.S. Forest Service, uneeded roads, Washington
• Related Campaigns: Roadless Forests