A federal government shutdown would trigger a wide variety of setbacks for our public lands and natural resources that would worsen over time. Check this fact sheet for details on how federal agencies and the public lands and natural resources they protect will be affected by a shutdown.
The Wilderness Society will continue to update this document as more information comes in.
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.
Last year, The Wilderness Society and 55 other conservation organizations delivered a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, outlining the damage that off-road vehicle use can cause if not prohibited in potential Wilderness areas.
These photographs and descriptions portray the damage that motorized vehicles have already caused in potential Wilderness areas in California, Idaho, Oregon and Montana. Many areas that were once pristine are now tarnished with unsightly vehicle tracks.
This week, The Wilderness Society President Bill Meadows sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, reiterating that the Forest Service maintain policies to protect land that has been recommended for Wilderness designation. The letter urges the Forest Service to prohibit off-road motorized vehicle use that can damage currently untouched wild areas.
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.
