Under the nationwide 2001 Rule, currently in effect for Colorado’s roadless areas, logging and road construction are prohibited in roadless areas, with a few narrowly-tailored exceptions for existing rights, public safety, and common sense.

The new Colorado Rule may have very broad exceptions to these prohibitions. For example, under the preliminary draft rule published earlier this year, roadless locations where ski areas can build or expand would be removed from the roadless inventory — and therefore from any protections ─ altogether! Road-building would be allowed to facilitate oil and gas drilling in more than 93,000 roadless acres where mineral leases have been sold since the effective date of the 2001 Rule. The preliminary draft rule would also allow almost unlimited logging in roadless areas, even in locations far away from homes or other important infrastructure.

Colorado Wild is part of a large coalition of groups that is fighting any weakening of the strong protections for national forest roadless areas currently in force via the 2001 Rule. With your help, the coalition generated over 80,000 comments against the proposed Colorado Rule earlier this year. We remain hopeful that the proposed rule will be strengthened in response to this public outcry.

The draft Colorado rule is expected to be issued for public comment this summer. Please be watching for alerts from Colorado Wild. We will need another massive outpouring of support for strong roadless area protection.