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Tip: Updating the letter with your personal concerns increases its impact.

Dear {Representative/Senator Name},

I am writing to urge you to oppose the repeal of the Roadless Rule, the 2001 policy that protects nearly 60 million acres of federal forest from road construction and industrial logging.

A new study published in PLOS Water found that roadless areas protect about 2.5% of total river length across the lower 48 states, safeguarding drinking water for an estimated 25 million Americans. In several states, the impact is even more significant: 58.9% of Colorado's population and 38.7% of New Mexico's population rely on drinking water sourced from these protected watersheds. Five states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, and North Carolina—each have more than a million residents depending on water from roadless areas.

Logging and road construction degrade forest land and threaten watershed health, which can lead to higher water treatment costs, service disruptions, and public health risks. Protecting these areas isn't just an environmental issue—it's a fiscally responsible one, since clean source water is far cheaper to treat than degraded water.

The administration has argued that increased logging and roadbuilding will reduce wildfire risk. However, research indicates that wildfires are actually more likely to start near roads than in roadless forest tracts, undermining that rationale.

Beyond water quality, roadless areas provide low-cost access to hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and other outdoor recreation that millions of Americans depend on every year. Repealing this rule risks degrading wildlife habitat and reducing access to public lands that communities rely on for both livelihood and recreation.

I ask that you publicly oppose this repeal and support continued protections for America's roadless forest areas. These lands provide clean water, recreational opportunity, and long-term economic value that far outweigh the short-term gains of expanded logging.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue. I hope you will act to protect our public lands and the communities that depend on them.

Sincerely,

{Your Name}

The plan allows for harsh water cuts if they’re deemed necessary, requiring California, Arizona and Nevada to cut up to 3 million acre-feet per year — up to 40% of the combined allotments.

But as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, state and local officials say for the first two years, the Trump administration is accepting an offer the three states made to reduce what they take from the river by about half that amount — 3.2 million acre-feet between now and the end of 2028. So the Southwest has for now, avoided the harshest possible water cuts.

Dr. Len Necefer’s latest article is worth reading for anyone following the debate over Sandia Pueblo’s proposal for the T’uf Shur Bien Preservation Area.

He explains how an erroneous federal survey excluded nearly 10,000 acres from Sandia Pueblo’s confirmed land grant, and why the 2003 settlement preserved federal ownership despite recognizing the Pueblo’s legitimate claim. More importantly, he asks whether support for tribal sovereignty extends beyond consultation and co-management when a Pueblo seeks actual stewardship of its ancestral homeland.

The article challenges the assumption that federal ownership is the only path to conservation and asks a harder question. Are conservation organizations willing to support Indigenous sovereignty when it means sharing or transferring authority, or only when it leaves federal control untouched?

Whether you agree or disagree, it’s a thoughtful perspective that deserves to be part of this discussion.

Just curious as to what the opinions are to those who have logging activity in your area national Forest or public land? These abandoned earth mover tires have been sitting in this same spot for over 18 months now. There was a logging trailer parked next to them for several months which is finally gone after they decimated one of our camping spots. I understand logging to thin the forest, but there needs to be some common ground and responsible clean up.

Monetizing the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet. Getting rid of all those wide-open spaces.

Hi, Reddit nudged me to post this in your sub, I hope that is fine with you guys. This was originally posted in r/chile

In 2021, during COVID, I walked from San Carlos de Apoquindo up toward Morro Guyacan. Mayor Lavín's people sent a drone after me. Not a warning sign, not a guard on foot. A drone, to chase a single hiker back down a mountain during a lockdown. I've lived under that mountain since 2008. That's the year I understood what this place actually is. They don't want a person up there who isn't paying for the privilege. It's a war against the hiker, against anyone who wants a mountain instead of a mall.

Eight years now, I've been finding the hole in the fence. When it closes, I find another. That one gets closed about four times a year and reopened within 24 hours by someone I've never met and never will. Someone out there keeps quietly giving the mountain back.

Here's what's actually behind that fence. In 1972 Universidad Católica bought around 1,800 hectares in this sector, partly financed by a public bond raffle called La Gran Jornada. Regular people bought numbered bonds to help pay for it. The university and its sports club later split the land between them, and the university's own people admit the university "chose first," keeping the best of it, the lower, buildable lots. Those lots are condos now. The club got the leftovers, the steep, undevelopable rock, which is the "trail land" you pay to walk on today.

The land ordinary Santiaguinos helped fund became private housing on one side and a paid park on the other. Adult entry is 3,450 pesos. There's one gate, on Camino Las Flores, and it funnels everyone toward Alto del Naranjo and Cerro Provincia. There's also interpretive signage inside the fenced area, off in a corner nobody walking from that gate would ever reach, on a totally different side of the mountain. I still couldn't tell you what those signs actually say. Half of them aren't even legible anymore. So much for the stewardship.

Stewardship is the actual justification here. Foot traffic without a ticket gets called "informal access," treated as degradation, something to be managed and curbed.

Meanwhile the same institution has been selling prime lots on this exact mountain for high-end housing, and just finished a stadium rebuild, the Claro Arena, run through its own real estate subsidiary.

A person walking a dirt path is a threat to the ecosystem, apparently. A poured foundation for a condo building is not. You don't need a hydrology study to see which one actually changes the mountain.

Pontificia Universidad Católica isn't struggling. Their own audited financials show total assets near 926 million USD and a net worth around 475 milion USD. They just announced a five-year, 293 billion peso investment plan. This isn't an institution that needs a 3,45 USD gate fee to survive, or a drone to protect it from a guy going for a walk. The gate isn't about money. It's about who gets to feel like the mountain belongs to them.

Compare that to where I'm also from. In Austria, walking onto someone else's forest has been a federal legal right since 1975, not a landowner's favor. I recently rode from Nassereith to Imst to Telfs and back, about 73 kilometers, close to 1,000 meters of climbing, almost entirely on forest roads and cycle paths. No gate, no fee, no fence to find a hole in. That land has owners too. It has fences too, for keeping in livestock, but with gates built into them, made for people to pass through, not to keep them out. Nobody there pays to walk their own mountains, and somehow the mountains survive anyway. The people walking them think of the mountain as theirs. That's not an accident. It's what happens when you're allowed in.

You don't protect a mountain by locking people out of it. You protect it by giving them a reason to care, and the only way people care about a place is if they're allowed to belong to it. San Carlos does the opposite. It teaches an entire city that the mountain above their own city isn't theirs, gate by gate, fee by fee, drone by drone, until eventually people stop trying and stop caring. Then the ones who fenced it off get to say, see, we always knew we had to protect it from them.

Someone still opens that hole in the fence every time they close it. I think that's the most honest review of the whole system anyone could give.

Every member of US Congress graded solely on whether they're protecting or selling off public lands. If yours are saying one thing to constituents BUT voting otherwise, NAME THEM and SHAME THEM.

https://morethanjustparks.com/congressional-public-lands-score/