And so they did, razing most of the eastern hardwood forests by 1900 before moving west, to the softwood forests of the Rockies, California, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska. The rapid clearing of the American forest brought alarm as early as the nineteenth century, and was a leading reason for the creation of the country's first conservation organizations.

Today, Americans own 191 million acres of national forest in 156 separate forests in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. This is twice the size of the national park system or the national wildlife refuge system. Three times as many people visit national forests as national parks, and the forests provide habitat for more rare species than refuges do. Hundreds of communities get their drinking water from national forest streams. Most forest land in the US is in private ownership, but the few remaining stands of virgin forest are virtually all on public lands.

Even so, the national forests—the people, plants, and animals who rely on them for recreation, livelihood, and habitat—increasingly threatened by logging and related activities. More than 50 percent of the roughly 190 million acres of national forest land is already open to logging, mining, and other extractive industries. One of the most effective ways to protect a pristine forest is to keep the roads out.

The Forest Service issued the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to protect 58.5 million acres of forestland after a three-year administrative process that involved more than 600 public meetings (including more than 40 in Idaho) and that drew a record-breaking 1.6 million public comments. The final policy includes Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest remaining temperate rainforest in the world. Under the roadless policy, these special areas will be protected from new road construction, most forms of logging, new oil and gas leases, and mineral development Almost immediately after his inauguration, President Bush ordered all recent Clinton administration rules and policies, including the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, to be halted, pending review

Earthjustice works on Capitol Hill to maintain strong environmental safeguards for our national forests, and in court to ensure that management of our forests is in keeping with the law.