Without federally planned public meetings about planned repeal of the 2001 policy, organizations host events in Bozeman and across the state

By Jen Clancey STAFF WRITER 

As more residents arrived to a Gallatin County Fairgrounds building on March 12, organizers unfolded and added chairs to rows of people ready to listen or offer public comment about the planned repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule. The meeting was led by a group of organizations creating public input opportunities about the rescission of the conservation policy, and Bozeman was the second to last meeting location in a series of seven across the state. 

In June 2025, the U.S. The Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced intentions to repeal the Roadless Rule. Adopted under the Clinton Administration, the law banned construction, re-construction and timber harvesting on more than 58 million acres of public land. In Montana, six million acres are protected as roadless. 

Hilary Eisen, the federal policy director at Wild Montana, explained that a group of public land advocates collected over 4,000 signatures and petitioned the chief of the U.S. Forest Service to hold public meetings regarding the Roadless Rule repeal, but the USFS did not respond. Thirteen organizations decided to group together and plan public meetings themselves instead. 

“It needs to happen, like there needs to be community conversations about this very impactful change,” Eisen told Explore Big Sky. “So we’re hoping that maybe by demonstrating to the Forest Service how this works, that they will change their mind and they’ll hold meetings, but at the very least we are hoping that we can at least provide that opportunity.”

The event, centering on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest, began with a short panel with Ryan Callahan, CEO and president of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Lisa Stoeffler, former Bozeman Ranger District leader with decades of forest management experience, and Vasu Sojitra, a professional mountain athlete, filmmaker and adaptive sports advocate. 

Stoeffler described how protection has become more important since the Roadless Rule’s implementation, including threats of wildfire, water scarcity and climate change. 

“There’s simply no good reason to upend the good work done at a local level with no rationale for doing so,” Stoeffler said. While the USFS has stated that roads promote access to fighting wildfires, research as reported by Robert Chaney in Mountain Journal, has shown that fire starts happen more frequently when in proximity to a road. In the meeting, Stoeffler shared that there are ways to improve the roadless rule, but warned against broad changes in lieu of carefully weighing site-specific solutions. 

Sojitra also shared his perspective as an outdoors advocate with a disability.
“One of the biggest things for folks with disabilities is that we don’t need more roads to get places,” Sojitra said. “ We just need more programming to get to places.”

Sojitra also explained that through adaptive programming, he was able to fall in love with the outdoors, like many in the room, and that protecting the environment and wilderness is vital to health.

Public comment began later, and residents lined up one after the other to share what the Roadless Rule means to them, whether or not they support it, and why. Bozeman resident Karissa Wedman shared her experience working in conservation and wildland firefighting. She described her appreciation for protected public lands and noted that as a 25-year-old, the Roadless Rule has been in place her entire life. 

“I would like to say something for people my age and younger,” Wedman said. “It’s that we don’t wanna lose this. We love this, and it’s scary to think of the rest of our lives without it.”

Another Bozeman resident, Scott Bischke, described his connection with outdoor spaces in Montana. 

“ We looked at the map today—just of all the road areas in Montana—and [I’m] confident to say that we have either recreated in each one of them or at the minimum been adjacent to them, fishing, hunting, enjoying the outdoors, all the different things that we do,” he said. 

He then directed his comments about the current administration and urged leadership to use the Roadless Rule to protect further lands “for the critters that live there and for future Americans to explore.” 

Other commenters included a Gallatin Gateway resident speaking to protect forests for future generations, including his 8-year-old granddaughter, and an Ennis resident and board member of the Montana Logging Association, who argued that the Roadless Rule needs deep reform. 

The USFS is expected to release its proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement in late March or early April. When it’s released, Wild Montana will compile all of the comments collected in meetings, both verbal and written, and send the comments to the USFS. There will be hundreds, as attendance at meetings across the state was robust, Wild Montana Organizing Director Kascie Herron said. 

“I’ve been blown away personally by the amount of community response that we’ve seen in each of these towns [where] we’ve held these meetings,” Herron said. She described comments from people on both sides of the argument, and noted that it was important to host meetings that promoted the democratic process typically seen in major land management decisions. 

Helena was the final meeting location after Bozeman, and the coalition will now focus on communicating with attendees and preparing for the public comment stage.