Now that the comment period for the proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule is open (for a minimal three weeks), I’m going to ask readers to do something very uncharacteristic for a semi-retired research ecologist and hardcore angler from Montana—forget all the good points that my friend Chris Hunt made in his recent article on the rule and why anglers should care about it. Forget his discussion about sedimentation, habitat fragmentation, and the nearly obligate relationship between roadless areas and existing bull trout, Gila trout, and west slope and greenback cutthroat populations. Forgive him for leaving out issues of large wood supply to headwater streams and the second and third order channels and, eventually, rivers they create. Instead, let’s focus on one thing we should all agree on in the West, whether we are anglers, loggers, ranchers, farmers, or hell, even politicians—the life and death importance of water supply.

Have you heard of the Sundry Civil Appropriations Act of 1897, signed by President William McKinley? Neither had I for most of my life, but I and every western angler and water user should have. More commonly referred to as the Organic Administration Act of 1897, it authorized the creation of national forests for three reasons, explicitly stating, “No national forest shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.” There you have it; the very genetics of the Forest Service focused in large measure on resilient water supply through headwater catchment protection.

I have worked for and with the Forest Service, and I’ve seen what they do well and what they do poorly. I have observed the scars of industrial logging on public lands—which actually occurred within a fairly short time frame—and I’ve been frustrated by the agency’s subsequent paralysis by analysis. Two of my three closest hunting and fishing partners are career Forest Service, and they are very candid about the agency’s strengths and flaws.

Often, though, it’s best to lead with numbers. The Forest Service has built, inventoried, and classified 380,000 miles of roads for logging and timber transport, representing one of the largest transportation infrastructure systems in the world. Putting aside the tens of thousands more miles of unclassified, unauthorized roads that forest users have built, this system, long enough to encircle our planet 15 times, is in notoriously poor shape, particularly since firefighting costs have exploded recently and agency budgets have been repurposed toward fire.

Impressive numbers, but what’s the point? Road density alters infiltration and drainage rates by intercepting shallow groundwater; every road and its drainage ditch become, effectively, an ephemeral or intermittent channel. Snowmelt and rainfall that should charge local water tables and leave the forest slowly get converted to surface water in relatively steep catchments and leave the headwaters at runoff instead of summer and fall. I’ve read maybe a hundred technical papers on this process in various journals, but don’t take my word for it; go to Google Scholar, enter “road density and hydrology in forests” like I just did and behold the 97,000 journal articles that come up—a significant number of them developed by Forest Service hydrologists and scientists. Read a few, or take a worthwhile, well-written shortcut and read Ben Goldfarb’s Crossings. We knew about forest protection and water supply in 1897, and we know a lot more now.

Montana has more than enough roads and not enough water for communities, agriculture, and resilient stream and river ecosystems. Punching roads through existing roadless headwater catchment areas of western and southwestern Montana, shown in light green, threaten them all (image: Wild Montana).

Here in Montana, the Roadless Rule applies to 6.4 million acres of Forest Service land—37% of it. That’s not insignificant. Montanans use Forest Service roads for recreation. We all use forest products. However, we are seeing water supplies collapse. Call it climate change, call it drought, whatever—wells are going dry, neighbors are fighting over water rights, the state water court docket is packed, and trout populations on our most famous rivers are falling precipitously. Fish, Wildlife and Parks has initiated various studies, but the hydrologic change is easily quantified and doesn’t lie. Except for a few tailwaters that are now surreally crowded, summer and fall flows have gone to hell, peak water temps have jumped, and dramatically decreased fish populations show it. Grain and hay crops are right behind the trout. There is economic hardship and trouble and tension across the state.

We need more water during low flow periods, not less. High integrity watersheds have an unrecognized social benefit; they capture precipitation, store it through infiltration, filter it, and deliver it slowly to channels. To replicate that through engineered solutions would be an unimaginably onerous burden on taxpayers. Roads? We don’t need more Forest Service roads; we need to decommission many (important work that the Forest Service has started, paid for with logging revenues) and better maintain the priority routes. Incidentally, for a variety of reasons many Forest Service logging proposals go without bids these days. The proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule isn’t about increased harvest or firefighting or local decision-making or any of the other horseshit rationalizations that are being trotted out. It’s about this administration’s rabid anti-conservation dogma. That dogma isn’t conservative; it’s radical, and radically short-sighted.

Every road and its drainage ditch intercepts shallow groundwater. If not maintained it will erode, intercept more, and become a channel (photo: G. Munther).

Western hunters and anglers of every political stripe kicked Senator Mike Lee’s federal lands transfer bill to the ground and sent it whimpering into oblivion. Water supply challenges don’t have quite the visceral impact of losing your elk honey holes to a land transfer, but they are a more fundamental and critical concern. We need to be paying attention to the data and addressing these dry times and those to come. Continuing the headwater catchment protections that were recognized in 1897 is a good place to start, even if your congressional representation doesn’t realize it. This is water we are talking about.

The public comment period for the proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule ends September 19, 2026.