About 5% of Wyoming is wild, unroaded and uncut National Forest land that is unprotected from developments like industrial logging. These wonderful places, totaling around 3.2 million acres, are vitally important to wildlife and to human communities-for habitat and food, for clean water and healthy fisheries, and as places for wildlife and people to get away from it all. Many of these unprotected roadless areas are at lower elevations and are even more biologically rich than the protected Wilderness Areas in Wyoming.

Protecting 5% of wild Wyoming from new roads and new logging just makes sense. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule would do just that. However, the Bush Administration is poised to reverse the rule, and Governor Freudenthal is opposed to the rule as well.

• National forests in Wyoming encompass over 9 million acres-15 percent of the state's land base of approx. 63 million acres.
• About 5% of the state's land base, 3.2 million acres, are wild roadless areas that are unprotected from development (35% of National Forest lands).
• Protected Wilderness areas on national forests in Wyoming encompass less than 3.1 million acres. This amounts to only 5% of the state, or about 33% of Wyoming's National Forests. It is mostly "rock and ice" in the northwestern corner of the state.
• 32% of Wyoming's National Forests are no longer wild due to logging, mining, and over 12,000 miles of roads.
• National Forests are owned in common by all Americans, for the benefit of all Americans. They are not the property of the timber companies or other industries.
• Each National Forest in Wyoming holds important wild roadless areas. This includes the Thunder Basin National Grassland in eastern Wyoming.

• National Forest watersheds provide drinking water to approximately one-fifth of the U.S. population.
• The value of this municipal water resource has been estimated at $3.7 billion annually.
• Roads are the leading cause of water quality degradation on national forests. The healthiest populations of native fish are found in unroaded and unlogged watersheds.

• Roadless areas nationwide support more than 280 threatened, endangered, and sensitive species. These areas provide a place for wildlife to find refuge from industrial development.
• Roadless areas provide important habitat for wildlife beloved by Wyoming residents, including imperiled cutthroat trout, lynx, goshawks, and wolverine plus game species like elk and bighorn sheep.
• More than 400 scientists have endorsed protection of all roadless areas from road building, commercial logging, and mineral development, citing their critical importance for the recovery of salmon and other fish, among other values.

• Roadless areas are extremely important recreation areas for many Wyoming citizens and tourists for hiking, camping, wildlife viewing and birdwatching, hunting, and horseback riding. Roadless areas provide the wide open spaces, scenic beauty, tranquility, and wildlife treasured by the people of Wyoming.
• As much as $450 million is spent in Wyoming by "adventure tourists" who come to Wyoming to experience wild places such as roadless areas in our National Forests.
• The Roadless Rule would maintain current roaded and motorized access to the National Forests.

• More than half of the National Forest System is open to oil and natural gas production, yet these lands yield only 4 percent of the nation's current domestic output.
• National forests provide only 5 percent of the nation's timber supply, of which less than five percent comes from roadless areas. In other words, less than one-quarter of one percent of the nation's timber supply comes from roadless areas.
• Eighty-five percent of the revenue generated from national forests comes from recreational activities-more than five times the amount generated by logging.

• In Wyoming, less than 4% of the "community fire protection zone" is in roadless areas. In other words, the threat of forest fires to homes and communities is not related to roadless lands.
• In the West, wildfires are twice as likely to occur in roaded areas as to occur in roadless areas.
• Nearly all wildfires started by humans and 92 percent of lightning-starts occur outside of roadless areas.
• Roadless areas tend to be far from communities and have lower fire risks than roaded forests.
• Nationwide, less than 16 percent of national forests at moderate to high risk of unnaturally catastrophic fire are in inventoried roadless areas, and fuel loads in many of those areas could be reduced without commercial logging and road building.
• Logging in roadless areas can increase fire risk by drying out fuels and providing more access and therefore more human-caused fires.

• A national rule is necessary because National Forest planning at the local level has resulted in the destruction of 2.8 million acres of roadless areas nationwide during the past 20 years.
• Under the Bush Administration, the Forest Service is pushing to open as much as 36% of the unprotected roadless lands on the Bighorn National Forest to logging.
• Recently updated forest plans for National Forests in the region (the Arapaho-Roosevelt, Medicine Bow and Routt NFs) fail to protect more than 500,000 acres of roadless areas open to road construction.

• About specific roadless areas in Wyoming and about efforts to protect roadless areas in Wyoming, contact Biodiversity Conservation Alliance at 307-742-7978. Starting in May 2004, look for photos and descriptions of Wyoming's roadless areas on BCA's website at http://www.voiceforthewild.org/. Watch for action alerts as well.
• About the national "big picture" roadless area situation, visit the Heritage Forest Campaign website at http://www.ourforests.org.
• About the roadless rule and agency rulemaking process, visit the Forest Service's website, http://www.roadless.fs.fed.us/.