When people on California’s Central Coast hear the phrase “roadless rule,” it’s often misunderstood to mean that roadless national forest lands are closed to the public or lack access altogether.
That misconception has taken on new significance as the Trump administration moves to repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a cornerstone federal policy that protects nearly 60 million acres of national forests from new road construction.
On the Central Coast—where Los Padres National Forest stretches across rugged terrain from Big Sur through the Santa Lucia Mountains and into San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties—the proposal carries direct local implications. More than 635,000 acres within and surrounding the Los Padres are protected under the rule, including backcountry in SLO County used for recreation and hunting.
The proposal has drawn opposition from conservation groups, hunters, anglers, and other public land advocates who say the rule protects some of the country’s most intact forests while preserving the wild landscapes that millions of Americans use for recreation.
“The biggest misconception is that these places are somehow off-limits,” said Ben Pitterle, director of advocacy and field operations for Los Padres ForestWatch. “In fact, they’re not roadless. There are thousands of miles of existing roads and trails in these areas.”
‘Almost anywhere you’ve gone to recreate in Los Padres National Forest, you’ve probably been in a roadless area.’
—Ben Pitterle, director of advocacy and field operations for Los Padres ForestWatch
Within SLO County, that includes areas such as the eastern slopes of the Santa Lucia Range, portions of the interior backcountry between Santa Margarita and Atascadero, and remote ridgelines that drain into Santa Barbara County.
The rule doesn’t prohibit hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, or horseback riding, Pitterle said. Instead, it largely prevents the construction of new permanent roads while restricting the most intensive forms of commercial logging in designated inventoried roadless areas.
“It’s literally what keeps the character and integrity of these places intact,” he said. “When people go to national forests, they want a wild or semi-wild experience in nature, and that’s what’s at stake.”
That message drew roughly 70 people to a June 27 town hall meeting in San Luis Obispo, where Los Padres ForestWatch joined Sierra Club, CalWild, Latino Outdoors, and The Wilderness Society to explain what repealing the rule could mean for the Central Coast. Organizers said the focus was not only on statewide impacts, but also on how changes could reshape access, habitat, and watershed health in SLO County.
Among the organizations against the repeal is Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a national nonprofit that advocates for conserving public lands and waters while protecting opportunities to hunt and fish.
“Those who hunt and fish are very, very much part of the conservation movement,” said Joel Weltzien, California chapter coordinator for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “I think there’s a good bit of hostility in some places that hunting is somehow antithetical to conservation, and there’s really nothing that could be further from the truth.”
Weltzien told New Times that California’s roadless areas include habitat that directly supports Central Coast wildlife populations that hunters and anglers rely on.
“If you look at a map of the inventoried roadless areas in California, you’re looking at some of the best and most intact habitat,” he said. “Without inventoried roadless areas, there wouldn’t be anything like the hunting and fishing opportunities we currently have in California.”
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule was adopted in the final days of the Clinton administration after decades of industrial logging reshaped national forests across the country.
Despite its name, public access has always remained central to the policy.
Within Los Padres National Forest, designated roadless areas include roughly 349 miles of existing roads and motorized and nonmotorized trails. In SLO County, these corridors connect to popular recreation gateways and less-developed backcountry zones used by hikers, backpackers, hunters, and off-highway vehicle users.
“Almost anywhere you’ve gone to recreate in Los Padres National Forest, you’ve probably been in a roadless area,” Pitterle said.
For hunters, those undeveloped landscapes translate into healthier wildlife populations.
Weltzien said deer often spend portions of their lives within or adjacent to roadless areas because they experience less human disturbance, while cold-water streams originating in those forests support productive fisheries that extend into downstream Central Coast watersheds.
“When you start tweaking with these things as a result of additional roads and additional infrastructure and additional development, then you almost certainly will see a decline in the quality of the habitat,” he said. “That yields less game, less fish, and fewer opportunities to hunt and fish.”
The Trump administration has framed repealing the rule as a way to improve forest management, increase timber production, and expand access for wildfire prevention projects as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Pitterle argues those justifications overlook how the rule already works in places like SLO County, where wildfire risk, infrastructure limitations, and watershed protection are closely intertwined.
“The issue isn’t a lack of roads,” he said. “It’s that we’re struggling to maintain the roads and trails we already have.”
He pointed to the Forest Service’s $6 billion maintenance backlog and said the agency has simultaneously proposed reducing trail maintenance funding.
He also disputed the idea that the rule prevents wildfire mitigation.
“The Roadless Rule doesn’t prevent any of that,” Pitterle said. “Those kinds of projects are happening all the time in existing roadless areas.”
He pointed to the Tecuya Ridge fuel reduction project in Los Padres National Forest, where commercial timber removal occurred within a designated roadless area as part of a wildfire mitigation effort. Existing regulations allow road construction and vegetation management when needed to protect public safety or reduce wildfire risk.
Weltzien said there is room to discuss improvements to the policy, but he sees a significant difference between refining the rule and eliminating it altogether.
“I think you can have a good faith conversation about ways to improve the Roadless Rule,” he said. “But that’s not what you get with what’s being proposed right now. A full repeal is definitely not in the interests of those who hunt and fish in California.”
Support for the rule has remained consistent since its adoption. A 2025 poll commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that 76 percent of likely voters support maintaining the Roadless Rule, while 77 percent said conserving national forests for current and future generations should take priority over expanding timber harvesting and mining. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independent voters all expressed support for keeping the protections.
“This should concern people across party lines,” Pitterle said. “This isn’t about closing forests or limiting recreation. It’s about whether some of our most intact public lands remain protected for future generations or become available for industrial development.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to release a draft environmental impact statement as part of the repeal process, followed by a nationwide public comment period. A final decision on whether to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule is expected in late 2026. ∆
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in July 9-16, 2026.
