Federal forest land that is not wilderness may still be protected under the "roadless rule" put on the books in 2001.
Now the federal government, at the request of the State of Alaska, is considering removing roadless rule protection for the Tongass National Forest, revered as a place of biological diversity. , but we'll guess Jim Furnish already submitted his comments.
Furnish is a former Forest Service hand, having run Oregon's Siuslaw National Forest and served as Deputy Chief of the entire Forest Service. He can point to a number of benefits to keeping the roadless rule in place, and he does so in this interview on the JX.