The Trump Administration has launched an assault on America’s wildest and most important forests by moving to repeal the Roadless Rule. This decades-old safeguard has kept more than 45 million acres of national forests free from destructive road-building, logging, mining, and drilling.

Its repeal would shatter some of the last intact landscapes in our country—forests that serve as natural carbon vaults, clean drinking water sources, and vital wildlife habitat.

These forests are among our strongest defenses against the climate crisis. They absorb and store massive amounts of carbon pollution, protect communities from floods and wildfires, and sustain biodiversity on a scale unmatched by other lands. Without the Roadless Rule, bulldozers and chainsaws will carve up habitat for grizzlies, wolves, and elk. Streams that provide drinking water to millions of Americans will be put at risk. And our chance to fight climate change with the most powerful natural tools at our disposal will be dangerously weakened.

The Trump Administration’s attack on the roadless rule harms wild places, wildlife, and people who live and work in these areas. It threatens the outdoor recreation economy that millions rely on, from hikers and hunters to climbers and paddlers. It hands taxpayer dollars to corporate polluters by forcing the public to subsidize expensive and destructive road-building. And it silences the voices of the overwhelming majority of Americans who want more protection for public lands, not less.

Roads of any kind are exceptionally harmful. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that 365 million vertebrate animals are killed on America’s roads every year. Building more miles of roads in some of the wildest places in the country will only add to that gruesome number.

America’s roadless forests are not expendable—they are irreplaceable. They belong to all of us, and they are essential to confronting the climate emergency and passing on a livable planet to future generations. The Trump Administration may be trying to sacrifice these lands for the profits of a few, but together, we won’t let them do it without a fight.

Please submit your public comment before the midnight (ET) 9/19 deadline to tell the administration that America’s last great roadless forests must remain protected. The future of our climate, our water, our wildlife, and our children depends on it.