As part of the Roadless Rule, it established a number of Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs), which are governed by regulations, and which protect over 130,000 km, or nearly 81,000 miles of rivers. In the new study published today, a team of researchers studied 2,488 protected roadless areas to determine how they contribute to river protection, how many people rely on them for drinking water, and the roles they play in hunting, fishing, and supporting aquatic biodiversity.
What is at risk with the repeal of the Roadless Rule?
IRAs protect roughly 2.5% of total river length in the contiguous United States. A total of 38 states benefit from river protection through IRAs, with the highest proportion in western states like Idaho, Utah, and Colorado, the researchers found.
While 25 million people rely on watersheds influenced by IRAs, dependency varies by state. Five states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, and North Carolina—each have over 1 million people who source drinking water from roadless areas. In California, 24% of the state’s population depend on drinking water sourced from IRA-influenced watersheds, as do 58.9% of Colorado’s population, and 38.7% of New Mexico’s population. What’s more, the proximity of a number of National Forests to urban centers means that even states with small IRAs can have a large fraction of the population that is dependent on those waterways. The Angeles National Forest, for example, serves over 4 million public water service customers in southern California.