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Roadless Areas

Wilderness in all but name.
Kelly Creek Roadless Area, also known as the Great Burn. Haverstick Photo.
A map of the wildlands of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. Created by Kylie Wilson.
Click here to see a larger version.

What are roadless areas?

Before congress passed the 1964 Wilderness Act, activists discussed what should constitute “wilderness” in a legal sense. The framers of the act believed that the absence of roads—the arteries of human industrial society—was a main way to tell if somewhere was wild or not.

The Wilderness Act required public land agencies to inventory what places in the US could become part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Forest Service has catalogued these not-yet-protected wild places as Inventoried Roadless Areas, or IRAs (the BLM calls them Wilderness Study Areas, or WSAs). The Forest Service frequently updates the borders of existing inventories, for example, when a forest plan is revised.

Roadless areas, whether formal IRAs, those identified through the forest planning process, or those missed by federal agencies, are basically unprotected wildernesses.

IRAs make up about 58.5 million acres of the United States, or about 2.5% of the entire country.

Most roadless areas have:
  • No roads
  • No permanent structures
  • No human settlements
  • Little to no evidence of logging or mining
  • Intact native plant and animal communities
However, unlike wilderness areas, roadless areas in the Wild Clearwater (and elsewhere in the US) are still open to industrial extraction by roadbuilding, logging, and mining.
A road-caused slide on the NPCNF, FOC file photo.

The Problem(s) with Roads

As one saying goes, “the deer doesn’t cross the road, the road crosses the forest.” It can be easy to see nature from a human-centric view, where roads provide access to resources and communities.

From nature’s point of view, roads introduce many problems, such as:

  • Constant sediment pollution in streams and rivers, degrading habitat for trout and salmon

  • Increased encounters between grizzly bears and humans, which are often deadly for bears

  • Decreased security for elk, leading to smaller bulls and problems in calves

  • Noxious weed expansion along roadsides

  • Changes to groundwater flow, including increased landslides

  • Motorized impacts, which disproportionately affect sensitive species like wolverines

There are over 260,000 miles of system roads on the national forests, about five-and-a-half times more than the US interstate system.

That doesn’t include many closed roads, “temporary roads”, or motorized trails. In comparison, there are just 5,000 miles of roads in all the national parks.

Mountains in the Mallard-Larkins Roadless Area, Brett Haverstick photo.

The Roadless Rules

Most roadless areas in the US are regulated by the 2001 Roadless Rule, which generally prohibits roadbuilding and logging within them. The states of Idaho and Colorado have their own roadless rules that allow for more development than the national rule.

Since 2001, tens of thousands of acres of roadless country has been developed through legal loopholes in the 2001 National Roadless Rule and the Idaho Roadless Rule. An FOC investigation shows that development in roadless areas has ramped up since 2010.

As development continues in roadless areas, roads fragment and degrade wild country and make roadless inventories less accurate.

You can read our report here.
Ultimately, the roadless rules have not won the permanent protection of roadless areas in the Wild Clearwater. Friends of the Clearwater supports the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). Among other provisions, NREPA would protect essentially all the roadless areas in the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests as wilderness (and many more outside the Wild Clearwater).  

You can learn more about that bill here.

The "Big Five" Roadless Areas of the Wild Clearwater

When it comes to wild places, size does matter—protecting large, connected areas is better than small, isolated areas—especially for large mammals like grizzly bears.
The five largest roadless areas in the Clearwater each top 100,000 acres in size. Together, their million acres represent some of the best unprotected wildlife habitat in America.
 Meadow Creek

Meadow Creek is 215,000 acres watershed on the Nez Perce National Forest. A vital fishery for salmon, steelhead, and bull trout, and needed addition to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

Read More
Mallard-Larkins

Ferns, red alder, cedar, and fungi mark the inland rainforest of the Mallard-Larkins. This large roadless area is overwhelmingly green, excepting the stony peaks of the Pioneer Area.

Read More
Fish-Hungery Creek

Fish and Hungery creeks (the largest tributaries of the Lochsa) are prime steelhead streams. The roadless area lies between the Lochsa to the south and the Lolo motorway to the north.

Read More
Weitas Creek

Weitas Creek is the largest roadless area in the Clearwater Basin. It is a verdant and diverse landscape, bounded by the North Fork of the Clearwater to the north and the Lolo Motorway to the south.

Read More
The Great Burn

The Great Burn, named in memory of the epic 1910 wildfires, is the crown of the Bitterroots. It stretches from Kelly Creek in Idaho to nearly the Clark Fork River in Montana.

Read More

All Roadless Areas of the Wild Clearwater

FOC has been monitoring the Clearwater basin wildlands for nearly 40 years. In that time, we have created our own inventory of undeveloped roadless lands that occasionally differs to the official boundaries of the Idaho Roadless Rule, but better reflects on-the-ground conditions. 

FOC advocates for several roadless areas at the fringes of our mission area, including the Bitterroot Face and Lolo Creek (northern additions to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness), Rapid River and Salmon Face (in the Greater Hell's Canyon area), and Mosquito-Fly, Sheep-Stateline, and Midget Peak RAs (in the Panhandle Nat'l Forest).
The following is a list of every large (5,000 acre plus) undeveloped roadless area in the Greater Clearwater. 
These roadless areas are grouped in "complexes", landscapes where only one road separates any roadless area from another. "Additions" are roadless areas that are directly adjacent to existing wilderness areas, without any roads between.*

Clearwater Wildlands Complex (1.035 million acres)

  • Mallard-Larkins — 260,000 acres, Clearwater and St. Joe Nat'l Forests
  • Great Burn/Kelly Creek — 255,000 acres, Clearwater and Lolo Nat'l Forests
  • Weitas Creek — 250,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • Fish and Hungery Creeks — 118,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • Upper North Fork (includes Rawhide) — 63,000 acres, Clearwater, Lolo, and Idaho Panhandle Nat'l Forest 
  • Pot Mountain — 51,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • Moose Mountain — 22,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • Weir Creek — 22,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • Siwash Creek — 9,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • Eldorado Creek — 7,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest

Selway-Bitterroot Additions and Adjacent (521,000 acres)

  • Meadow Creek — 215,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest and Bureau of Land Management
  • Rackliff-Gedney — 90,000 acres, Nez Perce and Clearwater Nat'l Forests
  • Sneakfoot Meadows — 23,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest 
  • South Lochsa Slope — 75,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • North Fork Spruce – 36,000 acres, Clearwater Nat'l Forest
  • O'Hara-Falls Creek* — 33,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest
  • Lick Point* — 7,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest

Frank Church-River of No Return Additions (64,000 acres)

  • Cove-Mallard — 64,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest

Gospel-Hump Additions and Adjacent (55,000 acres)

  • John's Creek† — 15,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest
  • Dixie Summit-Nut Hill* — 13,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest
  • Other Gospel-Hump additions — 40,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest

Grandmother Mountain Area (44,000 acres)

  • Grandmother Mountain — 35,000 acres, Idaho Panhandle Nat'l Forest and Bureau of Land Management
  • Pinchot Butte — 9,000 acres, Idaho Panhandle Nat'l Forest and Bureau of Land Management

Slate Creek Complex (39,000 acres)

  • North Fork Slate Creek — 11,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest
  • Little Slate Creek — 12,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest
  • John Day — 10,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest
  • Little Slate Creek North — 6,000 acres, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest

Other Wildlands, Nez Perce Nat'l Forest

  • Clear Creek — 9,000 acres
  • Pilot Knob/Silver Creek — 21,000 acres
  • Rapid River — 

*O'Hara-Falls Creek and Lick Point RAs are separated from the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness by one and two roads, respectively. Dixie Summit/Nut Hill is divided by one road from the Gospel-Hump Wilderness. These three are the "adjacent" areas in the complexes and are separate Wildernesses in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). 

†Acreage for John's Creek is a rough estimate. It is not inventoried.

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