For nearly two decades, the federal Roadless Rule has prohibited road-building and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of the country’s most pristine national forest land. Among the areas currently protected is more than half of the nearly 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest, part of the largest remaining temperate rainforest on Earth. But now, conservationists and the public are speaking out against a rollback effort by Alaska officials and the Trump administration that they say threatens the forest’s old-growth groves and the unique wildlife that lives there. The rule has been controversial since President Bill Clinton issued it in 2001, and it’s especially contentious in Alaska. Through lawsuits and lobbying, politicians from the state have long sought to block its implementation. Supporters of roadless areas have mostly come out on top, winning multiple court cases and halting timber development when the Bush administration made the Tongass temporarily...