The 2012 Colorado Roadless Rule (CRR) provides management direction for conserving and managing approximately 4.2 million acres of Colorado Roadless Areas (CRAs) on National Forest System (NFS) lands. The State of Colorado and Forest Service worked in partnership to strike a balance between conserving roadless area characteristics for future generations and allowing management activities within CRA that are important to the citizens and economy of the State of Colorado.

As part of that balance, the CRR included an exception to its general prohibition on road construction in CRAs: the North Fork coal mining exception. This exception allowed temporary road construction in CRAs for coal-related surface activities within a 19,100-acre area on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests (36 C.F.R. 294.43(c)(1)(ix)). On September 11, 2014, the Colorado U.S. District Court vacated this provision of the CRR for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) deficiencies.

The Forest Service proposes to remedy the court-identified NEPA deficiencies in a supplemental environmental impact statement and re-establish this exception to the CRR. In addition, the Forest Service is proposing to administratively correct the North Fork coal mining area boundary and the underlying CRA boundaries to remedy clerical errors. Total acres of the North Fork coal mining area would increase from 19,100 acres to 19,700 acres, the majority of the change (500 acres) is due to a math error found in the 2012 Final Environmental Impact Statement.