The Stakes
A quarter-century of federal land-use restrictions covering roughly 30 percent of all U.S. Forest Service territory may be coming to an end. The Trump administration’s move to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule would open nearly 45 million acres to road construction, timber harvesting, and resource extraction — a shift that backers say is long overdue for wildfire management and that critics are already preparing to challenge in court.
What Happened
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins filed a formal rule Tuesday to eliminate the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in its entirety. Established in 2001, the rule has barred road-building, logging, and mining across a massive swath of federally managed forests for 25 years. A draft environmental impact statement was set to be posted Wednesday, with a public comment window running through September 21.
Rollins framed the rollback squarely around wildfire risk. “For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” she told the Stateline in announcing the move.
Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, who previously worked for a major Idaho lumber producer, argued the existing rule had frustrated land managers trying to address mounting fire hazards across the West. He noted that roughly 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas carry high or very high wildfire hazard potential, while only about 5 percent of those same areas have received any hazardous fuels reduction treatment since 2014.
The administration first signaled its intent to roll back the rule in August 2025. That notice drew more than 600,000 public comments, the large majority of them in opposition. Despite that volume of response, no public meetings have been held since that initial notice — a contrast to the original 2001 rulemaking, which involved more than 600 public meetings across Western states and generated over 1.6 million comments before the protections were finalized.
By the Numbers
45 million acres of Forest Service land currently protected by the Roadless Rule would be subject to the rescission. One-third of those acres sit in Alaska, including the Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest surviving temperate rainforest. Oregon alone contains 2 million of the affected acres. Ninety-six percent of all Forest Service inventoried roadless areas are located across 12 western states. The comment period following the draft environmental impact statement closes September 21, 2026.
The Broader Picture
Support for the rescission has come quickly from Republican governors in Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, whose states contain significant portions of the affected land. Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, called the existing rule a “failed policy” and welcomed the administration’s action. Timber and resource industries have long argued that the restrictions prevent the kind of active land management needed to keep forests healthy and reduce catastrophic fire risk. American energy and resource production remain central to the administration’s broader economic agenda.
The wildfire justification, however, faces scientific scrutiny. Research by Oregon State University forest ecologist Chris Dunn, examining Western national forest wildfires from 1984 to 2018, found that most fires originated close to existing roads rather than in roadless areas. Internal Forest Service research similarly shows the majority of human-caused ignitions occur along roadsides — a finding that complicates the argument that adding roads to protected land reduces fire danger.
Idaho and Colorado had previously negotiated separate federal arrangements permitting targeted hazardous fuels work in their roadless areas, suggesting some states already held tools to address fire risk without a full nationwide rescission.
Congressional Democrats moved quickly to press for a statutory fix. Rep. Andrea Salinas of Oregon’s 6th District introduced the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which would write the existing protections into federal law. The bill has drawn 88 House Democratic co-sponsors and 25 Senate co-sponsors, though its prospects in the Republican-controlled Congress remain limited.
Legal challenges appear certain. Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental law group Earthjustice, said her organization would likely sue to block the rule changes. Federal land and resource policy continues to reshape the economic terrain of the American West. How the courts respond to that challenge could determine whether the administration’s rescission survives long enough to reshape land use across tens of millions of acres.
The Republic Standard News Staff
Category: Economy
Tags: Energy, Spending, Brooke Rollins, U.S. Forest Service