Trump Moves To Kill Roadless Rule: Will This Curb Wildfires?
The Agriculture Department proposed rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, moving to strip protections from more than 44 million acres of national forest. The administration frames it as wildfire management; opponents call it the largest rollback of forest protection in a generation.
What was proposed
- A proposed rule, not a done deal. The department filed a notice of proposed rulemaking on August 18, opening a public comment period that closes September 21. Rescission would follow only after comments are reviewed.
- The affected area is precise. The proposal would remove roadless protections from more than 44 million acres of the 193-million-acre National Forest System. That is the figure to hold on to; a larger 58.5-million-acre number describes the total roadless inventory that the original rule covers, not what this action affects.
- The West bears the weight. More than 95 percent of inventoried roadless areas sit in 10 Western states, from Alaska to Montana to New Mexico. Idaho and Colorado keep their own state roadless rules regardless of this action.
The backstory
The rule being unwound dates to the final days of the Clinton administration. Promulgated January 12, 2001, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule generally prohibited road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting across designated backcountry, subject to limited exceptions. It has been litigated for a quarter century and has survived every prior attempt to undo it. This is the first move to rescind it wholesale rather than carve out exceptions.
By the numbers
The government’s case rests on fire and neglect.
- The hazard is concentrated. More than 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas carry high or very high wildfire hazard potential, most of it in the West.
- The treatment has been thin. Only 5 percent of those areas have received hazardous-fuels reduction treatment since 2014, the department says, a gap it attributes to the rule’s access restrictions.
- The footprint is smaller than the acreage suggests. Of the affected land, the department estimates about 3 million acres already sit near existing roads, and roughly 4.8 million acres, about 16 percent, are operable forested area suitable for timber.
In their own words
“It’s time to turn the page on the failed roadless rule and return our forests to health and productivity,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the announcement, casting the change as restoring authority “to local forest managers who know the land best.” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz put it plainly: “Active forest management is not an option. It’s essential.”
The counterargument
Conservation groups reject the premise that roads are a solution to fire. “For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has kept our wildest forests intact,” Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen said in a coalition statement opposing the move, and critics argue that opening backcountry to roads and logging increases human-caused ignitions and fragments habitat without meaningfully reducing catastrophic fire. Their strongest point is empirical: most large Western fires start near roads and human activity, not in remote roadless cores. They have promised litigation the moment a final rule issues.
Worth watching
The comment period is the near-term battleground, and a rescission of this scale will draw hundreds of thousands of filings and an immediate court challenge on the other side. The legal question will echo the fights of the last 25 years: whether the administrative record supports such a sweeping reversal of a rule that has repeatedly withstood review.
The wider frame is about who manages the land. The administration’s argument is that a single national restriction, written in Washington in 2001, has kept local managers from thinning overgrown stands that now burn. The opposing argument is that “management” is a door to logging and road-building that will not come back once opened. Both sides agree the forests are burning; they disagree on whether more roads put the fires out or start them.
-The Editors
Energy & Manufacturing · Upstream of the Swamp · August 20, 2026
