The Trump administration plans to eliminate the Roadless Rule in national forests, with public comment available until Sept. 21. The federal policy prohibits the construction of roads inside national forests except under certain conditions.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the decision would help with wildfire response as the U.S. currently grapples with nearly 100 large wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
“Our forests can’t afford another decade of inaction,” Rollins said in a statement earlier this month. “Across the country, we’ve watched preventable conditions – overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease – turn healthy landscapes into tinderboxes.”
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A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson cited a review of more than 40 case studies finding that thinning combined with prescribed burning reduced wildfire severity by up to 72% compared to untreated forest. They said improving road access would let crews reach more of the roughly 45 million acres covered by the rule to do that work.
While the administration says more roads would make it easier for firefighters to respond to fires, other studies found that more roads in national forests lead to more wildfires.
Do more roads create more wildfires?
A January study in Fire Ecology, conducted by researchers from The Wilderness Society, a conservation nonprofit, analyzed wildfire data from over 33 years. It found that wildfire ignitions were far more common near roads. The highest ignition rate was in areas within 50 meters of a road, more than four times the rate in areas without roads.
The pattern held across all fire types, but was strongest for human-caused fires. Researchers said human-caused fires occurred more than seven times as often within 250 meters of a road as they did more than 2,000 meters away.
While roads did lead to more fires, the study said fires near roads were often smaller. A fire starting within 50 meters of a road averaged 49 hectares, while one starting in the wilderness averaged 239 hectares. But among the largest 2% of fires, the ones that actually threaten communities, that difference disappears, the researchers found.
The existing exception
Critics, like Reps. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., and Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., say the government’s rationale behind the change is disingenuous because the rule already allows road construction to respond to an active wildfire threat. The rule allows construction if a road is needed “to protect public health and safety in cases of an imminent threat of flood, fire, or other catastrophic event.”
But that’s not the only exception to the rule. It also allows workers to build roads to respond ot hazardous waste cleanup, protect pre-existing legal or treaty rights, and fix roads causing environmental damage. Regional foresters can also approve emergency road-building for wildfire response without sign-off from Forest Service headquarters in Washington.
The USDA told Straight Arrow that the exceptions exist but have been “limited and inconsistent” across roadless areas nationally. Since 2013, the agency said, only 60 miles of roads have been built within roughly 45 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. Less than 5% of those acres have received hazardous fuel reduction treatment since the rule took effect.
The USDA also disputed that rescinding the rule would lead to significantly more road construction.
“Rescinding the roadless rule would not authorize more roads,” the spokesperson said, adding that it would instead let the agency maintain and use roads that already exist. But the rule’s core function has always been a blanket prohibition on new roads, with narrow exceptions.
The rescission wouldn’t affect Colorado or Idaho, which have their own state-specific roadless rules.
In Utah, regional forest managers have approved every request to build a temporary road or dozer line to fight fires under the existing exception, Tim Peterson, the cultural landscapes director for Grand Canyon Trust, a conservation nonprofit, told Axios last year.
Peterson said he is not convinced that rescinding the rule would do much to protect against wildfires. Instead, he told Axios there are other ways the government could mitigate them.
“If we’re serious about wildfire mitigation, we need to focus on … places near where homes are built and where people live,” Peterson told the outlet. “Roadless areas, for the most part, especially in Utah, are remote backcountry places where spending fire mitigation dollars is … wasteful.”
The USDA disputes that framing. About 24.5 million acres of the wildland-urban interface, an area where forests meet homes and communities, are either within roadless areas or within a mile of them, a spokesperson told Straight Arrow. They called the expanded access “a major public safety issue.”
Other conservation advocates claim the Trump administration wants to rescind the Roadless Rule for the logging industry. In an interview with NPR, Chandra LeGue, senior conservation advocate with Oregon Wild, said companies see these lands as a valuable resource.
“These last remnants of wild, unlogged forests are incredibly special and unique on the landscape at this point and valuable for so many reasons,” LeGue said. “Those are the forests that need to be protected as a legacy for future generations.”
What’s next?
A coalition of seven state attorneys general, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, has formally opposed the rescission in a comment letter submitted during the rulemaking process.
“No matter how they spin it, the science and facts are clear,” Bonta said in a statement last year. “Roadbuilding increases fire risk and fragments forest ecosystems.”
A lawsuit isn’t possible yet since the Forest Service hasn’t finalized the rule. But legal challenges are widely expected once it is.
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