by Alex Baumhardt, Washington State Standard
August 18, 2026
The Trump administration will move ahead with plans to end more than 25 years of sweeping protections for tens of millions of wild, federally managed acres across the U.S.
Brooke Rollins, head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on Tuesday filed a rule to rescind “in its entirety” the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prohibits road construction, logging and mining on about 30% of lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, mostly in forested areas of the West. Rollins had last year filed a notice of intent that the agency was considering “rolling back” some protections under the rule.
A draft environmental impact statement will be posted Wednesday, and the public will have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time/8:59 p.m. Pacific time on Sept. 21 to comment before changes are finalized.
The Roadless Rule prohibitions are intended to protect wildlife, watersheds and old-growth forests from human development and human-caused wildfires. But in her announcement, Rollins said she was rescinding the rules on nearly 45 million acres under the banner of wildfire prevention, saying the protections instead have led to “overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease” turning “healthy landscapes into tinderboxes.”
“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our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 said.
Rollins’ assertions are not borne out by research, including from Oregon State University Professor Chris Dunn, a forest ecologist and wildfire expert. Dunn and his colleagues found that most wildfires in Western national forests between 1984 and 2018 started near roads, showing an increased likelihood of wildfires where roads exist because the No. 1 cause of wildfires is people.
The U.S. Forest Service’s own research also shows the majority of human-caused ignitions occur on roadsides, and 20 years of monitoring data does not support assertions that repealing road prohibitions will improve forest health, researchers found.
No public meetings
Rollins first proposed rolling back the rule in August 2025, saying at the time the move would support President Donald Trump’s executive orders meant to increase logging and energy development on federal lands.
That notice of intent set off a 21-day public comment period that brought in more than 600,000 comments, most of which expressed opposition to any changes that would erode the Roadless Rules prohibitions on development. Federal officials have not held a single public meeting since then.
In the two years leading up to final passage of the 2001 rule, Forest Service officials held 600 public meetings across Western states and received more than 1.6 million public comments.
Roughly 96% of the Forest Service’s inventoried roadless areas are located in 12 western states, including 2 million acres in Oregon within places like Iron Mountain in the Willamette National Forest, Joseph Canyon in Wallowa County, Tumalo Mountain in central Oregon and Lookout Mountain in the Ochoco National Forest.
Last year, U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat representing Oregon’s 6th Congressional District based in the Willamette Valley, introduced the Roadless Area Conservation Act to enshrine the rule in federal law, but it does not yet have enough support to pass. In the House, 88 of her Democratic colleagues have signed on as co-sponsors, including Oregon Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Janelle Bynum and Maxine Dexter, as have 25 U.S. senators. The state’s two other representatives, Democrat Val Hoyle and Republican Cliff Bentz, have not signed on as sponsors.
No state would be more affected by the rule termination than Alaska, which has almost a third of the 45 million acres affected by the pending change.
Alaska is home to the Tongass National Forest, a West Virginia-sized stretch of islands and waterways in the Southeast Alaska panhandle that make up the largest surviving temperate rainforest in the world.
Idaho and Colorado would not be impacted by the rule changes because the two states negotiated their own agreements with the federal government more than a decade ago to permit projects that would “reduce hazardous fuels” near wildfire prone communities and to allow some local and state decisions about development on the federal acres.
Different takes on the past 25 years
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, who previously worked for one of the country’s largest lumber producers in Idaho, said in a statement last year that the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers for years and served as a barrier to commercial logging.
“More than 40% of inventoried roadless areas, primarily in the West, have high or very high wildfire hazard potential. And only 5% of those areas have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014,” he said.
Rollins’ announcement included praise from the Republican governors of Montana, Utah and Wyoming, who said rescinding the federal protections would give their states flexibility to manage land locally. Democratic governors and other elected officials in states including Oregon, Washington and New Mexico have criticized the administration’s efforts and blame a century of largely unrestricted logging on federal lands, climate change and recent losses to Forest Service staff for worsening fires and declining forest conditions in the West.
Statements following Rollins’ announcement made clear conservation and logging groups have seen the last 25 years of the Roadless Rule quite differently.
Abigail Dillen, president of the nonprofit environmental legal group Earthjustice, said in a statement that the group will likely sue to stop the rule changes from moving forward.
“For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has kept our wildest forests intact. The benefits have been incalculable for people, for water, for wildlife, and for the climate,” she said. “Earthjustice has successfully defended the Roadless Rule for a quarter century, and we are not going to stop now.”
Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association representing the timber industry, said in a statement that the Roadless Rule is among “failed policies” meant to protect forests.
“The Forest Service is right to take a hard look at a policy that was written for forest conditions that looked very different 25 years ago,” he said. “Our national forests are experiencing severe wildfire, drought, insects and disease on a scale that few anticipated when the Roadless Rule was adopted.”
This story was originally produced by Oregon Capital Chronicle, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Washington State Standard, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: [email protected].