By Curtis Johnson
On August 20th, Trump’s United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officially proposed eliminating the national Roadless Rule. If finalized, this repeal would strip protections from 44.7 million acres of wild forest. The rule, passed in 2001, protects in total 58 million acres of forest from road building, logging, fossil fuel extraction and other development. Idaho and Colorado have their own state roadless rules so this proposal exempts them, at least for now.
The roadless area forests contain old-growth trees of immense grandeur, pristine rivers that are filled in the summer and fall with some of the last healthy salmon runs in the country, and trails through some of the U.S.’s grandest scenic beauty. These forests help protect some of the country’s most wondrous remaining wild species-grizzly bears, wolverines, and endangered lynx. They host key migration corridors for antelope, elk and mule deer. They protect headwaters of streams providing clean drinking water to 24 million people in the country.
The current protections include 9.3 million acres of the magnificent Tongass rainforest in Alaska. The Tongass contains incredible landscapes- rugged ocean coastlines, glacial fjords, snow-capped peaks, wild rivers, and old-growth forest. Concentrated in the Tongass are Earth’s largest remaining intact stands of coastal temperate rainforest , making it a vital carbon sink combatting climate change. Its trees capture 44% of all the carbon stored by U.S. national forests, absorbing 1.5 times more carbon than the U.S. emits annually. Opening the Tongass and all roadless forests to destruction would be an unacceptable crime against nature.
And further opening the Tongass to development would be yet another crime of this system against native peoples. The Tongass is the ancestral homeland of the Tlingit and Haida indigenous peoples. A joint statement from the tribes condemns the decision to rescind the rule saying it was taken “without any prior consultation with our Tribe or other Southeast Alaska tribes. As a sovereign tribal nation, we do not recognize the validity of federal actions impacting our traditional homelands when undertaken without meaningful government-to-government consultation, as required by law and respect for our inherent sovereignty”.
The statement continues, “The Tongass is more than an ecosystem-it is our home. It is the foundation of our identify, our culture, and our way of life.”.
The recission is “the largest evisceration of public lands protection in American history” according to Randi Spivak, public lands policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). In an interview, Spivak told me the Roadless Rule shelters “hundreds of threatened and endangered species. It provides incredible recreation opportunities-hunting, fishing, hiking. These were really the last of the forests outside of wilderness that had not been opened up to industrial development.”
The USDA, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, has given the public only 30 days, until Sept 21st, to comment on the plan. Opponents are aiming to mobilize 1 million public comments as well as holding public events speaking out against the repeal .
120 environmental, conservation, and citizen’s groups have been joined by tribes, sportsmen, wildland firefighters, and businesses dedicated to tourism, in speaking out against this decision. A letter in support of the Roadless Rule and opposing recission has been signed by 164 Congressional representatives.
Examining the USDA Plan
The USDA proposal claims its intent is to “reduce regulatory burden and return decisionmaking for the management of inventoried roadless area to the land management planning process at the individual national forest level.” It says “Recission of the national-level prohibitions provides responsible officials with flexibility to better guide management of the National Forest System lands and respond to changing local resource conditions.”
Describing these relatively untouched forests rich with species, habitat and natural wonders as “resources” is a dead giveaway to the proposal’s actual intent.
Despite claims to “return decisionmaking” to local forest officials, the proposal quickly pivots to who these officials and their management of these “resources” would be directed by. Namely, the federal government under Trump and his executive orders to cut so-called “burdensome” regulations –(ie.-environmental and safety protections), expand timber extraction, “unleashing” energy production, and maximizing resource extraction in Alaska. These are all measures to allow plowing roads into and decimating formerly protected public lands to expand logging, mining, oil and gas drilling, and other capitalist development.
The forest service has already been gutted by Trump and restructured to more thoroughly service resource extraction vs. forest protection. Spivak told me, “Whatever Forest Service staff is left, because they have fired so many people, they are under tremendous pressure to kick out the board feet” of timber. Further, forest management plans in local areas the proposal says will now manage these forests are already often too weak, and can be changed at a moment’s notice under an administration that Spivak points out is “stripping all of those safety valves away.”
Right now the CBD is in court fighting a separate proposal by the Department of the Interior (DOI) to redefine “harm” to endangered species. Spivak continued, “So if you are a spotted owl or marbled murrelet or any wildlife creature that depends on forest canopy and older forests, their new definition under the Endangered Species Act would make bulldozing their habitat legal.” The DOI is doing this when scientific studies have clearly demonstrated that habitat loss is the primary cause of species extinction.
USDA’s Own Draft Environmental Impact Statement Reveals Folly of their Plan
Along with its new proposed rule, the USDA is required to release a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) to elucidate the potential impacts of the change. An examination of the DEIS by the Center for Western Priorities stunningly reveals it undermines many of the arguments USDA gives in favor of the proposal and demonstrates the vast environmental damage the proposal would cause.
Among other things the DEIS found repealing the Roadless Rule “would increase soil erosion, landslide risk, and sediment pollution in watersheds that supply drinking water to roughly 24 million Americans”. It also would expose “Old-growth forest that has been off-limits for 25 years to new logging”, and open the door to new oil, gas and coal leasing on currently protected lands. The DEIS states the new rule would be “ ‘likely to adversely affect’ 327 threatened and endangered species and 71 designated critical habitats”.
It also admits money from timber sales “would [not] be sufficient to cover the costs of constructing and maintaining all new roads related to a project”. National forests already contain 370,000 miles of roads, enough to circle the globe 15 times. And The Forest Service can’t maintain even these existing roads to the tune of billions of dollars, not to mention any new roads.
The Ruse of “Combatting Wildfire Risk”
The USDA’s rule proposal and Trump’s executive orders on logging expansion have claimed repealing the roadless rule and further logging under the guise of “forest management” are required to address “increasing wildfire risk”. Yet they obscure the overwhelming evidence that more intense wildfires are being driven primarily by the temperature increases and drought brought on by climate change. And they attempt to cover up that their plans, along with the regime’s moves to expand fossil fuel production while eliminating efforts to combat climate change, will only expand dangerous wildfire.
The DEIS itself further undermines the claim the move is about combatting wildfire risk by admitting more roadbuilding in forests could mean more human-caused wildfire ignitions. This fits with recent scientific studies. The National Interagency Fire Center says as of 2023, the “10 year average of human-caused fires account for 88 percent of all wildfires nationally”. These fires result from a multitude of human causes- arson, debris burning, smoking, fireworks, equipment and vehicle use, etc. In fact, new research shows that fires are 4 times more likely to start near a road than in roadless areas. Environment America has found that “fewer than 1% of wildfires in the lower 48 state-and none of the costliest fires-since 2010 have started in roadless areas”
FUSEE, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology- an organization of active, former or retired wildland firefighters are also speaking out against the repeal. They say in a statement that more roads and human access will mean more human-caused wildfire starts. And that logging roads in backcountry areas are dangerous for attempting to stop wildfire. FUSEE argues this is best done by aviation-based tactics and other means fully allowed by the existing rule.
A current member of an active Wildfire module Molly Maguire stated, “Wildland fires are necessary and incredibly significant ecological processes. Roadless areas lack much infrastructure or human structures, so they offer opportunities to safely, economically, and ecologically manage fire across large areas without threatening human assets,”
Kate Groetzinger of the Center for Western Priorities who I interviewed, said the DEIS findings about wildfire risk made it clear to her eliminating the roadless rule, “is really about supporting the timber industry and potentially other types of infrastructure in our forests… it’s not about wildfire risk at all.” She added, “I think that there’s plenty of room for speculation about what other type of infrastructure the administration would like to put into our forests … anything from transmission lines to fiber optic cables, data centers.”
The Pushback
The USDA first announced they were considering eliminating roadless rule protections in June 2025. Over 600,000 public comments poured in during the restricted period USDA allowed of only 21 days. 99% of them opposed the repeal. Still the administration is barreling ahead, despite their claim to consider the opinions of the public in their decision.
While Trump’s USDA claims the rule is being pushed through to return authority to local management, they clearly have no interest in hearing from the people. In 2001 when the rule was adopted, 600 public hearings were held and 108 days given for the public to comment. But with this decision the Trump regime has not held a single public hearing and cut the comment period to 30 days.
Further the government’s decision has been made without respect for tribal sovereignty, especially regarding the Tongass. The USDA has only agreed to get “input” from tribes, not consult government to government as required by law. And they haven’t held a single hearing with affected tribes since the decision has been made. They have instead set up “subsistence hearings” in Alaska in late September that occur after the comment period is already over, and fall far short of full consultation with Alaskan tribes. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement from USDA itself also admits that consulted tribes overwhelmingly oppose the repeal.
If the USDA proposal is finalized, both Randi Spivak of the CBD and Tim Preso, managing attorney of the Biodiversity Defense Program at Earthjustice told me their organizations will launch lawsuits to prevent this repeal from moving forward if the repeal is finalized.
Preso said, “we’ve been defending the Roadless Rule against misguided attacks on it for 25 years and we’re not about to stop now… this administration has taken a wrecking ball to environmental protections that have been in place for decades and that really have been the reason why we have the environmental quality that we do have today. And now this administration is tearing them down one by one.”
Randi Spivak called for people to “move into action. People need to weigh in and write comments… Make it personal…. when we collectively can say 1 million people or 2 million people weighed in, and we can take that to our elected officials and say enough is enough.”
Kate Groetzinger of the Center for Western Priorities said in a statement “Despite all these negative implications and immense public opposition, the Trump administration seems to be dead set on moving forward with these rules. Western communities must rise up and oppose this change as loudly and forcefully as possible during this month-long comment period.”
Saving the Roadless Rule, and Rising Up Against Trump’s War on Nature
The move to wipe out roadless area protections may be the biggest and latest assault by the regime on public lands, but it’s also part of a larger picture, a relentless many-sided war on nature conducted for capitalist development. And it’s taking place and substantially pushing forward the existential climate and biodiversity crises confronting us globally.
Randi Spivak told me of countless projects she’s working on where a lot is being lost. For instance Trump’s stripping of three million acres of land from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments this summer.
These areas are sacred ancestral homelands of five sovereign indigenous nations in the Southwest. Days after ripping away these lands the Bureau of Land Management removed tribal seals at Bears Ears that signified the joint management and stewarding of the lands between tribal nations and the U.S. government at entry locations. Then they tore down signs at both monuments. Mining companies began filing claims on these formerly protected lands rich in native heritage, stories, foods, cultural sites, and spiritual connection within days of Trump’s announcement, despite the law requiring a 60-day waiting period.
Beyond the heartbreaking project losses accumulating, there is the continual erosion of what Spivak termed the “rule book for disclosing harms”, through things like weakening the National Environmental Policy Act, and gutting public comment periods. “So these are all gates you go through… that’s the other level”, she said.
She said, “I think they’re doing tremendous harm to life on Earth… they have complete and utter disregard for what they’re destroying. Because all they care about is a for-profit company’s bottom line, and where they see quote ‘burdensome regulations’ to everybody else, and especially our public lands that we, the public own, those to us are protective measures.”
It is indeed time for all of us to wake up, speak out and stand up, to defend these precious areas and lands from destruction and for our collective future.
Submit a public comment on the Roadless Rule here
For the Planet and Humanity 