The proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule jeopardizes nearly 58 million acres of undeveloped backcountry forestland managed by the U.S. Forest Service, comprising around a third of the territory in our national forest system. These forests have only remained intact because of the Forest Service's nearly 25-year-old commitment not to build roads in these areas for harmful activities like major logging operations or oil-and-gas drilling.

Although proponents of rolling back the Roadless Rule claim it is needed for wildfire management, the peer-reviewed science shows the opposite. A 2026 study in Fire Ecology by Aplet, Hartger & Dietz analyzed 32 years of wildfire data across all eight contiguous-U.S. Forest Service regions and found wildfire-ignition density was 7.99 fires per 1,000 hectares within 50 meters of roads, compared to just 1.97 fires per 1,000 hectares in inventoried roadless areas—a fourfold difference. A separate national analysis (Balch et al., PNAS 2017) found that 84% of all U.S. wildfires are human-caused. Roads are the primary vector for human ignitions, so building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires, not fewer.

The Federal Register Notice initiating the rescission states the goal explicitly: to "facilitate domestic production" of "timber, energy and mineral production... to the maximum possible extent." The proposal is being advanced under Executive Orders 14192 (deregulation), 14225 (timber expansion), and 14154 (energy unleashing), and follows other administrative actions calling for a dramatic increase in logging and oil and gas drilling on federal lands. An increase in these industrial activities would worsen climate change, destroy recreation areas, put the lands at greater risk of wildfire, destroy wildlife habitat, and threaten drinking water sources.

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz testified to the Senate that 24.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas are within one mile of the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)—calling it "our primary concern." A GIS analysis by The Wilderness Society using the Forest Service's own data found the actual figure is just 2.8 million acres—a nearly ninefold exaggeration. Less than 5% of inventoried roadless area acreage is in close proximity to the WUI, not 42% as Schultz claimed. The administration has 23.3 million acres of non-roadless forest land already available near the WUI for fuel reduction—without ever touching a roadless area.

The U.S. National Forests are the headwaters of our great rivers and the largest source of municipal water supply in the nation. According to DellaSala (2011), national forests supply drinking water to at least 124 million people in more than 3,400 communities across 33 states—roughly a third of all national-forest runoff originates in inventoried roadless areas. Roads are a major cause of water pollution: erosion rates from logging roads have been documented as much as 850% higher than from undisturbed forest. Because the 2001 Roadless Rule protects these headwaters, it is vital for maintaining clean drinking water for communities across the country. Major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, and Atlanta receive a significant portion of their water supply from national forests.

Building more roads in national forests would be a drain on taxpayers. Even with the Roadless Rule in place, the Forest Service already has a 380,000-mile road system—twice as long as the U.S. highway system—crisscrossing national forests. The agency cannot afford to maintain it: the deferred-maintenance road backlog was estimated at $8.4 billion in the 2001 Final Environmental Impact Statement and is roughly $15.6 billion in today's dollars. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly flagged Forest Service deferred maintenance as one of the largest in the federal government, and the backlog has never dropped below $5 billion. Adding new roads to inventoried roadless areas would only deepen that hole.

The Roadless Rule is one of America's most popular conservation measures, and that support has not faded. Prior to its 2001 enactment, more than 600 public hearings were held nationwide and 1.6 million Americans weighed in to call for protection of these forestlands—more comments than any other federal rule had received at the time. When USDA announced its rescission proposal, the compressed 21-day public comment period in late 2025 drew approximately 600,000 additional comments. A detailed roadless.org analysis of the comment record found that more than 99.8% of submitters opposed the rescission. A February 2026 Pew Charitable Trusts national poll found that 76% of likely voters support the Roadless Rule compared to just 13% opposed, with bipartisan backing from 71% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, and 80% of independents. More than 100 members of Congress have co-sponsored the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2025 (S.2042 / H.R.3930) to codify the Rule so it could not be rolled back without an act of Congress.