Earthjustice Responds to Trump Administration Attack on Roadless Rule

The U.S. Forest Service took another step today toward rescinding the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a bedrock conservation measure enacted 25 years ago to prevent industrial logging and roadbuilding across 58.5 million acres of national forestlands. The agency has released a proposed rule and environmental review, kicking off a 30-day public comment period.

The following is a statement from Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen:

“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. Now, the Trump administration wants to gut the rule and open up 45 million acres of roadless forest to clear-cutting and other harmful development enabled by roading. Scientists, wildland firefighters, and hundreds of thousands of Americans have fiercely opposed this attack on our public lands. Earthjustice has successfully defended the Roadless Rule for a quarter century, and we are not going to stop now.”

Background

Enacted in 2001 with broad bipartisan support, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects 45 million acres of national forests. These are among the nation’s last-remaining, undisturbed wildlands, providing safe habitat for at-risk wildlife, clean drinking water for millions of Americans and abundant outdoor recreation opportunities across the country.

The proposed rule and DEIS seek to fully rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a bedrock conservation measure. The administration has falsely claimed this is a solution to the wildfire crisis.

Fires don’t start without cause, and according to the Forest Service 9 out of 10 wildfires are caused by people. New science builds on this, finding that fires are four times more likely to start near a road than in roadless forests. That’s because more roads also mean more people with cigarettes thrown out car windows, abandoned campfires, and hot under-carriages of cars igniting tall dry grass – inviting more wildfire at a time when federal fire-fighting capacity has been radically reduced.

The public will have 30 days to comment on the DEIS. This will be the last opportunity for the public to weigh in before the rescission is finalized.

Since U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced in June 2025 that the Forest Service would rescind this rule, there has been a major public backlash, with more than 625,000 comments flooding the agency to oppose the rollback and a wide variety of people and organizations, including former Forest Service chiefs, voicing opposition. In recent months, people’s hearings were organized nationwide in reaction to the Forest Service’s refusal to hold even a single public hearing.