Trump Administration Attempt to Repeal Roadless Rule Met With Widespread Opposition

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today opened an official rulemaking process to rescind the Roadless Rule, an extremely popular conservation policy enacted in 2001 to protect more than 45 million acres of pristine lands in national forests across 36 states and Puerto Rico. The longstanding rule generally protects against new roadbuilding for logging and oil-and-gas drilling in unfragmented, backcountry forestlands that have never been disturbed by major development.

Roadless forests provide wildlife, including endangered species, with needed habitat, offer people a wide range of recreational activities, and protect the headwaters of major rivers, which are vital for maintaining clean, mountain-fed drinking water nationwide. If the Roadless Rule is rescinded nationally, logging and other destructive, extractive development is set to increase in public forests that currently function as intact ecosystems that benefit wildlife and people alike.

The Forest Service already has 380,000 miles of forest roads — funded by taxpayers. The Trump administration’s move will likely cost taxpayers more through the increased tax revenues that would be needed to subsidize more roadbuilding across the country. The move will also increase the risk of wildfires, as research shows that wildfires are more likely to start in areas with roads.

This rulemaking is proceeding even though a wide array of individuals, from small business owners to wildland firefighters, have expressed opposition to rescinding the rule. The public has just three weeks, until Sept. 19, to comment on the USDA’s Notice of Intent to rescind the rule.

Following are statements from national organizations, businesses, Tribes, other government entities, and individuals opposed to undoing the Roadless Rule — representing just a small sample of those working nationwide to save roadless forests.

“We the people of Kichxáan are the Tongass,” said President Gloria Burns, Ketchikan Indian Community. “You cannot separate us from the land. We depend on Congress to update the outdated and predatory, antiquated laws that allow other countries and outside sources to extract our resource wealth. This is an attack on Tribes and our people who depend on the land to eat. The federal government must act and provide us the safeguards we need or leave our home roadless. We are not willing to risk the destruction of our homelands when no effort has been made to ensure our future is the one our ancestors envisioned for us. Without our lungs (the Tongass) we cannot breathe life into our future generations.”

“The Roadless Rule is the single most important regulation that benefits hunting and fishing in America,” said David Lien, hunter, author, and Air Force veteran from Colorado Springs, Colorado. “For hunters and anglers roadless areas are irreplaceable, providing easy access, solitude, and quality hunting and fishing opportunities found nowhere else. While some roads are important for providing hunters and anglers access to the lands where they hunt and fish, too many roads are associated with degraded streams and rivers, increased big game vulnerability, and fewer mature bucks and bulls, often resulting in shorter seasons and fewer available tags.”

“As a Marine Corps veteran, I know that America’s security doesn’t just depend on what happens overseas — it depends on what we protect here at home,” said Janessa Goldbeck, Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Vet Voice Foundation. “Roadless forests safeguard clean drinking water for millions of military families, buffer communities from wildfires, and keep carbon in the ground to fight climate change, which our Pentagon has called a major national security threat. Rolling back the Roadless Rule isn’t about safety — it’s about clearing the way for corporate logging and drilling that put our people, our lands, and our security at risk. Veterans understand what’s at stake, and we won’t stand by while short-term profit jeopardizes long-term national security.”

“The Roadless Rule remains one of the best tools we have to protect ancient trees and intact ecosystems within the Tongass and other national forests, and we must defend it,” said Hunter McIntosh, president and executive director of The Boat Company. “My father founded The Boat Company 45 years ago to help fight against the powerful timber industry, fueled by government subsidies, that was recklessly destroying the Tongass. Today, we double down on that fight and our ongoing advocacy to keep these critical forests intact — for us, and for every generation that comes after.”

“Roadless areas are some of the most wildfire-resilient landscapes in North America because they are the least degraded by industrial logging and road-building that would have converted fire-adapted native forests into fire-prone tree farms, and provided road access for human-caused ignitions from careless recreationists and sociopathic arsonists,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE). “We need to be more strategic and selective with the places we put young bodies to fight fires, and these should be near at-risk communities, not in rugged, remote wildlands. Tearing open roadless areas to industrial logging and road-building will do wildland firefighters no favors — just the opposite.”

“Roadbuilding damaged salmon streams in the past — with 240 miles of salmon habitat still blocked by failed road culverts,” said Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association. “The Roadless Rule protects our fishing economy and more than 10,000 jobs provided by commercial fishing in Southeast Alaska.”

“Across Southeast Alaska, we see the irreparable damage from so many decades of unsustainable clear-cut logging in the scarred landscapes and decimated fish and wildlife habitats — we cannot and will not go back to that, and we know that’s what public comment will show once again,” said Maggie Rabb, Executive Director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. “Rescission of the Roadless Rule on the Tongass provides economic benefit to one exceedingly small sector of Alaska’s economy at the expense of thriving industries like tourism and fishing, not to mention the immeasurable impacts on Southeast Alaska communities who rely on the Tongass for so much more than a paycheck.”

“The Roadless Rule has protected priceless forests across America for a quarter century,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife and Oceans at Earthjustice. “These national forests belong to all Americans, not to the timber industry, which wants them sold to the highest bidder. Earthjustice has successfully defended the Roadless Rule in court for decades. Nothing will stop us from taking up that fight again.”

“It’s open season on America’s forests,” said Garett Rose, senior attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “For decades, the Roadless Rule has stood as one of America’s most important conservation safeguards, protecting the public’s wildest forests from the bulldozer and chainsaw. The Trump administration’s move to gut this bedrock protection is nothing more than a handout to logging interests at the expense of clean water, wildlife, and local communities. But we’re not backing down and will continue to defend these unparalleled wild forests from attacks, just as we have done for decades.”

“Only a fraction of our national forests remain undeveloped and free of roads, and that is entirely thanks to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule,” said Alex Craven, Sierra Club’s Forest Campaign Manager. “The Forest Service followed sound science, economic common sense, and overwhelming public support when they adopted such an important and visionary policy more than 20 years ago. Donald Trump is making it crystal clear he is willing to pollute our clean air and drinking water, destroy prized habitat for species, and even increase the risk of devastating wildfires, if it means padding the bottom lines of timber and mining companies.”

“America’s national forests give us clean air, water, wildlife, and the freedom for all to enjoy the outdoors,” said The Wilderness Society President Tracy Stone-Manning. “But now they are the latest target in this administration’s unpopular push to give away our lands to drill, mine, and log. Gutting the Roadless Rule — which has protected our forests for 25 years — would be the single largest rollback of conservation protections in our nation’s history. Americans cherish their public lands and deserve leaders who protect them for future generations, not give them away to corporations that exploit them.”

“The 2001 Roadless Rule has prevented fragmentation of wildlife habitat, safeguarded clean water, and protected important Indigenous sites. The rule also facilitates world class hunting, angling, and other outdoor recreation pursuits that support rural economies,” said David Willms, associate vice president for public lands at the National Wildlife Federation. “There are some ways that the Roadless Rule could be improved, but the wholesale repeal of this key conservation tool goes against the best available science and overwhelming public opinion.”

“Logging, mining, and drilling for fossil fuels in roadless areas is an assault on our life-support system,” said Sarah McMillan, Lands and Wildlife Program director at the Western Environmental Law Center. “The only scant benefits of rescinding the Roadless Rule’s smart public lands policies — to private companies — are overwhelmingly outweighed by the costs to our essential national forests and future generations’ quality of life. This move by the Trump administration is just as bad as selling public lands to the highest bidder.”

“The Roadless Rule prohibits bulldozing over American treasures like the Tongass for commercial logging and roadbuilding, and rescinding this rule will come at great ecological and taxpayer expense,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, senior director of Alaska and Northwest programs at Defenders of Wildlife. “This scam is cloaked in efficiency and necessity, but in reality it will liquidate precious old-growth forest lands critical to Alaska Natives, local communities, tourists and countless wildlife, who all depend on intact habitat for subsistence harvesting, recreation, and shelter. Rare and ancient trees will be shipped off at a loss to taxpayers, meaning that Americans will subsidize the destruction of our own natural heritage.”