Trump Administration Readies the Axe for Nearly 60 Million Acres of Public Forests

Adopted in 2001 with vast public support, the Roadless Rule protected forests at a scale unparalleled in American history. At a stroke, the rule safeguarded the living heart of the National Forest System by barring commercial logging and road construction across 58.5 million acres of wild forests—an acreage roughly the size of Oregon. 

Among its many virtues, the rule is a redoubt for a big chunk of the nation’s mature and old-growth trees and forests. By limiting commercial logging, the rule ensures those places are safe. It plays a particularly important role in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest—the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest and the country’s largest old-growth forest. Thanks to the Roadless Rule, about 9.2 million acres of the Tongass are protected. 

Now, in their zeal to wring dollars out of America’s public lands, the Trump administration has set its sights on roadless areas across the country, endangering beloved landscapes from North Carolina to Wisconsin and from Utah to Oregon. 

In her June announcement, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins justified this rollback by alleging it was needed to prevent wildfire, bolster economic development, and contribute to Trump’s deregulation agenda. 

The secretary’s fire rationalization does not hold water. The rule already allows for wildfire management and response. Moreover, current research suggests that more roads, less tree cover, and increased human activity increases the likelihood of wildfire ignitions. If the administration truly cared about safeguarding communities from wildfire, it would invest in proven solutions like home hardening, defensible space, and near-community vegetation management to make homes more fireproof—not strip forest protections in the name of ideologically driven deregulation. 

As for economic development, our public lands are more valuable than just the resources we can extract from them. The U.S. outdoor recreation economy alone can generate more than $1.2 trillion of economic output every year. Intact public forests and lands serve as the lifeblood for many local economies. Opening the nation’s forests to logging and roadbuilding serves the timber industry at the expense of the everyday people who live, work, and recreate in these special places. Further, such activity will only add to the hole the agency is in; the Forest Service does not have the funds or the staff to even address the current backlog of road and bridge maintenance requests, estimated at $4.4 billion in 2022. New, unnecessary road construction and commercial logging projects are fiscally irresponsible and dangerously distracting. 

In the end, getting rid of the Roadless Rule is simply another instance of deregulation for deregulation’s sake, regardless of the cost to the American people. 

Intact roadless areas are enormously beneficial to the environment and wildly popular with the American public. 

Wildlife

Home to many iconic and often imperiled species across the country (including grizzly bears, wolves, salmon, and songbirds), these largely uninterrupted landscapes serve as refuges in the midst of climate change and pressure from development. These landscapes are also crucial for the safe migration of valuable game species, like elk and mule deer. Whether for conservation or for sport, these habitats are vital for wildlife. 

Water

Roadless areas also support the clean drinking water of millions of Americans. These forestlands capture, filter, and channel clean water from headwaters down to municipalities. Destructive logging projects and roadbuilding lead to increased heating, nutrient pollution, and sedimentation of once cool and clear rivers, creeks, and streams. Intact forests—like those protected by the rule—also play a role in the overall functioning of the hydrological cycle and in keeping watersheds more stable and healthy. 

Recreation

Each year, millions of Americans explore tens of thousands of hiking and biking trails, whitewater paddling runs, and climbing routes in roadless areas. This includes some of the nation’s most iconic vistas: sections of the Appalachian Trail out East, areas surrounding the Boundary Waters in the Midwest, parts of the Continental Divide Trail that run along the Rocky Mountain states, and key pieces of the Pacific Crest Trail down the West Coast. Some of the greatest examples of American majesty are protected in roadless areas, so folks from across the world can camp, hike, hunt, fish, climb, and paddle in our awe-inspiring landscapes.

Climate

Obliterating the rule also risks one of our most cost-effective climate mitigation solutions. Intact forests help stabilize seasonal temperature shifts, which are becoming more extreme under climate change conditions. Logging most often targets the bigger, older trees, which not only provide cool, shady microclimates for people and wildlife alike but also capture and store more carbon than their smaller, younger counterparts. Even if these forests are replanted after logging, it can take 20 years or more for a young forest to stop emitting more carbon from its soils than it captures with its leaves. Our older trees are doing carbon capture and storage for us for free—all we need to do is leave them standing. 

If the USDA follows through with its plans, vast swathes of protected forests will be open to logging and roadbuilding. When chainsaws and bulldozers chew their way through these formerly intact forests, they will pollute drinking water, lower air quality, degrade habitat, destroy old forest—and we will irretrievably lose some of the country’s last remaining wildlands.

Over the last 25 years, NRDC has championed the Roadless Rule and defended against reckless administrative rollbacks, protecting our wildest places for ourselves and for the future. With your help, we’re ready to fight back against Trump’s latest attack on our public forests and irreplaceable roadless areas.