Trump Administration Moves to Scrap Roadless Rule Despite More Than 1.6 Million Comments in Near-total Opposition
The Forest Service held no public hearings and changed how comments are counted
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is moving to repeal the Roadless Rule despite more than 1.6 million public comments opposing the plan, according to a tally kept by more than 100 organizations, including NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). The Forest Service itself found that comments submitted during the scoping period found about 99 percent opposed repeal , which would open 45 million acres of national forests to roadbuilding and logging.
Following is a reaction from Garett Rose, Senior Attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“The administration didn't hold public hearings. It gave the public a historically short chance to weigh in. And, to add insult to injury, it changed the comment system mid-comment period—in a way that obscures how many people spoke up. And now they look ready to push ahead like none of us said a word. That's not listening to the public. That's going through the motions.
“We've seen this before. The first Trump administration stripped protections from the Tongass National Forest even though the vast majority of people who weighed in told them not to. Now they want to do the same thing to national forests across the country. This is the latest in a long string of handouts to corporate interests on our public lands. Roadless forests give us clean drinking water, shelter wildlife, and give families places to hike, camp, and hunt. They belong to all of us, and the people who own them have been clear.”
Background
The 2001 Roadless Rule protects 58.5 million acres of Roadless Areas in national forests from most roadbuilding and logging. When it was adopted, the public submitted more than 1.6 million comments, about 95 percent in support.
The current tally includes more than 1 million comments gathered by coordinating organizations during the comment period on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which closed Oct. 6. It also includes more than 625,000 comments submitted last fall during the proposed repeal’s initial scoping period - 99% of which opposed the rescission.
Because of changes to the federal government's online comment system, a batch of thousands of comments submitted together can display as a single submission. As a result, the official count on Regulations.gov will show far fewer comments than were actually sent.
Opponents include four former Forest Service Chiefs, two of whom served under Republican administrations, along with 62 wildfire scientists, wildland firefighters, water utilities and national inter-tribal organizations. The administration has cited wildfire risk to justify repeal. But its own analysis found fire ignitions are about four times more common on roaded national forest lands than in roadless areas. The repeal is one of at least 560 actions the administration has taken or proposed since January 2025 that threaten the environment, climate and public health, according to NRDC's White House Watch tracker.
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Established in 1970, NRDC (the Natural Resources Defense Council) works to safeguard the earth, its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. Our team of more than 800 lawyers, policy experts, scientists, economists, and communications specialists work across the United States and around the world, from offices in Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Santa Monica, as well as a representative office in Beijing and affiliate offices in New Delhi (through NRDC’s wholly owned for-profit subsidiary, NRDC India Private Limited) and London (through its UK-based partner NRDC International).