The Trump administration is rolling back a landmark conservation rule from the Clinton era that prevents roadbuilding and logging on roughly 58 million acres of federal forest and wildlands.
The announcement rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule comes as the Forest Service is under orders by President Trump to increase logging and thinning in forests to address the wildfire threat. Environmentalists have already indicated they'll sue to prevent its reversal, however.
After Clinton enacted the rule at the end of his term in 2001, it effectively created de facto wilderness protections for scores of forests in the West and Alaska.
Republican states and industry groups say Clinton usurped power reserved for Congress in the Wilderness Act. They have tried to overturn it for decades, filing more than a dozen unsuccessful lawsuits against it.
Speaking at a meeting of the Western Governors Association in New Mexico Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who oversees the Forest Service, said her agency will begin rescinding the rule. She added the move would align with a recent executive order to remove red tape to boost logging on federal land.
"This misguided rule prohibits the Forest Service from thinning and cutting trees to prevent wildfires and when fires start, the rule limits our firefighters' access to quickly put them out," Rollins said at a news conference.
Environmentalists counter that wildfires are more likely to occur in forests that have been developed with roads and other infrastructure.
In a statement, Drew Caputo, an attorney with the group Earthjustice, said the administration is handing over trees to industry instead of protecting national forests.
"If the Trump administration actually revokes the roadless rule, we'll see them in court," Caputo said.
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What this means for the West
Research from the USDA during previous administrations indicates that old-growth forests are important carbon sinks, and create fire-resilient ecosystems. Some of that research, along with a webpage dedicated to the 2001 Roadless Rule, have been removed from the USDA's website. (These links were accessed via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine).
Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the nonpartisan Center for Western Priorities, says this decision ignores all of the benefits roadless areas and old-growth forests provide.
“You need whole, intact ecosystems like that in order to have the healthy fires that we need in order to have healthy forests,” he said.
Weiss said the Trump administration is ignoring that research in favor of pursuing making a profit off of public lands.
“This is truly just a gift to timber companies who see all that profit in that old growth timber, but at the expense of our clean water, of our carbon sinks, of the intact ecosystems and wildlife that we need,” he said.
There are millions of inventoried roadless areas across the Rocky Mountain West.
There are 4.4 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in Colorado. In total, 30% of Forest Service land in Colorado is inventoried roadless area, and 6% of Forest Service lands allow neither road construction nor reconstruction.
In areas where neither road construction nor road reconstruction is prohibited, that includes 103,000 acres in the Pike San Isabel National Forest, 89,000 acres in the Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre National Forest, 61,000 acres in the San Juan National Forest, and 40,000 acres in the White River National Forest.
There are 4 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in Utah. 51% of Forest Service land in Utah is inventoried roadless area, and on 446,000 acres, or 5% of total Forest Service land, neither road construction nor reconstruction is allowed. In the Manti-La Sal National Forest, near Moab, 63,000 acres of these areas are off-limits to construction and reconstruction.
There are 3.2 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in Wyoming. In the Bridger-Teton National Forest, all of these areas allow road reconstruction, but no new road construction is allowed. This area totals over 1.4 million acres and constitutes 42% of the total forest area.
The USDA will need to undergo a formal rulemaking process with a public comment period in order to rescind the rule.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
