The Trump administration is moving to eliminate a longstanding federal rule that has kept roads and logging equipment out of some of the most remote stretches of America’s national forests — a decision that would affect more than 4 million acres of protected forestland in California alone.
The proposal, unveiled Tuesday, targets the so-called roadless rule, a two-decade-old federal protection that has barred road construction and commercial logging in undeveloped sections of national forests. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who first floated the repeal last year, said the change is meant to clear the way for more aggressive forest management and reduce wildfire risk.
“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of acres of forest out of reach of the treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said in a statement announcing the proposal and an accompanying environmental review.
But the U.S. Forest Service’s own research complicates that argument, particularly in California, where roads themselves have repeatedly been identified as a major driver of wildfire ignitions on public land.
Agency scientists examined 26 years of wildfire data along roughly 850 miles of roadways running through the Angeles, San Bernardino, Los Padres and Cleveland national forests — all of which include roadless sections. Their findings showed that nearly two-thirds of human-caused fires in those forests started near roads, places where people, sparks and dry, invasive vegetation frequently intersect.
Human ignition sources vary widely. A hiker might burn toilet paper in a remote area. A hot tub could have faulty wiring. A dragging trailer chain or an overheated engine parked on dry grass can be enough to spark a blaze. Most California wildfires, including those on federal land, trace back to human activity rather than lightning.
California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot has pushed back against the administration’s characterization of the rule as an obstacle to fire prevention work. In a letter sent to Rollins last September, Crowfoot noted that more than 240,000 acres of roadless land in California have already undergone vegetation treatment to reduce fire danger, all without the rule getting in the way. He pointed to the Caples Creek roadless area south of Lake Tahoe, which he said helped shield nearby communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire.
Opening these lands to logging, mining and new roads, Crowfoot warned, “may increase wildfire risk to rural communities and significantly increase the cost of wildfire suppression in California.”
The pattern extends well beyond the state. A peer-reviewed study released earlier this year by scientists with The Wilderness Society found that wildfire likelihood across national forests nationwide is four times higher near roads. Looking at data from 1992 through 2024, researchers found the lowest fire density in protected wilderness areas, followed by roadless zones, with the highest concentration of fires occurring within about 150 feet of roads.
“Opening our remote forests to more roads and development, and therefore more fires, is not a wildfire solution, and it never will be,” said Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director for The Wilderness Society.
Federal officials insist the repeal wouldn’t automatically trigger logging or road-building, saying such decisions would be left to local forest managers. The Department of Agriculture said future land-use choices “will be based on the conditions and needs of natural resources and will be informed by input from states, tribes and communities.”
Still, environmental advocates remain wary, especially given a 2025 executive order from the Trump administration calling for an “immediate expansion of American timber production.” The existing roadless rule already allows for road construction or reconstruction when necessary to address wildfire threats to public health and safety — a provision that raises questions among critics about why a full repeal is needed.
A group of retired U.S. Forest Service chiefs, including one who served during Trump’s first term, argued in an opinion piece last year that eliminating the rule threatens critical watersheds and wildlife habitat. “Why build more roads if the agency, with its limited resources, cannot even maintain the roads it has already got?” they wrote. “Let’s not forget why these roadless areas lack roads in the first place. The high-value, easily accessible timber in national forests has already been harvested. What remains in these roadless areas is difficult and expensive to reach.”
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael and the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, blasted the timing of the move, coming as it does during a punishing wildfire season and following Forest Service budget cuts under the same administration. He vowed to fight the repeal in Congress.
“The Trump administration is back at it again, selling off our public lands to polluting corporations while ignoring the loud objections of the American people,” Huffman said in a statement. “It’s reckless.”
The public has until midnight on Sept. 21 to submit comments on the proposal.
Original source: CalMatters
