The comment period is now open for the proposed recission of the federal 2001 roadless rule, which prohibits road construction and logging on 58.5 million acres of Forest Service land. The public has until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, Sept. 19, to submit any feedback to the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.
Experts agree that roadless areas protect wildlife habitat, biodiversity and migration corridors, help keep invasive species at bay, prevent pollution and soil erosion into streams and boost climate resilience. In short, the roadless rule is an ecological boon for Western U.S. landscapes, where most of the affected areas are located, as well as for any Westerners who enjoy outdoor recreation or live off the land.
The Forest Service published a notice on the rule change on Aug. 29. The Department of Agriculture cited the need to increase forest and wildfire management and boost the pace of resource extraction as reasons for revoking the roadless rule. Research, however, contradicts the government’s claim that building more roads will help fight wildfires. A 2020 Forest Service study concluded, after nearly 20 years of monitoring data, that more roads do not lead to better forest health through increased fire-management activity.
The National Environmental Policy Act requires the government to conduct environmental impact assessments on proposed rule changes, a process that can take years. But the Trump administration appears to be fast-tracking that timeline: A draft of its impact statement may arrive as early as March 2026, and the government aims to officially roll back the rule by late next year.
In the meantime, you can submit an comment on the roadless rule rescission online through the government’s notice portal under the docket FS-2025-0001. Several organizations offer templates as drafts for comments. In the first week of the comment period, over 40,000 submissions were received. When the roadless rule was first proposed in 2000, it garnered over 1.6 million comments — the most that any rule had ever received — with over 90% of the letters in favor of it.
For more background on the rule’s embattled existence, check out these stories from HCN’s archives:
- The roadless rule was slated to take effect in March 2001, but the incoming Bush administration delayed its implementation for two months.
- In July 2001, the Bush administration missed the deadline to defend its position against the rule in court battles — leaving environmental groups in the awkward position of taking the lead to defend a federal policy.
- In 2006, a district judge ruled in favor of the roadless rule. But she did not go so far as to issue an injunction on logging projects that environmentalists said violated the rule and her ruling.
- A 2019 study showed how Utah’s plants and animals, over 100 of which are at-risk species, could decline without roadless rule protections.
- As the Forest Service considered whether to exempt the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from the roadless rule, tribes requested a new rule in 2020 to ensure that they were consulted on federal rulemaking concerning the Tongass.
- To road or not to road, the saga continues: The Biden administration reinstated roadless rule protections for the Tongass in 2023 that the previous Trump administration had eliminated.
- President Trump reopened the roadless rule debate in 2025. Here’s how repealing the roadless rule threatens wildlife on public lands, including a population of Canada lynx recently reintroduced to Pacific Northwest forests.
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