As the Trump administration continues its work to repeal the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Forest Service now has to wade through over 600,000 public comments before making its final decision.
An analysis of those comments by the Center for Western Priorities (CWP) found that 99% of all comments submitted were in favor of keeping the Roadless Rule intact. CWP also notes that, back in 2001, when the Roadless Rule was drafted and applied, it received 1.6 million public comments, with over 90% of respondents speaking in favor of it.
“A 2019 poll by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 75 percent of the public supported the rule at that time,” CWP writes. “The poll also found that those in rural areas are just as likely to support the policy as those in non-rural areas.”
The main push behind removing the Roadless Rule is, in the Trump administration’s words, increasing opportunity for timber harvest and fuel management on National Forest lands, in an effort to curb wildfires and boost timber industries.
However, research from the Forest Service itself shows that “fuel management activities in roadless areas have actually been more numerous on a per-square-kilometer basis than elsewhere in the National Forest System, although activities in areas with roads cover larger areas.”
That same research paper also notes that, since the introduction of the Roadless Rule, forests with and without roads have burned at similar rates. This would point to the conclusion that many of the forest fires we deal with each summer are a result of poor forest management during the 20th century.
Final decisions on the repeal of the Roadless Rule aren’t expected until March 2026.