Forest Service proposes to rescind Roadless Rule

Jasz Garrett
5 minutes ago
3 min read

Thirty day comment period for the proposed rule and draft environmental statement ends Sept. 21

By Jasz Garrett

Juneau Independent

The U.S. Forest Service filed a proposed rule to rescind the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule last Tuesday.

The agency is seeking public comment on the rescission and draft of an environmental impact statement until Sept. 21. More information is available on the Forest Service Roadless Areas webpage.

The 2001 Roadless Rule includes 45 million acres of the 193-million-acre National Forest System — about 9.3 million acres of which is the Tongass National Forest. The rule established broad prohibitions on road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting within the inventoried roadless areas.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins stated the restriction "has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to wildfire risk reduction work across large swaths of America’s national forests."

"Our forests can’t afford another decade of inaction. Across the country, we’ve watched preventable conditions — overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease — turn healthy landscapes into tinderboxes," Rollins said in a prepared statement. "For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities."

A press release from the Forest Service states the rescission "is intended to prioritize local agency decision-making over regulatory rules that are the same across the country, regardless of specific land management issues and needs."

The rescission removes national designation of roadless areas, but does not mandate timber cutting or road construction, according to the announcement. It aims to remove "regulatory burden" and send decisions about roadless areas to the local national forest managers.

The Forest Service first published a notice of intent to rescind the Roadless Rule on Aug. 29, 2025. During a 21-day public comment period, the agency received more than 220,000 comment letters on behalf of over 625,000 individuals and organizations, according to the Forest Service.

The agency's proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule follows President Donald Trump's executive orders calling for the expansion of American timber production, unleashing American energy and Alaska's "extraordinary resource potential." The Roadless Rule was most recently repealed during the first Trump administration in 2019 and reinstated in 2023.

"For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has kept our wildest forests intact. The benefits have been incalculable for people, for water, for wildlife, and for the climate," said Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen in a prepared statement. "Now, the Trump administration wants to gut the rule and open up 45 million acres of roadless forest to clear-cutting and other harmful development enabled by roading. Scientists, wildland firefighters, and hundreds of thousands of Americans have fiercely opposed this attack on our public lands."

The rescission filing states returning roadless-area decisions to forest-level land management planning "provides flexibility the national rule did not," and that future land management decisions would be based on natural resource conditions and needs and informed by states, tribes and communities.

"A rollback on the Roadless Rule means cultural genocide for our people. Every part of our culture is intimately intertwined with the Tongass Forest, our traditional homelands," said Yolanda Fulmer, a Tlingit representative of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network in a prepared statement. "We have a duty as matriarchs to protect our culture and territories for future generations, and therefore, the Roadless Rule must be upheld and codified for long-term protections. For future generations, for our cultural lifeways, and for our global climate, we must keep these forests standing."

Last spring, the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council gathered public comments from communities across the Tongass with plans to submit them when the agency's 30-day comment period opened.

• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.