Trout Unlimited and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers came out the same day against the USDA’s proposal, joined by national environmental groups, while the administration pressed its wildfire case. The rule stays in effect while comments run through Sept. 21.
The U.S. Forest Service filed a proposed rule Tuesday to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule in its entirety, covering more than 44 million acres of the 193-million-acre National Forest System, as MidCurrent reported Tuesday. Opposition landed the same day. Trout Unlimited and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers both issued statements against the proposal, and NRDC, Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Wilderness Society released statements of their own.
“There’s absolutely no need to reverse the Roadless Rule – a policy that for 25 years has made hunting and fishing better, protected drinking water and threatened and endangered species,” Trout Unlimited president and CEO Chris Wood said in the organization’s release. Wood advised the Forest Service chief when the rule was implemented 25 years ago. He called the proposal “a classic example of a solution in search of a problem” and said rescinding the rule “will compromise the social license the Forest Service needs to conduct more forest health treatments adjacent to communities of people—in other words, in places that are not roadless areas.” The release points to research supported by the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station that found fire-risk-reduction projects have been more numerous in roadless areas on a per-square-kilometer basis than elsewhere in the national forest system.
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers president and CEO Ryan Callaghan called the rescission “the wholesale elimination of protections for the backcountry habitat hunters, anglers, wildlife, and rural communities depend on” in the group’s own release. “The Roadless Rule works,” Callaghan told Outdoor Life. “It’s our best elk hunting country, our best fishing waters, the places we go to recharge. But it also keeps taxpayers from footing the bill for thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of new roads that the Forest Service can’t afford to build or maintain.”
The administration’s case rests on wildfire. “Our forests can’t afford another decade of inaction,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the USDA release, describing “overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease” turning “healthy landscapes into tinderboxes” and calling it “time to turn the page on the failed roadless rule.” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said more than 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas have high or very high wildfire hazard potential, that only 5 percent of those areas have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014, and that 11.3 million acres are already near existing roads. The governors of Montana, Utah, and Wyoming are quoted in support in the same release, which states the rescission “removes national designation of roadless areas but does not mandate timber cutting or road construction” and sends those decisions to local forest managers.
The rule itself is not yet rescinded: it remains in effect while the comment window is open, and comments are due by midnight Sept. 21 via Regulations.gov. The Forest Service posted proposal details to its Roadless Areas webpage on Aug. 19. After the window closes, USDA reviews the comments and decides whether to proceed, modify, or withdraw the proposal. The timeline the agency published when it opened the process last August projects a final rule, environmental impact statement, and record of decision in late 2026. A separate repeal effort is moving in Congress, where a Senate committee voted in June to attach a repeal to the Wildfire Prevention Act.
