The U.S. Department of Agriculture filed a proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement in the Federal Register today to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in its entirety. The public comment period is open through midnight Sept. 21. The rule currently limits road construction and timber harvest across more than 44 million acres of the 193-million-acre National Forest System.
Roughly 70 percent of that acreage provides habitat for native trout or salmon, per Trout Unlimited: cutthroat and bull trout across the Rockies, brook trout in the southern Appalachians, and salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska. More than 95 percent sits in 10 Western states. Colorado and Idaho, which have their own state rules from 2008 and 2012, are excluded.
The Tongass National Forest is included, per President Trump’s January executive order “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” It is the fourth federal action on the Tongass in six years: the first Trump administration exempted the forest in October 2020, the Biden administration restored protections in January 2023, and today’s proposal returns it to the national rescission. The Tongass supplies roughly two-thirds of the pink salmon and 75 percent of the coho commercially caught in Southeast Alaska waters, per the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. MidCurrent covered the 2020 exemption and 2023 reinstatement.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins framed the proposal as a wildfire-management measure, saying in the agency release that “outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our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.” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz cited agency figures that more than 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas have high or very high wildfire hazard potential.
Trout Unlimited president Chris Wood, who advised the Forest Service Chief when the 2001 rule was implemented, told Fly Fisherman’s Loop to Loop podcast Monday: “There’s no shortage of opportunities to drive your car to the edge of a stream and fish that stream. What we do have a shortage of, though, are these remote places where you can go with your family, find solace in the backcountry, hunt, fish and just be together.”
Today’s filing removes the national designation but does not authorize projects; individual actions remain subject to existing laws. It runs alongside a separate legislative track MidCurrent covered in June, when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee attached a Roadless Rule repeal to the Wildfire Prevention Act by an 11-9 party-line vote. Anglers can submit comments at Regulations.gov through midnight Sept. 21. USDA has projected a final rule and Record of Decision by late 2026.
