In a column carried by Global Agriculture, Blake Busse, who works on The Pew Charitable Trusts' US conservation project, argues that the US Department of Agriculture should reconsider its proposal to rescind the Forest Service's 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The rule generally limits new road building and timber harvesting on designated National Forest System lands. The views are the writer's own.
The USDA proposed the repeal on 24 August 2026. Busse writes that the department's own draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) indicates repeal would likely cause economic and environmental harm to backcountry forests, wildlife, water and communities, while doing little or nothing to cut wildfire risk and possibly raising federal road maintenance costs. He notes that the DEIS shows inventoried roadless areas have been treated to reduce wildfire risk, by tree cutting, pile burning, chipping and low-intensity burning, at rates similar to other national forest land, and that it acknowledges road building can lead to more human-caused fires.
The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of national forest. The rule first covered 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico; after state-specific rules for Idaho and Colorado, 44.7 million acres remain under the 2001 rule that the USDA now proposes to remove. Before 2001, Busse writes, about 386,000 miles of roads had been built on national forest land, largely with federal timber subsidies, with habitat loss and poorer water quality for downstream communities as a result.
The DEIS examined three options: keeping the rule, repealing it, or removing 31.7 million acres, 71% of the covered area, including all roadless areas in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The USDA favours repeal.
Busse points to the scale of opposition. After the USDA said in 2025 that it was considering the move, the Forest Service received more than 625,000 comments, 99% of them against repeal. Tribal bodies including the National Congress of American Indians have passed resolutions against it, 12 Southeast Alaska tribes sent a joint letter on the Tongass, and in early September a bipartisan group of 164 US senators and representatives asked the USDA to halt the repeal. He calls instead for a balanced, lasting approach that keeps the qualities of roadless areas while meeting new management needs.
Photo: Mark Brennan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Source: Global Agriculture
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