Codify the Roadless Rule — Don't Let USDA Open 44 Million Acres to Logging

Congress needs to codify the 2001 Roadless Rule into law and pass legislation to stop the administration's dismantling of the Forest Service. The USDA's decision to rescind the rule has nothing to do with wildfire prevention — the executive orders it cites are about deregulation, timber production, and Alaskan extraction. Not a word about fire. The administration's own wildfire rationale collapses under scrutiny. Ninety percent of wildfires start within a half mile of a road. Inventoried roadless areas account for just three percent of fires on Forest Service land. The Forest Service itself concluded, when writing the original rule, that building roads into these areas "would likely increase the chance of human-caused fires." A 2025 study in Biological Conservation confirmed roadless areas carry lower wildfire ignition density than roaded forests. More roads mean more fire, not less. The Forest Service already has a $7 billion deferred maintenance backlog on its existing road network — and that only counts roads a passenger car can still drive. The agency has lost nearly a fourth of its workforce under this administration and completed 38 percent less wildfire mitigation work last year than the prior four-year average. Opening 44 million acres to new roads and logging won't fix any of that. It will hand extractive industries access to the last unroaded forests in America and leave taxpayers holding the cleanup bill. Protect these lands permanently.