Trump administration moves ahead to end roadless rule on national forests

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday plans to rescind a 25-year-old rule that had restricted logging, road construction, and other development on national forest lands, sparking widespread criticism from environmentalists. The U.S. Forest Service filed a proposal to eliminate the so-called roadless rule, which was established in the final days of Bill Clinton's presidency in 2001.

The agency deemed the rule an indiscriminate restriction that has troubled land managers and hindered efforts to mitigate wildfire risks in the nation's forests.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stated that the rule has become an impediment to tackling preventable issues such as overgrown stands, insect outbreaks, and disease, which have transformed healthy landscapes into potential wildfire hazards. According to Rollins, "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."

Scientists attribute the escalating wildfires to a combination of climate change-induced warming and drying of forests, reduced logging, and decades of fire suppression, which has led to an accumulation of combustible materials. Rollins criticized the roadless rule as a failure, asserting that the proposal aims to restore jurisdiction to local forest managers and eliminate barriers that have prevented them from enhancing forest health across millions of acres.

The roadless rule applied to 30% of national forest lands nationwide, encompassing roughly 59 million acres (24 million hectares), as reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency overseeing the Forest Service. The Forest Service will solicit public feedback on the proposal and a draft of the environmental impact statement published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.