{
  "id": 1774845,
  "title": "Trump administration moves ahead to end roadless rule on national forests",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/18/trump-administration-moves-ahead-to-end-roadless-rule-on-national-1774845",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-08-18T18:53:02.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Associated Press",
    "slug": "associated-press",
    "url": "https://apnews.com/article/roadless-rule-forests-trump-e80a41e0231aa070313a3484261368f3"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "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.\n\nU.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.\"\n\nScientists 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.\n\nThe 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.",
  "summary": "ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The Trump administration announced Tuesday it is moving ahead with plans to rescind a quarter-century-old rule that blocked logging, road building and other development on national forest lands, drawing the ire of environmentalists nationwide. The U.S. Forest Service is filing a proposal that would scrap the so called roadless rule adopted in the last…",
  "key_points": [
    "Trump administration plans to rescind 25-year-old roadless rule on national forests",
    "U.S. Forest Service deems rule an impediment to wildfire risk mitigation",
    "Proposal aims to restore local forest managers' jurisdiction over 59 million acres"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}