The U.S. Forest Service recently published its proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which currently prohibits timber and road-building on more than 50 million acres of U.S. forests. Within hours, the coverage and discourse spiraled into a familiar hysteria: America’s wilderness is about to be paved. Our landscapes deserve better consideration than empty outrage: The rule at issue does not govern wilderness, rescinding it does not, by itself, authorize a single acre of logging, and the real solution may lie at the state level.
Congressionally-designated wilderness is protected by the Wilderness Act of 1964, a statute no administrative rulemaking can undo. Permanent roads, commercial timber harvest, and motorized use are already prohibited there. The Roadless Rule applies rather to Inventoried Roadless Areas, or IRAs, which are undeveloped national forest lands the agency catalogued as generally larger than 5,000 acres and free of improved roads. They amount to roughly 58.5 million acres, about 30% of the National Forest System, and often sit adjacent to wilderness, functioning as the connective tissue and the buffer around it. Their protection is administrative rather than statutory, allowing the executive branch to revise it. This is why the issue has been litigated for a quarter century.
It is also important to be clear about what rescission entails. Removing the national prohibition does not hand anyone a chainsaw. Any road or timber project would still require a forest plan, environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and be subjected to a public comment period. What changes is the default: Instead of a nationwide presumption against road construction, each national forest would resolve the question through its own planning process, and the burden would shift from those proposing development to those objecting to it.
The Roadless Rule recession debate has been ignited, once again, in the wake of the administration’s position. Conservatives should take this debate seriously, as a matter of long-term conservation planning. A single national rule governing the Tongass National Forest, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge in southwest Montana, and the pinyon-juniper country of southern Utah is an unnecessarily blunt instrument, as the officials applying it are largely located in Washington, D.C., and not in the counties most impacted by their decisions.
The more complex argument is wildfire, which has been one of the central talking points around rescission. The current rule already contains some exceptions permitting fuels reduction work, including the removal of smaller-diameter trees to lower fire risk, and nearly two million acres of inventoried roadless areas have been treated under it. Although concerns remain about the ability to place new roads in the case of emergencies, roads themselves can still represent a complicating factor rather than a straightforward remedy. Research finds that nearly 80% of human-caused ignitions occur within half a mile of a road. Add the agency’s $10.8 billion deferred maintenance backlog, more than half of which is tied to roads it already owns and cannot afford to maintain, and the case for building additional ones as a fire strategy becomes more nuanced. Luckily for those who are concerned about logging, the commercial case is similarly modest. Most roadless terrain is high, steep, and slow-growing rather than productive timber ground.
A better answer is at the state level, though it’s not without policy friction. Idaho and Colorado have negotiated their own roadless rules through state petitions, codified at 36 CFR part 294, subparts C and D, and the current proposal explicitly leaves both in place. That is the model worth replicating, and recent analysis makes the case for its fiscal benefits clear. Roadless areas support native trout or salmon across 70% of their acreage, are nearly twice as likely as roaded lands to have properly functioning watersheds, and account for 93% of elk summer range in Montana and more than 99% of crucial mule deer habitat in Utah, while the timber they hold represents less than 0.2% of national demand. Conservation that requires no land acquisition, no easement purchase, and no new bureaucracy is about as cost-effective as public land policy gets. The recreation stakes are concrete as well, since the areas in question carry more than 25,000 miles of trail and roughly 10,000 climbing routes. Still, states wishing to follow in Idaho and Colorado’s footsteps have a rocky policy landscape ahead, highlighting the necessity for clearer policy paths.
The governors of Montana, Wyoming, and Utah have all supported rescission. They now have an opportunity to demonstrate that state authority means state stewardship for other impacted states.