Rescinding ‘Roadless Rule’ threatens Oregon’s public lands

Cascade Lakes, Lost Lake by Mt. Hood, Larch Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge, Joseph Creek and Oregon Dunes on the coast — these are among the places protected from road building, logging and mining by the Roadless Rule.

Established 25 years ago on the final day of the Clinton administration, the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects 58.5 million acres of public land throughout the country — including about 2 million acres in Oregon. 

The Trump administration aims to change that.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins introduced a proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule last September, eliciting public outcry. During an unusually brief public comment period, more than half a million Americans voiced their opinion. Of the over 625,000 submissions the government collected over 21 days, 99.2% were in favor of keeping the rule, according to an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities. 

The next opportunity for public comments depends on when the U.S. Department of Agriculture submits its draft Environmental Impact Statement evaluating the damage that would be caused by tossing out the Roadless Rule. But it could be soon.

“The proposed rule and draft Environmental Impact Statement are expected in the coming months, potentially in Spring 2026,” according to an unsigned statement a staffer in the Forest Service’s Office of Communications sent to Street Roots. 

This time around, the staffer said, the public will have a more standard period of time to weigh in. 

“The next public comment period for the proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule is planned to be at least 30 days.”

The publication of the Environmental Impact Statement and comment period will be announced on the Forest Service website, the Federal Register and regulations.gov.

Following an Environmental Impact Statement and public comment period, the decision is slated for release late this year.  

Water supply

National forests protected by the rule are a vital source of clean drinking water. Inside the forest is a natural water purifying system of roots and soil that filters out the water as it moves toward groundwater aquifers. This is particularly relevant in Oregon, according to Sami Godlove, the Central Oregon field associate for Oregon Wild.

“In Bend almost the entire water supply for over 100,000 people comes from a roadless area: the Bridge Creek Watershed near Tumalo Mountain,” Godlove said. “In addition to water, Tumalo Falls is a well known hiking, fly fishing, mountain biking and cross country ski area across the highway from Mt. Bachelor.”

About 800,000 Oregonians in Salem, Baker City, Lake Oswego, Pendleton, Ashland, Oregon City and Eugene also depend on clean drinking water from roadless areas.

Fire safety

Proponents for removing the Roadless Rule claim that building roads will provide access for fighting wildfires.

“Of the 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas covered under the 2001 Roadless Rule, 28 million acres are in areas at high or very high risk of wildfire,” the USDA said in a statement last June. “Rescinding this rule will allow this land to be managed at the local forest level, with more flexibility to take swift action to reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure.”

But that’s not what the research shows. Wildland firefighters also question the government’s logic.

From 1992 to 2024, the number of measured wildfire ignitions were lowest in designated wilderness areas, followed closely by inventoried roadless areas, according to a study by the Wilderness Society. The highest number of ignitions was within 50 meters of roads. 

A study from Springer Link released in January concludes that building roads into roadless areas is likely to bring more fires. These fires would mostly be smaller than fires farther from roads but there would be more of them. Some could grow into large fires. 

Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology in Eugene, said changing the rule has nothing to do with fire prevention.

“Rescinding protection of the roadless area is about extracting commodity resources and exerting power over the landscape, not fire prevention,” Ingalsbee said. “It’s a losing proposition. It’s not about firefighting, it’s staking out landscapes for logging, grazing, mining or drilling. That’s what this administration is all about. These places are so remote and rugged that building a road is destructive. It won’t last. It’s a huge expense for taxpayers.” 

Meetings in lieu

Alex Craven is the forest campaign manager for the Sierra Club. In 2000, when the Clinton administration was working on establishing the Roadless Rule, government agencies held over 400 meetings to work through the details. This time around, Craven worries that the Forest Service may not hold any public meetings during the upcoming public comment period.

“We’re working on pulling together a series of town hall or citizen’s hearing style events,” Craven said. “These will be in lieu of what the Forest Service is likely not to put on. We’re seeing across the country a lot of communities are interested in bringing together people in these affected areas that appreciate roadless areas and want to see the rule kept intact. They’re putting on their own hearings and those are starting as soon as March.”

One such meeting is coming up in Portland. A town hall on the rule will be held with U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-OR) April 8 at the Ecotrust Building.

Although the Forest Service makes the final decision about the Roadless Rule, members of Congress have launched an effort to change the Rule into law. 

In June 2025, Salinas, along with Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) and Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and others announced their plan to codify the rule into law.

Godlove said the Roadless Conservation Act would provide the same protections as the rule.

“We are working with our congressional delegation,” Godlove said. “All support it except Rep. Cliff Bentz for District 2 and Rep. Val Hoyle in Lane County.” 

Craven said many people haven’t heard of the Roadless Rule or might not realize which areas it protects. The Forest Service created the policy because it was popular, ecologically sound and financially necessary, he said. 

“None of that has changed,” Craven said. “Justifications to repeal it are dubious at best but the basis for creating the rule is more valid than ever before.”

The Roadless Rule works

James Fraser is the Oregon policy director for Trout Unlimited, serving as the point for state and federal policies. He and others from the organization have spoken to elected officials in Washington D.C., informing them about what people in their state think.

“NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) doesn’t require agencies to consider public input as sort of a vote,” Fraser said. “It just requires the agency to make a fully informed decision. So the purpose of these comment periods is to gather all of the relevant information so the agency can look at what’s out there and then decide what to do even if it’s not the most environmentally protective option. So NEPA requires them to make a fully informed decision. It doesn’t require them to make the most environmentally protective decision.”

Fraser believes stakeholders across the West, regardless of partisan identity, support the Roadless Rule. 

“The Roadless Rule has worked really well for 25 years and there appears to be a mismatch between the stated reasons for rescinding the Roadless Rule and the Forest Service’s own science,” Fraser said.

The government says it’s clearing the way for business and local control of resources.

Rescinding the Rule “aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order 14192, Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation to get rid of overcomplicated, burdensome barriers that hamper American business and innovation, according to a statement from the Department of Agriculture, home of the Forest Service. “It will also allow more decisions to be made at the local level, helping land managers make the best decisions to protect people, communities and resources based on their unique local conditions.”

The motivation is clear, said Kai McMurtry, Sierra Club senior communications coordinator.

“The Trump administration wants to rescind the rule to build roads for logging, mining and oil and gas drilling,” McMurtry said. “It’s an undemocratic effort to sell off our public lands to private extraction profiteers.” 

Fraser believes it’s more economically sound to keep the Roadless Rule in place, due to deferred maintenance costs and the lack of valuable timber in those areas.

Devin O’Dea, western policy and conservation manager from Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, echoed that.

“We have enough roads to go around the globe 15 times,” O’Dea said. “The Roadless Rule came up because of challenges of maintaining roads. The deferred maintenance backlog is ballooning out of control. Adding maintenance needs into a system that is behind on maintenance already is unrealistic.”

Sierra Club raises awareness

Carol Valentine, the forest team coordinator for the Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club, was not surprised by the Trump administration’s plan to rescind the Roadless Rule.

“It just feels like piling on because we had been working on the Northwest Forest Plan revision first, and then the public land selloff,” Valentine said. “There was the Trump Executive Order and the Fix Our Forest Act Congress. So it’s just been this ongoing battle really to preserve some of what we have and need. It’s pretty terrifying, and it’s really good that people are paying attention and getting involved. That’s what we’re seeing: that more people are getting involved.”

In the current political climate, she said, it’s more important than ever that government agencies hold the public comment periods required by law — and that people show up to participate.

“There are still people in the Forest Service that want to protect areas,” Valentine said. “Even though they fired pretty much all the -ologists and kept all the timber program people or some of them. There are still some managers that want to maintain the parts of the Forest Service that protect some areas and they are the ones saying, ‘We have to have a comment period, we have to follow this traditional structure which is part of the law.’”

This article appears in March 11, 2026.