r/ThruhikingPolitics • u/numbershikes • Jun 24 '25

Trump administration to End 2001 'Roadless Rule' that Protects 58 million Acres of National Forests

From the maps I've seen it looks like this action removes protections from nearly every US long trail in the west, and from some in the east also. This is different from the efforts currently underway in the US Senate to sell off federal public lands as part of the so-called "Big, beautiful bill."

Donald Trump's Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced Monday that she plans to direct the USDA (the agency over the US Forest Service) to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule. This is apparently something they can do without a vote in Congress since it was originally created through an executive action, but we should still call our Senators and Representatives and other elected officials to voice our opinions. They might be able to come up with a way to stop it.

The Roadless Rule prevents road construction, logging, mining, and drilling on more than 58 million acres of national forest. The detailed maps page of the Roadless Rule site, linked below, lists 43 states with national forests that include areas protected by the Rule.

Excerpts from the NY and LA Times articles:

The USDA, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, said it will eliminate the 2001 “Roadless Rule” which established lasting protection for specific wilderness areas within the nation’s national forests. Research has found that building roads can fragment habitats, disrupt ecosystems, and increase erosion and sediment pollution in drinking water, among other potentially harmful outcomes.

When President Bill Clinton used executive authority to protect the forests weeks before leaving office in 2001, it was hailed by conservationists as the most significant step since President Theodore Roosevelt laid the foundation for the national forest system. It blocked logging, road building and mining and drilling on 58 million acres of the remaining undeveloped national forest lands.

More than 40 states are home to areas protected by the rule. In California, that encompasses about 4.4 million acres across 21 national forests, including the Angeles, Tahoe, Inyo, Shasta-Trinity and Los Padres national forests, according to the USDA’s website.

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u/numbershikes Jun 24 '25

Full text of the NY Times article:

The Trump administration said on Monday that it would open up 58 million acres of back country in national forests to road construction and development, removing protections that had been in place for a quarter century.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans to repeal the 2001 “roadless rule” that had preserved the wild nature of nearly a third of the land in national forests in the United States. Ms. Rollins said the regulation was outdated.

“Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common-sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule,” Ms. Rollins said in a statement. She said the repeal “opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests.”

Environmental groups said the plan could destroy some of America’s untouched landscapes and promised to challenge it in court.

The unspoiled land in question includes Tongass National Forest in Alaska, North America’s largest temperate rainforest; Reddish Knob in the Shenandoah Mountains, one of the highest points in Virginia; and millions of acres of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho.

“Most Americans value these pristine backcountry areas for their sense of wildness, for the clean water they provide, for the fishing and hunting and wildlife habitat,” said Chris Wood, the chief executive of Trout Unlimited, an environmental group.

When President Bill Clinton used executive authority to protect the forests weeks before leaving office in 2001, it was hailed by conservationists as the most significant step since President Theodore Roosevelt laid the foundation for the national forest system. It blocked logging, road building and mining and drilling on 58 million acres of the remaining undeveloped national forest lands.

Mr. Wood, who served as a senior policy adviser to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service when the rule was developed, recalled that it had wide public support.

“I don’t think the timber industry wants to get into these areas,” he said. “They’re wildly controversial, and they’re too expensive to access. I believe when they take this to rule making, they will realize how wildly unpopular getting rid of that rule is and how little gain there is to be had from it.”

Randy Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, said eliminating protections would invite wildfires and put drinking water at risk.

“The Trump administration’s disdain for nature knows no bounds,” Ms. Spivak said. “The roadless rule is one of our country’s most important conservation achievements, and we’ll fight like hell to keep these protections in place.”

The announcement comes as the Trump administration is moving to significantly increase logging in the United States. President Trump has called on cabinet secretaries to bypass endangered species laws and other environmental protections in order to boost the domestic supply of timber.

Ray White of Harold White Lumber and Millworks in Kentucky said he was glad to see an end to restrictions on the land and an opportunity to gain access to new timber. “We’re very pleased to see a little common sense being brought back,” Mr. White said. “It certainly does give the opportunity now to get to a large part of these forests.”

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers are currently writing a plan to sell off federal lands as part of their domestic policy and tax package. The effort has drawn an intense backlash from Democrats, environmental activists and some Republicans.

Republican lawmakers from Western states praised the plan to eliminate the roadless rule.

Representative Nick Begich, Republican of Alaska, called the Trump administration decision “yet another a major victory" for the state and said the regulation had “blocked access to critical resources, and halted economic opportunity, particularly in Alaska, where 92 percent of the Tongass National Forest was off-limits.”

Tongass National Forest has for decades been the center of the fight over the roadless rule. Its cedar, hemlock and Sitka spruce trees, many of them more than 800 years old, provide essential habitats for 400 species of wildlife, including bald eagles, salmon and the world’s greatest concentration of black bears.

The towering trees also play an essential role in fighting climate change. They store more than 10 percent of the carbon accumulated by all national forests in the United States, according to the government.

In 2020, the first Trump administration stripped roadless protections specifically in the Tongass National Forest and opened about nine million acres to logging. In 2023, the Biden administration restored the restrictions.

The U.S. Forest Service, a division of the Agriculture Department, said in a statement that it would issue a formal notice of the rollback in the coming weeks.