Rescinding the Roadless Rule: ending national road and logging limits on 44.7 million acres of national forest (2025-2026)

Case

On Aug. 18, 2026 USDA filed a proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule entirely, which since 2001 has barred road building and most logging in inventoried roadless areas of the national forests. USDA says the move cuts red tape and lets local managers reduce wildfire risk, and ties it to Trump's executive orders to expand timber production. Conservation groups, most Tribal governments consulted and an overwhelming share of public commenters oppose it, and critics point to the timber industry background of Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. USDA's own analysis says near-term effects would be modest and localized, with possible economic impacts above $100 million.

What the rule is and what is proposed
The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule generally prohibits road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting in inventoried roadless areas of the National Forest System, with limited exceptions. The Federal Register describes it as long-term protection for 58.5 million acres.
The Forest Service's 2025 notice of intent said the 2001 rule applies to about 44.7 million acres (including about 9.3 million in Alaska's Tongass National Forest), out of inventoried roadless areas totaling about 58.2 million acres, or about 30 percent of National Forest System land. USDA's August 2026 release cites more than 44 million acres of the 193-million-acre system.
On Aug. 18, 2026, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a proposed rule to rescind the 2001 rule in its entirety; it was published Aug. 20, 2026 (91 FR 53827) and would remove and reserve 36 CFR part 294, subpart B. State-specific roadless rules for Idaho and Colorado are not affected.
If finalized, roadless areas would be governed by each national forest's land management plan, which could still restrict roads and logging. Rescission does not itself authorize any project, and any later road or timber proposal would need site-specific environmental review under NEPA.
USDA says more than 95 percent of inventoried roadless areas are in 10 Western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Timeline
March 1, 2025: Trump signed Executive Order 14225, "Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production," declaring that the U.S. has abundant timber but that heavy-handed federal policies have prevented its full use.
Aug. 29, 2025: USDA published a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement and rulemaking to rescind the rule. During the 21-day comment period it received more than 220,000 comment letters on behalf of over 625,000 individuals and organizations.
Aug. 18-20, 2026: USDA announced and published the proposed rescission with a draft environmental impact statement and cost-benefit analysis. The initial comment deadline was Sept. 21, 2026.
Sept. 11, 2026: the Forest Service extended the comment deadline on the proposed rule to Oct. 6, 2026.
As of Oct. 6, 2026, the Federal Register's page for the proposed rule listed 322,418 comments received at Regulations.gov.

The administration's stated rationale
USDA calls the 2001 rule a one-size-fits-all restriction that has frustrated land managers and been a barrier to wildfire risk reduction work, and says rescission returns decisions to local forest managers.
Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said more than 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas, mainly in the West, have high or very high wildfire hazard potential, that only 5 percent of those areas have had hazardous-fuels treatment since 2014, and that more than a quarter of these lands, 11.3 million acres, are already near existing roads.
USDA says the rescission aligns with Executive Orders 14192 (deregulation), 14225 (timber production), 14154 ("Unleashing American Energy") and 14153 (Alaska resources). The proposed rule itself cites those orders in its statement of purpose.

USDA's own impact estimates
USDA acknowledges that near-term effects of rescission would be bounded by existing plan direction, budgets and legal constraints, and describes the management opportunities as modest and localized.
Roads: about 18.2 million acres (45.5 percent of the potentially affected area) are lands where current forest plans allow permanent roads but the 2001 rule prohibits them.
Timber: about 4.8 million acres (16 percent of forested area in potentially affected roadless areas) meet both operability and plan-allowance conditions. If harvest occurred on all of it, which USDA calls unlikely, it could add 5 to 10 percent to annual National Forest System sawtimber harvest, with an estimated $5.2 to $11.4 million a year in revenue to the Treasury and Forest Service and $4.6 to $10.6 million a year to the timber industry.
Recreation: USDA estimates lost economic benefit to recreationists of about $6.1 million a year, most likely in the operable areas of roadless areas.
Minerals and energy: the rule would give more flexibility for future oil, gas and coal leasing in affected areas, though USDA anticipates no net change in domestic production of those fuels.
Wildfire: USDA acknowledges that greater public access can increase human-caused ignitions in some places, while saying the 2001 prohibitions have limited thinning and some fire-control tactics. It also cites a $6.9 billion deferred-maintenance backlog for Forest Service roads and bridges as a limit on road building.
USDA says total additional economic impacts of the proposal "could exceed $100 million" and classified it as economically significant under Executive Order 12866.
USDA's cost-benefit analysis quantifies annual effects of the proposed rule as: lost recreation benefits of $6.1 million, forgone passive-use (conservation) value of $5.3 to $11.5 million, and a timber benefit to society of $9.9 to $22.0 million, plus a $9 million recreation-spending transfer. Total quantified annual forgone benefits are $5.3 to $17.6 million.
The analysis puts the 15-year net present value at -$92 million to +$199 million at a 3 percent discount rate (-$70 million to +$152 million at 7 percent), using maximum potential harvest and benefits that it says do not account for uncertainty.
The analysis lists unquantified costs including degraded recreation quality, ecological and water impacts, increased ignition risk and the agency's road-maintenance burden, and unquantified benefits including recreation access, reduced wildfire risk and management flexibility.
The statement that impacts "could exceed $100 million" appears once in the analysis, in its summary beside a table whose quantified annual figures are lower than that; the analysis does not tie the statement to a specific calculation.
The economic analysis says the rescission would have the same result as reinstating the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule, which exempted the Tongass National Forest from the 2001 rule.

Public and Tribal response
The Center for Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy group, analyzed the publicly posted comments on the 2025 notice of intent and found 99.2 percent opposed rescission, 0.6 percent supported it and 0.2 percent were neutral, with a margin of error of about 1.4 percent. The analysis covers only the comments posted for review, not the hundreds of thousands of bulk petition submissions.
In its proposed rule USDA reports that the majority sentiment among Tribal governments it consulted is opposition to rescission, citing threats to sovereignty, cultural sites and subsistence resources; one Alaska Native Corporation supported it, saying the national rule limits its right to access and develop its lands. As of filing, the Forest Service had received 64 requests for consultation and held 29.

Industry ties and who stands to gain
Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz was previously president of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a trade association of companies that buy federal timber, and vice president of resources and government affairs at the lumber maker Idaho Forest Group, according to Mother Jones.
In July 2022 congressional testimony as head of that coalition, Schultz said nearly half of the National Forest System was off limits to management and asked Congress to allow new road construction; he now oversees the agency writing the rescission.
The American Forest Resource Council, a West Coast timber trade association whose members include Idaho Forest Group, has called for rescission. Mother Jones, citing lobbying records, reports it has spent more than $210,000 since February 2025 advocating expanded harvest on national forests. Public Citizen reports Idaho Forest Group raised its own lobbying spending in 2026, including on USDA forest-management efforts.
The president of the American Loggers Council told Capital & Main that ending the rule is a critical step in reviving the timber industry even if it takes five or ten years. A USDA spokesperson told the same outlet that market conditions and a reduced Forest Service workforce will make selling timber from roadless areas harder.

North Carolina
Reported North Carolina acreage varies by source: nearly 152,000 acres of inventoried roadless area in the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests alone (Carolina Public Press), 172,000 acres statewide (WUNC/BPR), and 144,000 acres (Sierra Club). WCNC's broadcast cited more than 150,000 acres in the High Country.
Areas named in local coverage include parts of Linville Gorge and South Mills River. Carolina Public Press reports that North Carolina has more wildland-urban interface acres than any other state.
The Draft EIS summarizes roadless acreage by Forest Service Region, not by state or forest, so it gives no North Carolina total. Volume II's North Carolina map (Figure 21) is dated December 2025 and shows boundaries only.
For the Southern Region (Region 8), which includes North Carolina along with other Southern states, the Draft EIS lists about 954,000 acres of 2001 roadless area on 13.5 million acres of national forest, of which about 839,000 acres would be potentially affected under full rescission (Alternative 2). Under the partial alternative (Alternative 3), about 815,000 acres would lose prohibitions and about 25,000 would keep them, which the EIS describes as 97 percent of the region's roadless acres losing protection.
In the Southern Region, 41 percent of the forested potentially affected area is classed as operable for timber harvest under Alternative 2, a higher share than the 17 percent national figure.

Who is behind the rule
Brooke L. Rollins is Secretary of Agriculture and announced the proposed rescission on Aug. 18, 2026; Tom Schultz is Chief of the Forest Service, the USDA agency that manages the national forests and prepared the rule and Draft EIS.
The proposed rule (91 FR 53827, FR Doc. 2026-16965) was signed by Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Alexander Vaden. The Federal Register lists Joshua White as the agency contact for questions.
The notice and release credit the agency, not individual drafters; the staff who wrote the rule and Draft EIS are not named in the sources reviewed.
Before leading the Forest Service, Schultz worked in the lumber industry: he was vice president of resources and government affairs at the lumber maker Idaho Forest Group and president of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a trade association of companies that buy federal timber.

Perspectives

Official position — USDA / Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz
The 2001 rule is a one-size-fits-all national restriction that has kept land managers from thinning fuel-loaded forests. Rescinding it returns decisions to local forest planning, which still operates under the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act and NEPA. The proposal does not mandate any logging or road building, USDA says, and it expects only modest, localized change given budgets and market conditions. In the agency's account, active management is needed because many roadless acres face high wildfire hazard and few have been treated.

Official position — Governors Greg Gianforte (Montana), Spencer Cox (Utah) and Mark Gordon (Wyoming)
Western governors quoted in USDA's release welcomed the rescission, saying a national rule has tied the hands of local managers and that state and local involvement produces better decisions about wildfire risk and forest health.

Critic — Sierra Club (North Carolina chapter)
The wildfire rationale is cover for reopening public forests to logging and other industrial development. The group points to research indicating fires start more often near roads than in roadless areas, says millions of Americans supported the rule in 2001 and objected to rescission, and warns that logging and development would destroy habitat, old-growth forest and recreation areas.

Critic — Public Citizen
A former timber-industry executive and lobbyist is now the official overseeing a rule that major logging companies stand to benefit from. The group says the administration's forestry changes mirror long-standing industry priorities and that conflicts of interest are multiplying.

Defender — American Forest Resource Council and American Loggers Council (timber trade groups)
Industry groups support rescission. The American Forest Resource Council says flexible, proactive management, including more harvest, thinning, prescribed fire and road construction, has never been more needed. The American Loggers Council's president calls rescission a critical step in reviving a struggling timber industry, even if results take five to ten years, and timber professionals argue the downsides will be smaller than environmentalists fear.

Expert view — Tribal governments consulted by the Forest Service (as summarized by USDA)
Most Tribal governments consulted oppose rescission, according to USDA's own summary. They argue it threatens sovereignty, sacred sites, gathering areas, water quality and subsistence resources, and that it shifts project-level review onto Tribes' limited resources. Many asked for the existing rule to stay or for stronger, co-managed alternatives. One Alaska Native Corporation supports rescission, saying the national rule limits its access and development rights.

Research notes
Open leads: (1) Acreage in North Carolina varies by source (roughly 140,000 to 176,000 acres). The Draft EIS Volume I reports acreage only by Forest Service Region and Volume II's NC map has no numbers, so the figure cannot be settled from those; the Forest Service's interactive Draft EIS map viewer or the national IRA shapefile could give a state or forest total. WCNC's broadcast figure is more than 150,000 acres in the High Country. (2) The comment period on the proposed rule closed Oct. 6, 2026; final-rule timing and litigation (groups have said they will sue) are still to be added. (3) Industry lobbying totals come from Mother Jones and Public Citizen reporting on lobbying disclosures; verify against the disclosures themselves before relying on a dollar figure. (4) Check whether campaign or inauguration money from timber interests can be documented from primary records; none is claimed here. (5) Ask USDA how its "could exceed $100 million" statement was derived, since the economic analysis's quantified annual figures are lower.

Note
USDA says rescission only returns decisions to local forest plans, does not mandate logging or roads, and reduces wildfire risk; opponents say it is a giveaway to timber and mining interests and that roads raise human-caused fire risk.

Sources
[1] Federal Register, "Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation" proposed rule (91 FR 53827) (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/20/2026-16965/special-areas-roadless-area-conservation) · 2026-08-20
[2] USDA press release, "USDA acts to remove roadless rule restrictions that exacerbate rising wildfire risk" (https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/08/18/usda-acts-remove-roadless-rule-restrictions-exacerbate-rising-wildfire-risk) · 2026-08-18
[3] Federal Register, extension of comment period (Doc. 2026-18648) (https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-18648) · 2026-09-11
[4] Federal Register, notice of intent to prepare an EIS and rulemaking (90 FR 42179) (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/29/2025-16581/special-areas-roadless-area-conservation-national-forest-system-lands) · 2025-08-29
[5] Executive Order 14225, Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202500316/html/DCPD-202500316.htm) · 2025-03-01
[6] Outdoor Life, "More Than 99 Percent of Americans Disapprove of Roadless Rule Rollbacks" (Center for Western Priorities analysis) (https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/americans-unanimously-opposed-roadless-rule-rescission) · 2025-09
[7] Mother Jones, report on Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, the timber industry and the roadless rule (https://motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/us-forest-service-chief-tom-schultz-logging-timber-lumber-industry-roudless-rule-national-public-lands) · 2026-09
[8] Public Citizen, "Trump's Forest Service Chief Is Rewriting Logging Access Rules He Once Lobbied to Change" (https://www.citizen.org/news/trumps-forest-service-chief-is-rewriting-logging-access-rules-he-once-lobbied-to-change/)
[9] WUNC/BPR News with Grist, "The Trump administration is moving forward with its plans to remove roadless forest protections. This includes WNC" (https://www.wunc.org/2026-08-18/the-trump-administration-is-moving-forward-with-its-plans-to-remove-roadless-forest-protections-this-includes-wnc) · 2026-08-18
[10] WFAE/Carolina Public Press, "Roadless areas of national forests could go away under proposed rule change" (https://www.wfae.org/energy-environment/2026-02-28/roadless-areas-of-national-forests-could-go-away-under-proposed-rule-change) · 2026-02-28
[11] Sierra Club North Carolina, "Roadless Rule rescission will devastate national forests in NC, nationwide" (https://www.sierraclub.org/north-carolina/blog/2026/08/roadless-rule-rescission-will-devastate-national-forests-nc-nationwide) · 2026-08
[12] Capital & Main (via Times of San Diego), "Trump's Plan to End Forest Protections Targets a 'Conservation Success Story'" (https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2025/09/21/trumps-plan-to-end-forest-protections-targets-a-conservation-success-story/) · 2025-09-21
[13] Draft EIS Volume II, State Maps (Figure 21, North Carolina), USDA Forest Service (https://www.regulations.gov/document/FS-2025-0001-224065) · 2026-08-20
[14] Draft EIS Volume I, 2001 Roadless Rule Rescission (Appendix 1, Tables 54-55), USDA Forest Service (https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FS-2025-0001-224064) · 2026-08-20
[15] USDA economic analysis (regulatory flexibility analysis and cost-benefit analysis), 2001 Roadless Rule Rescission (https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FS-2025-0001-224067) · 2026-08-20

Connections

Related — Collapse of environmental enforcement against polluters
Another front in the administration's rollback of environmental safeguards on public resources.

Same context — Environmental deregulation under EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin
Both are part of the second-term push to roll back environmental protections under the deregulation and resource-development executive orders; USDA cites the same order on deregulation.

Related — NEPA: removal of CEQ regulations and rollback of agency environmental review procedures (2025-2026)
USDA's NEPA procedures and the Roadless Rule rescission are both part of the Agriculture Department's rollback of environmental constraints on national forests.

Shared mechanism — Oil and gas insiders running the energy agencies: Wright, Burgum, and the appointee pipeline
Same pattern of industry veterans leading the agency that regulates their former sector; Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz came from timber trade groups, and Mother Jones calls him one of dozens of former extractive-industry insiders in key environmental posts.