Aug 19, 2026
Rescission would negatively impact fifty-eight million acres of national forest lands nationwide, including more than three million acres in Wyoming.
UPDATE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2026
Of the three Alternatives to the 2001 Roadless Rule being analyzed in the recently released USDA Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) only the “No Action” alternative preserves protections for our roadless forests.
WWA has put together tips and talking points for submitting successful public comments here.
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UPDATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026
The USDA has now published the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and Proposed Rule, making it clear that their intent is to completely rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Public comment is also now open.
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ORIGINAL POST: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19,2026
On August 18, 2026, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the US Forest Service (USFS) has filed a proposed rule to rescind the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The USDA has just released more information about the proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule and the brief, thirty-three day comment period that is now open August 20 and set to close on September 21, 2026.
For more than a quarter century, the Roadless Rule has protected some fifty-eight million acres of these national forest lands nationwide - including more than three million acres right here in Wyoming - from new road building to large-scale industrial development. These lands without roads encompass some of our nation’s most pristine forest lands, intact habitats, clean air and water, and unparalleled opportunities for outdoor recreation. They need and deserve the protections the Roadless Rule grants them.
The USDA announcement positions the rescission of the Roadless Rule as a wildfire-fighting measure, when, in fact, studies show that wildfire ignition risk is higher in areas with roads than those without, due to increased mechanized human activity. This April, nearly one hundred and twenty firefighters attested to the Roadless Rule’s importance in a letter to Members of Congress, outlining the Roadless Rule’s enduring value for sustainable and safe wildland fire fighting across the country. At our Roadless Rambles event, Mike Maltaverne shared his perspective as a career firefighter on the negative impact that repealing the Roadless Rule would have on Wyoming. In short, invalidating the Roadless Rule will not only not prevent wildfires, it could exacerbate the issue as drought continues to plague the American west.
Proponents of rescinding the Roadless Rule also argue that opening roadless forests to development is necessary to generate revenue. In fact, studies show that the US Forest Service (USFS) regularly spends more preparing for and administering timber sales than it makes in profit, and that our roadless forests already generate nearly $25 billion annually, largely through recreation.
Our intact roadless forests are also critical to food security for many Indigenous communities, as well as for sustaining cultural practices including hunting, fishing, and gathering forest plants for food, medicine, and traditional arts. If commercial logging and roadbuilding were allowed in these special places, it would take decades for the forests to grow back, if they do at all.
To put it plainly, the investment made by protecting these forests far outweighs the short-term monetary gain, if any, that would be made from extractive activities.
It is also worth noting that there are already 370,000 miles of USFS roads across our country, with an estimated $9 billion backlog of maintenance. It feels hard to justify building more roads when we struggle to effectively manage the ones that already exist. This backlog was one of the many reasons the Roadless Rule was adopted in the first place.
Last summer, when the Trump administration proposed repealing the Roadless Rule entirely, more than 625,000 public comments flooded into the USFS in response, 99% of which opposed the rollback. It’s time to raise our voices like this again. WWA is currently working to help prepare talking points and best practices for submitting successful comment. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, be sure to check out our interactive Roadless Area map, where you can explore just what is at stake if the 2001 Roadless Rule gets overturned.