The Roadless Conservation Area Rule, or roadless rule as it’s better known, is roughly 60 million acres of national forest land where logging and road construction are prohibited.
About 16,000 acres in Michigan and 69,000 acres in Wisconsin are designated as Inventoried Roadless Areas.
In June 2025, The Trump Administration announced its intention to rescind this rule saying it restricts the Forest Service’s ability to properly manage fire risks and hurts economic development in rural America.
"Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule,” Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a press release. “This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests. It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.”
While the U.S. Department of Agriculture has initiated the process to rescind the Roadless Rule, some lawmakers are also trying to remove it through a bill.
Why the Roadless Rule was created
National Forests operate under a "multiple-use" mandate.
This means any one piece of land could be trying to balance recreation, natural resource protection and harvesting, and wilderness designations.
Former U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck says timber harvesting in particular saw a boom on national forestland during World War II. Dombeck served the U.S. Forest Chief from 1997-2001.
He says the Forest Service tapped into the “piggy bank of old growth timber” during the war to rebuild war machinery and provide homes for soldiers.
“The agency really developed a can-do reputation, as we can get in there and do this, and we did it very well,” said Dombeck. “Part of the problem was we did it too well for a little bit too long.”
That all slowed down in 1989 with the spotted owl issues in the Pacific Northwest and the push for more environmental protections. Timber harvest went from 12.8 billion board feet to almost 3 billion, which is about what is harvested now.
When that timber harvest dropped off, so did the roads budget. There’s roughly 386,000 miles of roads within the national forest system.
Dombeck says when he became chief in 1997, there was an $8.6 million backlog for roads.
“We only had 13% of the roads in the entire national forest system that were in good condition. 50% were in poor condition and were not maintained to the standards for which they were designed,” said Dombeck. “Because of these budget issues, and this sort of this symbolic fight over ‘We don't want you to go into roadless areas, we don't want you to cut old growth,’ and the momentum was there to kind of keep on doing it.”
This led to the Forest Service putting an 18-month suspension on road building and start collecting public feedback.
During that time period, there were 600 public meetings and 1.6 million public comments gathered.
Dombeck considers the process one of the “fairest processes in a democracy.”
“The rulemaking process is carried out by people that are career civil servants, based upon science, based upon economics. We get public input,” said Dombeck.
All that feedback led to the roadless rule being enacted in 2001.
Rescinding the rule
To rescind the roadless rule, the Trump Administration has to go through a regulatory process.
It’s already announced its intent to rescind and had its initial comment period. It’s now reviewing those comments and is working on a draft environmental impact statement and proposed rule.
Once that’s published, there will be another opportunity for public comment.
The Forest Service doesn’t have to go through the public meetings and long comment period like it did when it created the rule. By law, it only has to allow for written comments for a set period.
“It is really critical that if they're rescinding the rule, the public has an opportunity to voice their concerns,” said Cassie Steiner, Senior Campaign Coordinator with the Sierra Club Wisconsin Chapter.
The Sierra Club believes the Forest Service won’t hold any public meetings and will only allow written comments during the legally required number of days.
In anticipation of this, the Sierra Club is hosting its own town halls to collect public comment. The comments are being transcribed and will be submitted once the comment period opens.
“It's public lands, so hearing from the public about what happens with it is very critical, and I think baseline to responsible management in our democracy,” said Steiner. “Another piece of it is this is home for a lot of people, and very personal. I think the stories we heard tonight were not just scientific studies, those do support keeping the roadless rule in place as well, but you know, a lot of people are concerned about future generations.”
One of these town halls was held at Nicolet College on June 4.
The Town Hall
The Northwoods Center conference room at Nicolet filled in with about 100 people for the Sierra Club’s Roadless Rule Town Hall.
It was jointly organized by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Sierra Club, Wisconsin’s Green Fire, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, League of Women Voters of the Northwoods, and the Environmental Law & Policy Center.
About two dozen people gave public comment.
Some stayed focused on the roadless rule itself, pointing out the cost to taxpayers.
“I don't want more money going to new roads on public lands, when the massive network of roads that already exist, as Mike had mentioned, are in disrepair and lack the funding to maintain them,” said Dianne Yeske of Verona, WI.
Others focused on refuting the Trump Administration claim that more roads would help reduce wildfires, saying that roads could lead to more fires since, in places like Wisconsin, people are the number one cause of wildfires.
The Forest Service published a study in 2020 that found “historical fire maps indicate that forests with and without roads have burned at similar rates since the Rule took effect.”
Many like Doug Henke from Phelps spoke about protecting these areas for wildlife and water quality.
“When this roadless rule was made, I don't think the people understood how important it was in terms of preserving species and diversity, and all the things that really are kind of holding this whole thing together,” Henke told WXPR after the town hall. “In Wisconsin, where there's 62,000 acres of tiny percentage of the total forest here is involved, but it is those little spots that may hold the key to the future survival of all kinds of species, including humans.”
Others raised concerns about the impact the rescission could have on the recreation and tourism economy and ensuring there are wilds spaces for future generations.
Some people went beyond the roadless rule speaking about what they see as a greater attack on public lands.
Sterling Strathe of Eagle River spoke of the efforts to sell public land and the recent change to open more lands to off-road vehicles.
“My biggest concern is this is a piece in what's happening to our public lands, and it's actually a quite small piece,” said Strathe.
Going through Congress
While the Trump Administration started going through the regulatory process to rescind the rule, some lawmakers are trying to rescind it through legislation.
The House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing May 21, 2026 that included discussion on a House bill that would make the roadless rule ineffective.
Wisconsin Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany spoke in favor of the bill at the hearing saying the roadless rule stymies proactive management and wildfire suppression efforts.
“Healthy forests require management, access, and the ability to respond to changing conditions on the ground. Without roads that’s simply impossible,” Tiffany said at the hearing.
Groups like the National Association of Home Builders support rescinding the rule saying it is “overly restrictive, prohibits land to be properly managed at the state and local level, and needlessly blocks federal timber harvesting in a healthy and sustainable manner.”
Some have also criticized the rule for taking a “one size fits all” approach and believes the decision should be made on a more local level.
Republicans on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently tacked an amendment to the Wildfire Prevention Act that would nullify the roadless rule.
The Wildfire Prevention Act goes to the full Senate next for a vote.
The Sierra Club is going forward with its town halls.
“It's important that even if this administration doesn't hear those [comments], they're on the written record, so that groups like Sierra Club can continue to support and bring it back later if it is removed,” said Steiner.
The Forest Service has not yet published its draft proposal for nullifying the roadless rule.
The Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club is holding a Roadless Rule Town Hall for the Upper Peninsula region this week. It’s Thursday evening in Houghton.
