Air Date: Week of September 5, 2025

A roadless area in the Tobacco Root Mountain Range, in Deerlodge National Forest, in Montana. While national forests are definitionally opened up to logging, roadless rule areas often overlap with crucial old growth habitat. (Photo: Preston Keres, USDA, Courtesy of the Center for Biological Diversity)

With an unusually short period for public comments the Trump administration is moving to repeal the “Roadless Rule,” which currently protects over 45 million pristine acres of national forests from access roads for logging. Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity, joins Host Jenni Doering to explain the potential consequences for critical habitat, watersheds, carbon storage and recreation if the Roadless Rule is repealed.

Transcript

DOERING: Some of the wildest places in the United States are not officially wilderness. Instead, they are part of the national forests, managed by the US Department of Agriculture because trees are in one sense a “crop” to be grown and harvested. But forests serve many purposes besides just being a source of timber, and a key policy called the “Roadless Rule” has for decades recognized the importance of keeping some national forest land free from logging and from the roads that come with it. Now, the Trump administration is looking to repeal this rule, which currently protects over 45 million acres of national forests from road development. The USDA announcement claims roads are needed to help fight and prevent worsening wildfires, without mentioning that climate change is fueling the drought and heat conditions that lead to them. And research suggests more roads may in fact spark more wildfires. Here to discuss the implications of repealing the roadless rule is Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity. Welcome to the show, Randi!

SPIVAK: Thanks for having me.

DOERING: So, what is the Roadless Rule exactly, and what areas of the country does it protect?

SPIVAK: So the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, or Roadless Rule for short, it's a landmark conservation policy that's protected our last intact wild forests for more than two decades, and the rule generally prohibits road building and logging in our last unfragmented, undeveloped forest in our National Forest System. So there are roadless areas in 39 states across the country. Taking a step back, you know, why this rule got created in the first place? So, our National Forest System across the country, from the East Coast and West Coast and north, south. You know, there's over 100 national forests in this country, most of it has been opened up to heavy logging and heavy roading. The roadless areas that we're talking about here, these are the last places. They were generally harder to get to. They're not the low elevation forest that could be logged most easily, and the Forest Service had built so many roads, we've got over 180,000 miles of roads crisscrossing our national forests, and that is more than twice the miles of roads in an entire transportation sector in the country. Roads are extremely damaging to forests and habitat and water quality, and so there was this movement basically to protect the last remaining roadless areas. Most of them are wilderness quality. It takes Congress to designate an area as wilderness. This rule was done administratively in recognition of how important these roadless areas are ecologically, to clean water and to wildlife habitat. And frankly, the Forest Service has built more roads than they can even maintain.

DOERING: So we're talking to you because the USDA announced that they intend to repeal the Roadless Rule, and they've opened up a 21-day comment period, up until September 19. How does this timeline compare to previous attempts by the federal government to repeal administrative rules?

SPIVAK: It's pretty short. Twenty-one days, I think that might be a record. Usually those comment periods are 60 days. And just to be clear, there'll be two phases where the public can weigh in. This first phase is called scoping. That the deadline is September 19, and that's when the administration put out their intent to repeal the rule. And they're asking people, what issues should we analyze in the more formal proposal? We'll see that proposal probably based on what the USDA is saying, sometime the winter 2026, Jan-Feb. And we don't know how long that comment period will be. In the past they've been 90 days. I imagine it's going to be much shorter.

DOERING: Tell me about how public comments really played into when this rule was first created.

SPIVAK: Yeah, so this rule was first created in 2001 although there was a lot of momentum building to make this rule happen for decades, just so early on in that comment period, there were hundreds of meetings across the country. Of course, we didn't have the internet then. There were about 600 meetings across the country. Over one and a half million people weighed in in support of the Roadless Rule. That was the most comments ever at that time for a conservation measure. And I think it was a six-month comment period. Overwhelmingly, people were in support of protecting our last remaining wild forests, and they supported the Roadless Rule, overwhelmingly.

DOERING: So this is about roads in national forests. Some would say the national forests are there to be logged. You know, we have other places that are set aside for wilderness, for recreation. What's your response?

SPIVAK: Well, the law that governs the national forests, yes, it does allow logging. It doesn't say how much logging, but it also mandates that our national forests provide viable wildlife populations and also protect clean drinking water and watersheds. So they have to cover all those bases. And right now, our national forests have been heavily logged. They are heavily eroded. There are over 500 threatened and endangered species on our national forests, in large measure, because they have been logging and roaded. And therefore protecting our last wilderness areas, as well as congressionally designated wilderness areas, are really important to make sure that the law upholds its promise to protect watersheds and clean drinking water as well as species habitat.

DOERING: And when it comes to habitat, fragmentation is one of the biggest problems for species. So I can imagine that, you know, keeping the roads out of places that aren't already covered in roads could be really helpful for some of these species that are struggling.

SPIVAK: Yeah, that's right. So thinking about roads, here's why roads are an issue. So first, they're the largest source of sedimentation entering our mountain streams. Think about when you bulldoze a road into a steep hillside, the rain and snow causes tremendous amount of erosion that sends a lot of sediment and pollution into streams. So if you think about, let's say, fish, steelhead trout, salmon, they need cold, clear waters for fishing. When you've got chronic sedimentation pouring into streams, that warms the temperature, it actually covers the fish eggs, it really harms fish spawning. It's also important to understand that national forests, they're the headwaters of most of our great rivers and streams in this country, and they're the largest source of U.S. municipal water supplies. In fact, over 60 million people get their drinking water from national forests and in over 33 states. And roadless areas, they protect headwaters from roads in many, many of these headwater areas. So keeping these areas roadless is also important for maintaining clean drinking water.

DOERING: Randi, could you give us an example of one of these species that is protected by this Roadless Rule?

SPIVAK: Sure, as I mentioned, there are hundreds of threatened, endangered species and even many more common species that spend time in roadless areas. It's everything from butterflies and salamanders and native salmon and cutthroat trout and grizzly bears. And we'll talk about grizzly bears for a minute, because they're super important in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska and elsewhere. You know, they do not like human presence, and roads bring human presence, and so they avoid those areas, and it really interferes with their breeding and their hibernation. And so grizzly bears are one example of a species that really needs sort of refuges, protected cover, away from roaded areas and human presence.

DOERING: And by the way, what's the relationship of old growth forest with roadless areas?

SPIVAK: There's a heavy overlap of old growth with roadless areas. The Tongass has the most acres of roadless areas in the country, and also probably the most old growth forests. And old growth forests are not only beautiful, super important for many species of wildlife, but they also store enormous amounts of carbon, and they continue to pull carbon from the air. And logging basically emits about 90% of the carbon that's stored in trees, and then you never get that sequestration again. Small, young trees do not do the job of large, old, standing trees.

DOERING: Randi, the Trump administration claims that repealing this rule will actually help us fight forest fires. What do you make of this idea?

SPIVAK: Roads actually increase human caused wildfires. There were research studies that show that wildfires are four times more likely in areas with roads than in roadless forest tracks, and that's because roads allow human access. Think of it. It's a dry, hot summer day. There's a spark from a tire. Somebody carelessly throws a cigarette butt out the window, or unattended campfires. So the science unequivocally shows that where there are roads, there will be more fire ignitions. And there's another study that showed more than 90% of all US wildfires happen within half a mile of a road, and again, they're caused, unfortunately, by humans, unintentionally. So no, in this case, more roads will equal more wildfires.

DOERING: Why is the administration trying to repeal this rule?

SPIVAK: You know, Trump's agenda writ large, he is looking to get rid of regulations that protect our water, our air, our land, our wildlife, and against climate change. He's doing this across the board. He has issued an executive order that calls for significantly ramping up logging on our national forests, and I'll quote, “to exploit our timber resources.” You know, this is... he's got drill, baby, drill. This is just another log, baby, log. I mean, Trump really just sees the natural resources in this country as places to exploit. Look, once you open up these areas to roads and logging, and you bulldoze roads in and start logging them, these areas are lost forever. They will forever be industrialized. We need to keep our roadless forests roadless for now and future generations.

DOERING: And to what extent is there any legislation in Congress about this?

SPIVAK: There is a bill, the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2025 and they are looking for cosponsors now, and that bill would make the Roadless Area Conservation Rule permanent.

DOERING: Randi Spivak is the public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity. Thank you so much, Randi.

SPIVAK: Thanks for having me.

DOERING: Public comments on the proposed repeal of the roadless rule are welcomed through September 19th. Find the link to the USDA press release and more on the Living on Earth website, loe.org.

 

Links

Read the Center for Biological Diversity’s statement on the Roadless Rule repeal

Comments on the roadless rule can be submitted here