The Trump administration is targeting one of the most consequential environmental policies of the past two decades, with Agriculture Secretary Brooke L Rollins working to dismantle the Roadless Area Conservation Rule that has kept more than 58 million acres of national forest off-limits to road construction and logging since 2001.
The rule emerged from overwhelming public support. Nearly 2 million Americans submitted comments during its initial rulemaking process, the vast majority backing the protections. Its bipartisan origins made it durable for more than two decades, until now.
Rescinding it would unlock vast tracts of undisturbed wilderness to commercial exploitation. Logging companies and extraction industries view the protected lands as opportunity. Conservationists and public lands advocates see it as the dismantling of a covenant with the natural world.
The Roadless Rule shields some of the continent's last remaining intact ecosystems. Grizzlies, wolves, and salmon depend on these unfragmented habitats. Elk and mule deer populations thrive in areas where development has not carved up the landscape. More than 180 million Americans rely on forested lands to naturally filter and capture drinking water, a service that becomes expensive and complicated once logging and construction introduce sediment and other contaminants.
Charles F Sams III, who directed the National Park Service from 2021 to 2025, views the rule's potential repeal as part of a broader administration campaign to reshape how Americans experience public lands. Since stepping down, hundreds of park superintendents, rangers, biologists, archaeologists, and other staff have been fired from an agency that served more than 320 million visitors in 2025 alone.
The strategy, in Sams' assessment, aims to sever the connection between everyday Americans and their relationship to public lands, history, and collective ownership. For Sams, who grew up on the Umatilla Indian reservation in northeastern Oregon, that breaks a fundamental stewardship obligation rooted in the Cayuse creation story, where Salmon gave humans gifts in exchange for a promise to protect the natural world.
Removing roads from damaged land is a slow, expensive process. The better approach in national forests is never building them in the first place. Sams recently walked trails on his reservation that were once paved roads, now restored to allow salmon passage at Iskuulpa Creek.
The fight over the Roadless Rule transcends typical political divisions. Hunters, anglers, hikers, campers, and families across the political spectrum support protection of wild places. The constituency for extraction is narrower: companies seeking exclusive leases and access to resources they can harvest and profit from, leaving ecological damage that persists long after corporate interests move on.
Sams called on Americans to contact their elected representatives and the U.S. Forest Service to oppose rescission of the rule. Public lands belong to all citizens, which means both a voice in their governance and responsibility for their stewardship.
Author James Rodriguez: "Rollins and Trump are gambling that Americans won't fight hard enough to keep the rule intact, and the 58 million acres hanging in the balance suggest they should recalculate that bet."
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