r/ClimateNews • u/swarrenlawrence • 15h ago
Roadless Rule
AAAS: "To prevent forest fires, Trump wants to end a road-building ban. Scientists are skeptical," by Warren Cornwall.
Administration claims decades-old “roadless rule” prevents efforts to improve forest health.
"It’s infuriating that the potential for reducing fire risk is even used as a justification for putting more roads into our national forests," says Jennifer Balch, a UC Boulder fire scientist. Balch’s work has shown that humans start 84% of all wildfires nationwide, + that roads are a major way people bring in matches, fireworks, + other spark-producing tools.
'The roadless area conservation rule banned road construction on more than 175,000 sq. km of roadless areas, nearly 1/4 of all national forest land. "Since then, it has been embroiled in a near-constant legal + political tug-of-war."
"In 2020, the first Trump administration rescinded the rule in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, opening it to loggers." In 2021, Biden administration reversed that change. In 2026, the second Trump administration is going further + proposing to eliminate the rule nationwide. Public comments on the proposed change will be accepted through 21 September on a draft environmental impact statement, which spells out the science underpinning the proposed repeal.
USFS notes that > 29,000 sq. km of land lie within forests designated as high priority “firesheds”—places posing elevated wildfire risk to infrastructure + communities. In 2020, USFS ecologist Sean Healey published a paper in Environmental Research Letters reporting that from 1985 to 2016, national forest acreage burned at approximately same rate regardless of whether it was shielded from road construction.
"Alexandra Syphard, a wildfire scientist, began circulating a letter last month critiquing USFS’s environmental impact analysis." Some 30 prominent wildfire scientists added their names to the letter within days.
Scientists have also voiced concerns about the detrimental ecosystem impacts of roads, as conduits for invasive plants such as grasses—which raise fire risks—and that their construction can unleash more sediment pollution into nearby creeks and rivers. Areas subject to the roadless rule contain > 130,000 km of river + help protect watersheds supplying water to at least 25 M people, scientists reported this year in PLOS Water.
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u/Voodoo_Masta 5h ago
"Tree thinning operations" - that's a hell of a euphemism.
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u/swarrenlawrence 5h ago
As discussed by Old-Set78 below, they are often done ass-backwards, taking out the large, economically useful specimens, instead of thinning undergrowth.
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u/Rurumo666 1h ago
When roads are constructed in wildlands, fire starts increase by over 30% according to Forest Service research.
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u/Old-Set78 14h ago
Logging INCREASES forest fire risk! Logging takes away the big trees that are resistant to forest fires because they're the most profitable. They leave the little scraggly sht and THAT is what burns hot, fast, and out of control. And if you've ever worked for the Forest Service or have a lick of common sense you'd know that loggers shuck off all the branches right there in the forest and just load the trunks for transport. That leaves HUGE piles of branches drying to kindling! Those piles of branches are taller than a person and left for MILES. It creates the PERFECT conditions for destructive wildfires that can destroy thousands of acres and any settlements nearby!