For decades, powerful environmental groups have pursued a vision of our national forests that steadily removes people from the landscape. They have advocated for less road access and less active management, while supporting policies that place millions of additional acres beyond meaningful human use.
Now, as the Forest Service proposes rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, that same philosophy is on full display as environmental groups warn of bulldozers, clearcuts and industrial development across nearly 45 million acres of national forests.
The rhetoric is designed to frighten people about what might happen if a 25-year-old national prohibition disappears, while obscuring what rescission actually means.
It would not authorize a single timber sale or road project, and it would not eliminate forest plans or environmental review. It would allow local Forest Service professionals to once again consider whether roads and active management are appropriate based on the conditions and needs of individual forests.
We can see the cumulative effect of that philosophy in the steady loss of access to our national forests. In 1993, the Forest Service managed about 369,000 miles of system roads, with roughly 80 percent maintained for motorized use. Thousands of miles were decommissioned during the 1990s, and the Forest Service told Congress it decommissioned another 500 miles annually, on average, from 2004 through 2024.
Those numbers do not include seasonal closures and other travel restrictions, so most Americans probably have little idea how much national forest access has disappeared during their lifetimes.
There is a philosophy behind this trend that environmental historian William Cronon identified three decades ago. Cronon challenged a wilderness ideal that places humans outside the natural world and romanticizes an “unworked natural landscape,” warning that this way of thinking separates people from the places that provide their wood and livelihoods while leaving little room for people to live responsibly within nature.
Our history makes that philosophy even harder to defend because people have been actively shaping these forests for thousands of years.
Indigenous people used intentional burning to influence vegetation, produce food and other resources, and maintain fire adapted landscapes. Forest Service researchers now acknowledge that removing human ignited fire contributed to profound ecological changes and that restoring intentional burning may be necessary even in designated wilderness.
That history should make us question the assumption that less human involvement necessarily produces healthier or more natural forests.
Americans continue that connection today when they hunt, camp, gather firewood, fight fires, manage forests and produce renewable wood products. Roads help make those activities possible while allowing foresters and firefighters to reach landscapes that need attention.
Environmental groups often defend roadless policies by pointing out that people cause many wildfire ignitions, particularly near roads. That is true, but counting ignitions tells us little about which fires grow large and consume the most forest.
Forest Service research in Washington’s East Cascades found that lightning caused fires accounted for 92 percent of the area burned, while human caused fires were far smaller on average.
The more important question is what happens after an ignition occurs, and forest conditions, fuels and the ability of firefighters to reach a fire can help determine the answer.
The consequences of our changing relationship with forests extend beyond access. The Congressional Budget Office found that wildfires on federal lands averaged more than five times larger than fires on nonfederal lands between 1991 and 2021, while also recognizing that forest management can reduce wildfire risk and severity.
Our national forests belong to the American people, and conservation should strengthen their relationship with these lands instead of steadily severing it.
Protecting genuinely wild places has value, but extending a philosophy of human exclusion across vast multiple use national forests has consequences for access, forest health and the communities connected to these lands.
After decades of restricting access and management, environmental groups should answer a provocative question: When did protecting public forests come to mean protecting them from the public?
Make Your Voice Heard
The Forest Service is accepting public comments on its proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule through September 21. Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities has made it easy to submit a comment supporting greater access, active forest management and local decision making on our national forests. Submit your comment here.
