The biggest fear tactic we have seen in the discourse around the proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule is to suggest that rescinding the rule will lead to logging companies coming in and clearcutting our forests. Long before the Roadless Rule was enacted the USFS was in the process of abandoning clearcutting as a timber harvest practice.

According to the Forest Service:

Approximately 73 percent of the 191 million acres of national forests are considered forested. Of that forested land, 35 percent is available for regularly scheduled timber harvest and about ½ of 1 percent of those trees are harvested in any 1 year. The remaining 65 percent of the forested land is designated for non-timber uses, such as wilderness and other areas set aside for recreation, or cannot be harvested due to environmental conditions, such as steep slopes and fragile soils.

The USFS tracks its harvest trends, and the most recent harvest data shows that the the amount of forests managed by the USFS that undergo some form of clearcutting amounts to about 80-90,000 acres per year. In 2023 this totaled out to 1/20th of 1% of acreage harvested is done through clearcutting methods.

Harvest plans are determined through Forest Management Plans that are reviewed for each individual forest unit, and these plans take into account endangered species protections, soils, terrain limitations, recreation impacts, and dozens of other criteria. While the Roadless Rule designations do inform some of these protections, rescinding the Roadless Rule will not remove these other protections.

Additionally, according to the CBO, since the time the Roadless Rule was enacted, we have seen the number of sawmills decrease by 40% in the United States.

Even if the intent of rescinding the Roadless Rule is to increase timber harvest or even clearcutting, we simply don’t believe that the current timber harvest trends are that easy to reverse. The 40% of shuttered sawmills aren’t going to magically reappear overnight. The hundreds of environmental groups that litigate dozens of protective statutes in order to prevent any form of timber harvest aren’t going away. Ultimately, the only time Americans are seeing their National Forests destroyed at the same level of what was seen historically by clearcutting is from catastrophic wildfire. During our worst fire years, 100x more forests are being destroyed by wildfire than clearcutting. When wildfires burn these resources we get very limited value out of a resource that used to provide substantial economic value.

This just isn’t about clearcutting – even though clearcutting is an extremely useful boogeyman for radical environmentalists, who are protecting something else entirely than our actual forests.

The best way to show you why groups are fighting so hard to keep the Roadless Rule is to show you a recent example of how the Roadless Rule gets used to stop active management of our forests.

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Case Study

The Fight to Protect Communities from Wildfire – and the Obstacle Standing in the Way

North of Santa Barbara, California, the Los Padres National Forest sits at the heart of a landscape under constant threat from catastrophic wildfire. This is the same type of ecosystem that has seen entire cities burned to the ground in recent years, like during the Palisades Fire, which destroyed communities and forced mass evacuations.

The U.S. Forest Service has recognized this danger and attempted to act proactively. In 2022, they proposed a wildfire risk reduction project to actively manage hazardous fuels across 235,000 acres of the forest. The goal was simple yet critical: reduce wildfire intensity, protect nearby communities, and preserve the forest ecosystem itself. This kind of project represents exactly the type of forward-thinking, science-based management that can prevent disasters before they happen.

But almost immediately, the project came under attack. A coalition of 91 environmental, tribal, and community organizations joined forces to oppose the plan. Through legal threats and aggressive campaigns, they demanded the Forest Service scale the project back. Their pressure worked. The Forest Service was forced to cut 140,000 acres from the plan, leaving just 90,796 acres to be treated.

Groups Opposed to the Wildfire Risk Reduction Project

And even after this major concession, these same groups are still not satisfied. They continue to fight the project, demanding further reductions, even though the Forest Service removed the majority of treatment areas located within designated roadless areas from the plan. These groups are on record demanding the Forest Service consider an alternative that reduces the project by another 83%.

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What’s Really at Stake

The areas removed from the project were not wilderness, but roadless areas, which are supposed to allow for some active management under the Roadless Rule. On paper, the rule permits certain treatments in these areas. But in reality, it gives environmental litigators a powerful weapon to block any meaningful action.

The Los Padres case is a perfect example:

• The Forest Service initially included roadless areas in its plan to reduce catastrophic fire risk.
• Activist groups immediately used the Roadless Rule as legal leverage to demand their removal.
• The agency complied, stripping out the roadless area treatments.
• Even then, the opposition continues.

Yellow Areas Below Show the Full-Size Project Treatment Areas

Purple Areas Below Show the Reduced-Size Project Treatment Areas

Areas Removed from Project are the Roadless Areas

If you analyze which yellow areas were removed from the first map, it’s clear that the areas were removed were the Los Padres National Forest Designated Roadless Areas. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the five areas in these maps that are designated wilderness can’t be treated at all:

This shows the true effect of the Roadless Rule. It’s not just a set of guidelines—it’s an additional legal barrier that ensures groups opposed to active management can delay, weaken, or outright stop forest restoration work.

While these groups claim to support fire prevention, their actions reveal a different agenda: lock up the land and block the very treatments needed to prevent the next megafire.

What the Project Really Does

Opponents portray this as a logging project. It is not. There is no commercial logging in this plan. A Forest Service spokesperson admitted, “For trees and stuff, there is an opportunity to sell it potentially, but we haven’t been too successful in the past. There are no mills nearby. Usually, we have to pay to remove it.” These treatments aren’t commercial logging projects. They are targeted, science-driven actions aimed at lowering fuel loads and protecting lives:

• Strategic Fuel Breaks: Creating strips of land where vegetation is thinned to slow fire spread and give firefighters safe, effective places to work.
• Defense Zones Along Roads & Trails: Improving evacuation routes and firefighter access by removing vegetation within 10 feet of key corridors.
• Property Boundary Buffers: Protecting homes and communities by stopping fire spread at the wildland-urban interface.
• Prescribed Fire & Grazing: Restoring natural fire cycles and reducing hazardous vegetation.
• Replanting with Native Species: Ensuring healthy, resilient landscapes for future generations.

Every method—from hand thinning to pile burning and targeted grazing—is designed to restore ecological balance while protecting human lives. Trees over 24 inches in diameter are off-limits, and any cut material is chipped, burned in controlled settings, or left to decompose naturally.

This is active stewardship, not exploitation.

Why This Matters

When wildfires roar through unmanaged forests, the results are devastating:

• Entire cities can be wiped off the map in hours.
• Wildlife habitats are destroyed.
• Forest ecosystems are permanently altered.
• Recreation access is closed and recreation value is reduced.

The Forest Service is trying to prevent this in Los Padres National Forest. But as long as the Roadless Rule remains in place, activist groups will continue to exploit it to block these projects. Even after the Forest Service removed the vast majority of roadless acres from this proposal, opposition didn’t stop.

That’s because the true intent of the Roadless Rule is not balance or compromise. It’s about locking up our public lands and treating them as de facto wilderness, regardless of the human and ecological cost.

A Call to Action: Rescind the Roadless Rule

The lesson here is clear: As long as the Roadless Rule exists, forests and nearby communities will remain at risk. The rule creates endless opportunities for litigation and obstruction, ensuring that proactive management can never happen at the scale needed.

The Los Padres project is a case study in what happens when bureaucracy wins over common sense:

• An impactful 235,000-acre plan was gutted to 90,796 acres.
• Critical, at-risk landscapes were left untreated.
• Opposition still hasn’t ended.

If we want to protect our forests, our recreation experiences, and our communities, we must remove this obstacle. Rescinding the Roadless Rule will, give land managers the flexibility to act quickly and decisively, empower science-based fire prevention and forest health projects, and reduce endless lawsuits that waste taxpayer money while putting lives in danger.

Conclusion

The stakes could not be higher. We have seen what happens when wildfire management is delayed or blocked. Entire towns like Paradise, California, have been destroyed. Santa Barbara and countless other communities are next unless we act now.

The Los Padres project proves that the Roadless Rule is not a tool for balance. It’s a roadblock to safety and stewardship. To protect lives, forests, and future generations, we must rescind the Roadless Rule and give our land managers the tools they need to manage our forests before it’s too late.

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Don’t delay letting your representatives and the USDA know that you support rescinding the Roadless Rule. You can do both via the form below. Comments are due September 19th!