When thinking of national forests, vast Western expanses such as Alaska, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest often come to mind. However, millions of acres of federal forests are also present in the eastern half of the United States. These areas, rich in biodiversity, have largely been shielded from roads by a policy known as the “roadless rule.”
But this protection may soon end.
The formal name for this policy is the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, implemented in 2001 during the last days of the Clinton administration. It stemmed from the U.S. Forest Service’s realization that it had constructed more roads than it could maintain, which led to environmental damage. The rule prohibited road construction and logging across nearly 60 million acres of untouched national forest across 39 states. In the densely populated eastern U.S., these areas offer essential ecological and natural havens.
The Trump administration’s initiative to dismantle this rule, potentially opening these lands to logging and mining, raises concerns about the impact on these forests and the communities that depend on them.
The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, contends that the roadless rule restricts efforts to mitigate wildfire risks, ensure firefighter access, and enhance forest health. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has criticized the rule as “absurd” and “overly restrictive,” suggesting that its repeal would grant the Forest Service more flexibility to safeguard forests and bolster rural economies.
Conservationists, however, challenge the administration’s stance, arguing that it lacks scientific support and overlooks the significance of these unspoiled forest areas. These forests are crucial for wildlife habitats, recreation, and water supply protection, and they play a vital role in carbon storage to combat climate change. “Roadless areas are a finite resource,” stated Garrett Rose from the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They represent the last best stretches of national forest land.”
Opposition to the repeal also comes from former Forest Service leaders. Four former chiefs, with 150 years of combined experience, have advocated for maintaining the rule. “Eliminating protections for these lands, which belong to all citizens, rich and poor, would be an irreversible tragedy,” said Vicki Christiansen, who led the agency from 2018 to 2021.
The rule currently protects about one-third of national forest land, with 95% located in 10 Western states where large, contiguous forests are common. East of the Mississippi River, the rule safeguards smaller, more vulnerable areas. For instance, Shawnee National Forest in Illinois has only 4,000 roadless acres; the Southeast has about 416,000 acres in total.
Inventoried roadless areas in U.S. national forests, millions of acres
The Trump administration initiated the repeal process last fall with a notably brief 21-day public comment period, much shorter than the typical timeframe, which can extend up to 90 days. Despite the short period, it garnered over 220,000 comments, almost all opposed, citing concerns about wildlife, tourism, and water quality.
Nevertheless, the administration plans to move forward with the rollback. This is part of a broader effort to increase logging and transform the nation’s second-largest land management agency. Recently, 57 of the 77 Forest Service research stations were closed, many of which focused on climate change, invasive species, and wildfires. The reorganization includes relocating the agency headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, and closing nine regional offices.
Since returning to office last year, President Donald Trump has urged federal agencies to ramp up timber production, facilitating tree felling through legal loopholes. With the Department of Agriculture seeking to overturn the roadless rule this year, the debate is shifting from Washington to the forests and communities adjacent to some of the last protected areas in the East.
— Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Shawnee National Forest, Illinois
A quiet stand in the woods against a warming world
In 1990, John Wallace marked his 31st birthday by chaining himself to a log skidder deep in Shawnee National Forest. He was one of many activists who spent 79 days occupying the area to halt timber sales. U.S. Forest Service officers eventually arrested him after cutting him free with a blowtorch. The protest, which gained national attention, resulted in an injunction against commercial logging and oil and gas drilling that lasted until 2013.
Despite this, the roadless rule continued to protect approximately 2% of the forest from logging.
Now, 35 years after his protest, Wallace is concerned about how President Trump’s push for expanded logging will affect the land he cherishes. “The impact in Shawnee won’t be as significant as out west,” Wallace, who has experience managing public lands in Carbondale, Illinois, noted. “But make no mistake, the Trump administration aims to open up our public lands to industrial exploitation.”
Shawnee spans the southern tip of Illinois, covering about 289,000 acres of steep hills, hardwood forests, and sandstone bluffs. After extensive logging a century ago, the forest has regrown unevenly, surrounded by farms, power lines, warehouses, and small towns. Only around 10,000 scattered acres remain protected from roads under the rule.
These roadless areas are crucial for species such as the cerulean warbler, bird-voiced tree frog, and Indiana bat. A single tree can absorb around 48 pounds of carbon dioxide each year, and many of these forests are currently at their peak carbon absorption potential.
“Eastern forests are middle-aged,” typically between 80 and 120 years old, explained Richard Birdsey, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and former U.S. Forest Service researcher. “This is when they are most effective at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in biomass and soil.”
Birdsey has spent decades studying forests as carbon sinks. In 2019, woodlands offset more than 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and a study he co-authored in 2023 found that Eastern forests had only reached about half of their carbon storage potential. If left undisturbed, these forests could continue accumulating carbon for decades or even centuries. Halting all timber harvesting in these areas could absorb around 117 million metric tons of CO2 annually by 2050. Increasing timber harvests, as proposed by Trump, could raise emissions to similar levels.
Driving through Shawnee, Wallace navigated winding roads past fields, power lines, and scattered homes cutting through the forest. “I can see national forest in my rearview mirror and up here on our left,” he remarked. “When we approach the roadless area, we’ll be surrounded by national forest.”
After missing a turn and backtracking along a country road, he arrived at the modest cabin of his longtime friend Mark Donham. Located deep within Shawnee near Burke Branch, this expansive ecosystem didn’t meet the roadless rule’s protection criteria, but the Forest Service still preserved it from logging due to its sensitive plant and water resources.
Inside, Donham, who works at a grocery co-op in Kentucky, stoked one of his wood-burning stoves, his only heat source, and unfolded a large map. “This area here — all the way up to the transmission line — is the roadless area,” he explained. Donham moved to the cabin with his late wife in 1980 and soon joined the fight against logging. “It’s almost 7,000 acres.”
Outside, he led the way down a muddy, uneven path into Burke Branch, which is interlaced with a network of improved and unimproved roads, according to the forest’s 2006 management plan. Donham pointed out towering pines, one nearly eight stories tall. “These aren’t even the biggest ones,” he noted, gesturing further down the trail toward taller conifers.
His mood darkened as the path narrowed. Deep ruts from all-terrain vehicles scarred the soil, and beer cans littered the ground. “I’ve lived here 45 years,” Donham said, gathering trash in a white plastic bag. “Aside from vehicle abuse, nothing’s happened here. You can walk four or five miles and be in the wilderness.”
To Donham, the damage serves as a warning. Roads mean access — and access, he cautioned, rarely leads to good outcomes.
— Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Chattahoochee National Forest, Georgia
The fire risk on both sides of the road
A narrow, pothole-ridden dirt road winds deep into the Chattahoochee National Forest outside the small mountain town of Clayton, Georgia. It’s a challenging hike on foot or a rough ride on a mountain bike or ATV. But if you climb the steep slope beside the road, you’ll find a ridge with an uninterrupted view of the forest, free from roads. Pines, oaks, and twisted mountain laurels cascade down the slopes, with another peak visible in the distance.
It’s a beautiful and remote area.
The Chattahoochee spans approximately 751,000 acres in the Appalachian foothills of northern Georgia. Only 7% of this forest, with its winding streams, steep ridges, and mixed woodlands, remains roadless. It feels vast and untouched, a rarity in the East. But this beauty comes with risks.
“If lightning struck one of those peaks and started a fire, it could spread before they could do much about it,” explained JP Schmidt, an ecologist with Georgia Forest Watch.
This concern — access — is central to the U.S. Forest Service’s argument for repealing the roadless rule. Officials say that without roads, firefighters may struggle to reach fires quickly, allowing them to grow larger and more dangerous. The 2016 Rough Ridge fire, which burned 28,000 acres of the forest, underscored these fears.
“It was a fire they couldn’t keep up with,” said James Sullivan, also with Georgia Forest Watch. The fire, which burned for about a month, threatened small mountain communities like Tate City and Betty’s Creek. Although firefighters protected those areas, “the rest burned on its own.”
Allowing a fire to run its course — as long as people and homes are safe — isn’t necessarily a failure of forest management. It clears leaf litter, thins crowded saplings, and reduces debris buildup. “You’ve got all these fuels taken care of,” Schmidt noted, “and there’s much less threat of a major fire again anytime soon.”
It wasn’t always this way. The National Forest Service, established in 1905, initially emphasized aggressive fire suppression. This approach began to change in the 1960s, and today some fires are allowed to burn under careful supervision. Many public lands are now managed with fire, a practice Indigenous peoples have used for centuries to maintain forest health.
“Prescribed fire is one of the most effective tools for reducing hazardous fuels and maintaining healthy, fire-adapted forests in the Southeast,” said Laura Fitzmorris, a Forest Service spokesperson. Roadless areas make up only a small portion of the Chattahoochee and are “generally small and interspersed with nearby communities, roads, and recreation sites.” Access, she noted, is “one of many operational factors considered” in wildfire response.
However, access can be a double-edged sword — roads permit more than just fire trucks.
“More roads mean more access,” Schmidt said. “So people might start fires, whether intentionally or accidentally.”
Human activity is overwhelmingly the leading cause of wildfires. From Virginia to Texas, humans ignited 23,980 fires in 2024, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, while lightning caused only 809. Many of these fires start near roads, often from discarded cigarettes. Hot exhaust pipes or dragging tailpipes can also spark fires. Hikers and campers can start them by failing to extinguish campfires. And some people intentionally start fires, using roads for easy access.
In all these cases, said Sam Evans, the National Forests and Parks program leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center, “roads are the common denominator.” The roadless rule already includes an exemption for firefighting, and he dismissed the administration’s argument that repealing it would make firefighting easier as “malarkey.”
“They’re trying to trick the American people into thinking that timber production somehow makes us safer from wildfire,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
— Emily Jones
Green Mountain National Forest, Vermont
A denuded swath of woodland hints at the future
Zack Porter’s boots crunched on the snow as he climbed a small ridge within Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest. Upon reaching the top, he surveyed the barren landscape and asked aloud: “Why?”
It’s unclear exactly when it happened, but between 2020 and 2025, loggers legally cleared away the maple, beech, birch, and ash trees that had stood here for over a century. In their place grew thorny brambles that snagged Porter’s pants and left prickles in his socks. “I’m blown away,” he said. Porter, co-founder of Standing Trees, a nonprofit advocating for New England forests, hadn’t visited the site since it was logged. “They turned this into a moonscape,” he remarked.
He fears that more clearcutting might be on the horizon.
The U.S. Forest Service manages about 376,000 acres of Green Mountain National Forest, and this area — known as Homer Stone — lies in its southern section. Although classified as a roadless area, it wasn’t designated as such until after the 2001 rule took effect, leaving it open to what the Forest Service calls “early successional habitat creation.”
“You have to get used to that with the Forest Service. There’s a lot of jargon, a lot of terms that can be misleading,” Porter explained. “That’s just a euphemism for logging.”
The Forest Service has categorized roughly 81,000 acres of Vermont as part of a “roadless area,” but only about 25,000 acres are protected under the Clinton-era rule. The remaining 56,000 are not covered, and the Forest Service has authorized logging on about 6,000 acres. Porter believes this is a preview of what could happen to protected trees nationwide if the Trump administration eliminates the Clinton-era protections.
“The roadless rule is one of the best tools we have to keep these public lands on a path to ecological restoration,” Porter said, gazing at stumps, some over 3 feet in diameter.
The Forest Service argues that cutting mature trees can revitalize the forest by creating areas of young, rapidly growing vegetation that provide food and shelter for songbirds, small mammals, and insects. Some ecologists, ornithologists, and conservationists support this method, claiming that fire suppression and development have reduced this type of habitat.
The trees in this part of Homer Stone are mostly gone now. Along with them, Porter argues, went irreplaceable ecological benefits. Reduced old growth forest means less potential habitat for the American Marten, which is endangered in Vermont. It also means fewer shaggy bark trees and inevitable fallen deadwood, which are ideal homes for northern long-eared bats. A lack of cover can also increase runoff, worsening Vermont’s flooding issues.
Porter is also concerned about how these trees were cut. The Forest Service announced its logging plans during the first Trump administration but didn’t specify locations. The public comment period before cutting was brief, Porter said, resulting in only superficial changes. For instance, some proposed roads were labeled “temporary,” but Porter said it’s unclear how they differ from permanent roads.
Tracey Forest, who runs the Spirit Hollow silent retreat in southern Vermont, told local news outlet VTDigger that she wasn’t aware of the public comment periods. Foresters appeared in the forest surrounding her land in 2024, and trees began to fall the following year. She has since had to relocate parts of her business. “To place such a giant, loud, factory operation right at our border — it seems unconscionable to us,” Forest said.
Driving further into the Homer Stone forest, evidence of logging is easy to spot: stumps where trunks once stood, a hilltop where light pours through thinned trees. Then, suddenly, the forest resumes, largely untouched. On either side of this invisible line, the trees are ecologically identical — but those beyond it were inventoried before 2001 and are thus shielded from logging.
“There’s little to stop the logging of this place, except for the roadless rule,” Porter said as he crossed into protected land, walking along a path lined with sturdy Vermont hardwoods. “Look how easy it would be for someone to drive a logging truck in here.”
— Tik Root
