Public Support For Roadless Rule Is Nearly Unanimous

NORTH FORK, CA (Milwaukee Sentinel Journal) – A review found 99% of public comments opposed rescinding a U.S. Department of Agriculture proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule on U.S. Forest Service lands.

In the political realm, candidates sometimes refer to an election victory with 55% of the vote as a “landslide.”

What would you call 99%?

National Forests will remain closed to commercial development if the public has its say

Based on an assessment of recent public input, it appears Americans have a nearly unanimous level of support for retaining the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule on National Forest System lands.

You may recall earlier this year when the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a proposal to rescind the measure, commonly called the Roadless Rule.

The federal rule protects about 59 million acres in the National Forest System from road-building and most logging and other industrial activity and represents one of the most significant protections for wildlife habitat in the nation, according to the Center for Western Priorities.

The USDA plan would undo those protections on 44.7 million acres. “(The Trump) administration is dedicated to removing burdensome, outdated, one-size-fits-all regulations that not only put people and livelihoods at risk but also stifle economic growth in rural America,” said Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins in a statement announcing the proposal.

Rollins said rescinding the rule would align with President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 14192, Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation and also support Executive Order 14153, Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.

Reaction to the proposal was overwhelmingly negative from conservation and environmental groups. Among the reasons: The roadless areas provide the best public areas for remote fishing and hunting; they are key to keeping water clean; increasing roads in forests increases the risk of wildfires; and retaining them reduces road-building and maintenance costs to the federal government.

Most of the USFS roadless parcels are in western states and Alaska, but approximately 69,000 acres are in Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and could be affected by the repeal, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

The USDA initiated an environmental impact statement and opened a 21-day public comment period on the plan that ended Sept. 19.

What did Americans say?

The USDA has yet to summarize the results. But the hundreds of thousands of responses are available to the public on a government website.

So the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation and advocacy organization based in Denver, did a statistical analysis of 5,000 comments chosen randomly from 183,000 received by the deadline.

It found 99.2% of comments opposed the rescission of the rule, while just 0.6% were in support and 0.2% were neutral, said Aaron Weiss, CWP deputy director.

It must be noted that the number of comments received eventually grew to 625,737 as bulk submissions – largely petitions collected by conservation groups opposed to the repeal – were added. These bulk submissions are not publicly available for analysis but would undoubtedly push the percentage of comments opposed to rescinding the Roadless Rule even closer to 100%, Weiss said.

In case you’re wondering, this strong sentiment for the Roadless Rule is not new. When it was first proposed by the USFS in 2000 under chief Mike Dombeck, a Wisconsin native and current resident, the rule drew 1.6 million public comments, with over 90% favoring it.

Was the result expected this time, too?

“If anything surprised me, it’s that there was almost no support at all for rescinding the rule,” Weiss said. “Usually on things like this, you see groups on both sides activating their supporters.”

What’s next?

In September the USDA said the proposed rule, accompanied by a draft EIS, would be released by March 2026, along with a request for additional public comment. At the time the agency also said a record of decision was expected in late 2026.

Weiss didn’t speculate on how the USDA would proceed, however.

“In this case, there’s no science to back up what the administration wants to do,” Weiss said. “I think (the administration is) facing long odds on this. Public comments do matter.”

This story was written by Paul A. Smith, reporter for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The original story can be read here.