Undecided Is Fine. Silent Isn’t.

Most policy fights happen a long way from the trailhead.

This one is about the trailhead.

On August 20, the U.S. Forest Service published a proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule. Outside Idaho and Colorado, which have their own rules, that rule keeps new roads and most logging out of about 44.7 million acres of national forest.^{1, 7} The public comment period was supposed to close September 21. It’s been extended to October 6.³ By one count, more than 240,000 comments are already in.⁴

I’ll tell you where I am up front: I haven’t decided.

I race and navigate on national forest land here in Michigan. My work is built on outdoor businesses whose product, at the end of the day, is the place. I care about the water and wildlife that come out of these forests. And public lands are one of the rare things I’ve watched hunters, anglers, hikers and riders agree on.

All of that pulls me one way.

But the case for change isn’t nothing, and I don’t think it deserves to be waved off. Wildfire is real. Forest health is real. So is the frustration of people who live next to these forests and feel like decisions about them get made somewhere else.

So this isn’t a piece telling you what to think.

It’s a piece asking you to say what you think, while it still counts.

What the rule actually does

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule was finalized in January 2001. It covered 58.5 million acres, roughly a third of the National Forest System.⁵

In those areas, it prohibits building or rebuilding roads and cutting timber, with exceptions. One of those exceptions allows cutting “generally small diameter timber” to “reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire effects.”⁶ Idaho and Colorado wrote their own state-specific rules years ago, and those aren’t affected by this proposal. That’s why the number in play is about 44.7 million acres, not 58.5.^{2, 7}

This isn’t only a western story, either. Michigan has roughly 16,000 roadless acres across the Hiawatha, Huron-Manistee and Ottawa national forests.⁸

The case for rescinding it

Here’s the argument in the words of the people making it.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says “outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk.” She wants to “restore authority to local forest managers who know the land best.”⁹

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz says more than 40% of inventoried roadless areas have high or very high wildfire hazard potential, and only 5% of those high-hazard areas have received hazardous fuels treatment since 2014.⁹ The agency also notes that the rule’s exceptions were “expected to be infrequent,” and argues that their use has been “limited and inconsistent.”²

The American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, puts it simply: “Calling an area roadless does not protect it from wildfire, insects or disease.”¹⁰ The BlueRibbon Coalition, which advocates for motorized access, argues that “roads are firefighting infrastructure, not fire starters,” and that “families, older recreationists, hunters, anglers, and people with disabilities” depend on maintained roads to reach public land.¹¹ The National Association of Counties calls it a “one-size-fits-all management policy.”¹²

These aren’t fringe arguments. They come from people who live with these forests every day.

The case for keeping it

Here’s the other side, again in its own words.

Outdoor Alliance, a coalition of human-powered recreation groups, says the proposal affects “more than 25,000 miles of trails, 10,000 climbing routes, nearly 1,000 miles of whitewater, and more than 10,000 miles of mountain biking.”¹³ Its CEO argues the existing rule already allows “active management.”¹³

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers says the rule “keeps trout streams cold and clean, and keeps taxpayers from footing the bill for thousands of miles of new roads.”¹⁴ That cost point matters. The Forest Service already manages about 370,000 miles of roads.¹⁵ The proposed rule itself puts the agency’s deferred maintenance backlog for roads and bridges at $6.9 billion.²

Trout Unlimited says 70% of public land in roadless areas supports native trout and salmon. It also says 78% of human-caused fires on national forests start within half a mile of a road.¹⁶

And public opinion leans hard in one direction. In a December 2025 poll commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which supports keeping the rule, likely voters supported the rule 76% to 13%, and 71% of Republicans said they favored conservation over opening these lands to timber and mining.¹⁷

There’s a middle option

The Forest Service’s own environmental analysis includes one. Alternative 3 would remove protection from about 31.7 million acres and keep roughly 13 million. It would drop the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, areas in the wildland-urban interface or within half a mile of existing roads, and smaller roadless areas in the West, while keeping roadless areas of any size east of the 100th meridian.⁷

And the hunting and fishing world isn’t as united on this as you might expect.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and Trout Unlimited want to keep the full rule.¹⁸ The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation supports Alternative 3 and says it’s “skeptical of one-size-fits-all policies like the Roadless Rule.”¹⁹ The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership wants “additional management flexibility to protect communities from wildfire while maintaining the conservation values,” and points to Idaho’s and Colorado’s state rules as models.²⁰

So the common ground is real. But it isn’t unanimous. That’s worth knowing before you write anything.

What the government’s own numbers say

One more detail that’s easy to miss.

The Forest Service estimates that under full rescission, about 4.8 million acres could open to logging where forest plans allow. It estimates revenue to the timber industry could rise by $4.6 million to $10.6 million a year at most (the agency itself calls harvesting all of those acres unlikely), and that recreation value could fall by about $6.1 million a year.^{1, 21}

For scale, the outdoor recreation economy added $696.7 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024.²²

By the government’s own math, the dollars on either side of this decision are small.

Supporters would say the real payoff is lower wildfire risk, which is hard to put a price on. Opponents would say the same about clean water and wild country. They’re both right that the spreadsheet doesn’t capture it.

Which tells me this decision isn’t really about money.

It’s about values. What these places are for, and who gets to decide.

That’s exactly the kind of question a public comment is built for.

Why your business should comment, whichever way you lean

If you run an outdoor business, you have something most commenters don’t: first-hand knowledge of how these places get used, by whom, and what depends on them.

Maybe you’re a paddling outfitter who runs trips on water that starts in a roadless headwater. Maybe you’re a hunting outfitter who needs road access to get clients where they’re going. Maybe you run a shop in a forest town where timber jobs and trail tourism share the same main street.

Those businesses won’t all land in the same place. That’s fine.

That’s the point.

A public comment isn’t a vote. The federal eRulemaking program says so directly: “The comment process is not a vote,” and “a single, well-supported comment may carry more weight than a thousand form letters.”²³

Which means a specific, honest comment from a business owner who knows the ground can matter more than you’d think.

How to write one that counts

Keep it short, specific and yours.

Say who you are. Your business, where you operate, how many customers you take into national forest land, and how many people you employ.

Name real places. The forest, the roadless area, the trail or river. Specifics carry weight that general opinions don’t.

Say how the decision affects you. Your trips, your staff, your season, your costs. That’s the information agencies can’t get anywhere else.

Respond to the options. Alternative 1 keeps the rule, Alternative 2 rescinds it fully, and Alternative 3 is the middle. Say which you support and why, or what you’d change.

Back it up. One real number or example beats a paragraph of adjectives.

Comments go through Regulations.gov, docket FS-2025-0001, and they’re due by October 6.²⁴

Taking part isn’t taking a side

I talk a lot about values-led businesses: companies that know what they stand for and let it shape how they act.

Most of the time that sounds like a marketing idea.

This is what it looks like when it isn’t. The places your business depends on are up for decision, and the people deciding have asked what you think.

Being undecided is fine. I’m still working through the alternatives myself, and I’ll file my comment before the 6th.

Being silent is a choice too. It just isn’t one I’d make for a business whose product is the place.

Sources

1. U.S. Forest Service, Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation proposed rule, Federal Register, August 20, 2026 (91 FR 53827).
2. Same proposed rule, including the agency’s characterization of how the exceptions have been used and the $6.9 billion road and bridge deferred maintenance figure.
3. Comment period extension, Federal Register, September 11, 2026.
4. The Spokesman-Review, September 23, 2026.
5. Roadless Area Conservation final rule, Federal Register, January 12, 2001.
6. 36 CFR 294.13 (2002 edition).
7. U.S. Forest Service, Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Vol. I; Forest Service roadless program page.
8. Environmental Law & Policy Center comment letter, September 19, 2025 (16,121 acres); see also Michigan Advance, August 20, 2026.
9. USDA press release, August 18, 2026.
10. American Forest Resource Council, August 2026.
11. BlueRibbon Coalition.
12. National Association of Counties, September 18, 2026.
13. Outdoor Alliance, August 18, 2026.
14. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, August 18, 2026 (quote from CEO Ryan Callaghan).
15. U.S. Forest Service, Legacy Roads and Trails.
16. Trout Unlimited.
17. The Pew Charitable Trusts, February 18, 2026 (Susquehanna Polling & Research; 1,200 likely voters; Dec. 2–14, 2025; ±2.83%).
18. Field & Stream.
19. Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
20. Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, August 19, 2026.
21. U.S. Forest Service economic estimates, as summarized by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, September 17, 2026.
22. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account, March 5, 2026 release (2024 data).
23. eRulemaking Program, “Tips for Submitting Effective Comments”.
24. Regulations.gov comment page, docket FS-2025-0001 (full docket).