If you’d like U.S. forest lands to remain unpaved, speak now or forever hold your peace.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins just opened a 21-day public comment period on her proposal to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has safeguarded 58 million acres of undeveloped national forest land from development and logging since 2001.
Public lands at risk include 635,000 acres of “some of the most remote and ecologically intact landscapes in Los Padres National Forest,” according to nonprofit Los Padres ForestWatch.
Los Padres National Forest contains 37 “inventoried roadless areas” across the Central Coast, including many areas in Santa Barbara County, that would be potentially subject to roadbuilding and industrial logging should the Roadless Rule be rescinded.
Among their various benefits, these areas provide habitat to endangered species and opportunities for backcountry recreation, including 349 miles of trails, ForestWatch said.
Rollins’s expressed reasoning behind the rollback is that opening access to more forested areas will aid in fire prevention and firefighting efforts, as well as bolster “responsible” domestic timber production and support rural economies. In other words, more roads are needed to access hard-to-reach areas for chopping and firefighting.
Her office also claims that forests are overgrown, riddled with diseased insects, and threatened by drought and wildfire, feeding into Rollins’s assertion that the rule is an “overly restrictive” obstacle to responsible, “common-sense” management of natural resources.
By rescinding the rule, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz says that land management decisions will be up to local Forest Service officials. Those same officials, however, are facing an impending loss of oversight with the closure of the Forest Service’s nine regional offices across the country.
Environmentalists contest Rollins’s claims, citing the more than 371,000 miles of road that already crisscross through national forests, which the Forest Service itself reported in 2025 left a $5 billion backlog of needed road and bridge maintenance. Studies have also shown that fires frequently start by roadsides — less than 3 percent of wildfires ignite more than two miles from a road.
ForestWatch argues that the Roadless Rule does not stand in the way of fuel reduction or fire management either, noting that the Forest Service has approved multiple projects in roadless areas of Los Padres National Forest in recent years, including Pine Mountain in Ventura County — “demonstrating that fire-related work can and does move forward even when such projects are considered controversial.”
Bryant Baker, director of conservation and research at ForestWatch, called wildfire prevention a “farce” to cover up the Trump administration’s intention to open up new areas of public lands to logging and “other damaging activities.”
“We cannot allow industry interests disguised as wildfire prevention to dismantle protections for some of the most cherished landscapes in our national forest,” he said.
They are urging Congress to pass the Roadless Area Conservation act, co-sponsored by Santa Barbara congressmember Salud Carbajal, which would permanently codify protections for roadless areas into law.
The public is invited to comment on the proposal no later than Sept. 19, 2025. Public comments will be considered during the development of the draft environmental impact statement. Submit comments here.
