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tongass national forest
Fury as Trump Puts Tens of Millions of Protected Forests on the Chopping Block
"The roadless rule is the most effective conservation rule on the books at protecting mature and old-growth forests," said one environmental campaigner.
Jun 24, 2025
A top Trump official on Monday announced a plan to end a rule that protects tens of millions of acres in the National Forest System and which would clear the way for road development and timber production on those lands—news that elicited alarm from conservation and environmental groups.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the Trump administration plans to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has for decades protected 58.5 million acres of forests from timber harvesting and road construction.
Rollins called the rule overly restrictive and added that the move "opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation's forests. It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land."
The environmental law group Earthjustice took issue with wildfire prevention being used to justify the rollback.
"While the Trump administration has suggested that wildfire risk is an underlying reason for these sweeping policy changes, rolling back the roadless rule actually threatens to cause more fires. That's because fire ignitions are far more likely in roaded landscapes," said Drew Caputo, the group's vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans, in a statement on Monday.
Rollins made the announcement at the annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association. Hundreds of protestors gathered outside of the building where the event was taking place in Santa Fe, New Mexico in order to denounce efforts that might lead to federal public lands being privatized, according to The Associated Press.
The roadless rule covers areas including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture codified a regulatory framework that exempted Tongass from the roadless rule. Former President Joe Biden undid that change while he was in office.
Idaho and Colorado have adopted state roadless area rules that supersede the boundaries of the federal roadless rule boundaries for those states, according to the USDA's website, which appears to mean that not all of the 58.5 million acres would be impacted if the Trump administration goes through with this change.
"The roadless rule is one of the country's conservation success stories, safeguarding singular natural values across nearly 60 million acres of America's great forests," said Garett Rose, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Great Outdoors Campaign Director Ellen Montgomery at Environment America similarly said that "the roadless rule is the most effective conservation rule on the books at protecting mature and old-growth forests."
"Once again, the Trump administration is ignoring the voices of millions of Americans to pursue a corporate giveaway for his billionaire buddies. Stripping our national forests of roadless rule protections will put close to 60 million acres of wildlands across the country on the chopping block," said Sierra Club's forest campaign manager, Alex Craven, in a statement on Monday. "That means polluting our clean air and drinking water sources to pad the bottom lines of timber and mining companies—all while pursuing the same kind of mismanagement that increases wildfire severity."
Caputo at Earthjustice made some of these same points and indicated his organization is ready to sue over the move. "If the Trump administration actually revokes the roadless rule, we'll see them in court," he said.
The move follows a March executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump directing Rollins and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior to take steps to increase timber production.
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Reject the Budget Bill That Sells off Alaska and Our Rights Along With It
Buried in Congress’ latest budget proposal is an unprecedented power grab that threatens both wild Alaska and the foundations of public oversight.
May 07, 2025
The House Natural Resources Committee majority just unveiled the worst piece of legislation for the environment in history—a bill that wouldn’t just sell off Alaska but that would threaten democracy and environmental protections across the country. The proposed “budget” reconciliation legislation is saturated with destructive provisions that would set our nation’s conservation legacy back for decades.
Don’t be distracted by the chaos. This “energy dominance” bill is not about good budgeting. It’s a clear handout to fossil fuel executives and a key part of President Donald Trump’s plan to sell off your public lands to wealthy oil, gas, and mining corporations for unchecked industrialization.
Starting with the threats to wild Alaska alone, you can find an unprecedented and sweeping giveaway of our nation’s lands and waters. Mandated industrialization, the override of environmental standards, cutting out the public—the text reads like something drafted in an oil tycoon’s boardroom.
This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.
First, the Arctic. Despite a well-documented history of failure, the bill would force the Department of the Interior to reinstate leases from a failed 2021 oil and gas lease sale in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That sale intended to pay for the last round of Trump billionaire tax cuts—a sale for which not one major oil company showed up to bid and less than 1% of projected revenues were collected. Taxpayers are still waiting for their money. Nevertheless, today’s bill would mandate four more lease sales in the refuge over the next decade, as well as lease sales in the Western Arctic every two years.
From there, the bill attempts to rewrite environmental law by declaring that rushed approvals are automatically in compliance with landmark statutes like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).
That’s not laziness—it’s an attempted authoritarian overreach.
In practice, that could look like agencies having just 30 days to approve permits—like those deciding whether seismic blasting can legally harm or kill polar bears—with no public input and zero accountability.
Then comes the most egregious power grab: The bill attempts to strip away judicial review of government decisions in the Arctic Refuge. Only the State of Alaska or oil companies could sue. The Gwich’in people, who have stewarded this place as their cultural homeland since time immemorial? Silenced. The basic democratic rights of the American public? Quashed. The same gag order appears for the Western Arctic, attempting to halt litigation over the Willow project and prevent future legal challenges to drilling by Iocal Indigenous communities or others.
And the hits keep coming.
The bill would require another six offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next 10 years in the waters of Cook Inlet, each covering no less than a million acres. Once again: environmental review sidestepped, public legal challenges all but erased.
The bill would also amend ANILCA to mandate approval of the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial corridor that would cut through National Park and Bureau of Land Management lands, disrupt caribou migration, and threaten subsistence for Alaska Native communities. Just like with Arctic drilling, this provision lets corporations sue the government to fast-track approvals while denying that same legal access to impacted Indigenous communities and the public. This language should terrify anyone who cares about tribal sovereignty or public lands.
Also hidden within the bill is language that would increase national timber harvest by 25%, possibly including the old-growth forests of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska—some of the most carbon-rich and ecologically important temperate rainforests on the planet. And it would slash funding for federal land management, threatening the long-term care of public lands from Denali to the Everglades.
So, what do Americans get in return? Not much. These fossil fuel handouts won’t lower energy prices, fix the deficit, or benefit future generations. The last Arctic Refuge lease sale brought in pennies on the dollar and had no impact on gas prices or our dangerous dependence on oil. This bill won’t boost revenue; it just fast-tracks extraction while silencing oversight.
Here’s the truth: This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.
We need Congress to reject this toxic package. Because our public lands—and our democracy—aren’t up for sale.
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Protecting Forests Can Help Us Combat the Climate Crisis–If Done Right
If we are to restore old growth, combat climate change, and preserve wildlife habitats and have forests for future generations to experience, we must change the way that we manage our public forest lands.
Mar 30, 2024
In December, the Biden administration took a redwood-sized step toward protecting old-growth trees and forests. Following a presidential executive order in April 2022, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it intends to amend all 128 forest land management plans to conserve and expand old growth in national forests. That move clears the way for us to stop chainsaws from felling our oldest trees, which are worth more standing than as lumber. We commend Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (who presides over the Forest Service) and his team.
As with any policy proposal, the devil is in the details. To truly prevent timber companies from chopping down our old-growth trees and forests, the final version of this proposed amendment, expected in January 2025, must be stronger in a few specific areas.
- The amendment as announced would limit the logging of old growth for commercial motives. The Forest Service must go further and prevent the commercial exchange of old growth cut down for any reason. There’s no reason for old-growth trees to ever be sold to timber mills.
- All protections enacted must apply to the entire National Forest System, especially to Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The Tongass was exempted from the plan announced in December. There is more old growth in the Tongass than anywhere else, and leaving the crown jewel of our National Forest System out of a plan to protect old growth is nonsensical.
Environment America and our allies with the Climate Forests Campaign have been and will continue to advocate for the strongest possible protections for these trees and forests.
While it is a strong step in the direction of protecting critical trees and forests, even if the Forest Service’s final amendment includes the robust protections described above, it will still omit many important trees and forests.
Some of these forests are managed by another federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Interior Secretary Deb Halaand and BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning should propose their own plan to protect older trees and forests on BLM’s lands.
We’re facing twin crises—climate change and biodiversity loss. To combat both, we need more “climate forests”—vibrant ecosystems full of older trees that absorb and store carbon.
Old-growth forests are irreplaceable and worthy of elevated protection, but there are hardly any left. To recover even a fraction of what was lost to logging over the centuries, the United States must act to protect mature trees and forests, the future old growth, from commercial logging. These forests are still developing and will turn into old-growth ecosystems, supporting biodiversity and storing more carbon if we let the trees grow. The solution to our shortage of old-growth forests is to nurture these future ones, but the Forest Service’s proposed amendment would not confer meaningful safeguards for mature forests.
Humans have built wooden homes, fences, furniture, and other products for centuries. The problems started when people began to believe that trees were most valuable when chopped down. We started industrial-scale logging to clear land for agriculture, cities, railroads, and highways. We’ve managed our forests accordingly, accepting a Forest Service mission that includes the “productivity of the nation’s forests.”
After more than a century of management for “productivity,” many of our nation’s “forests” are rows of trees of uniform species and age that we let grow only to chop down in a few decades. They resemble fields on a farm. Two-thirds of our country’s forests are “timberlands,” designated for industrial logging. If you embrace the concept of a forest as a fully functioning ecosystem, developing over decades or centuries without large-scale human interference, then it’s clear that the public forests of the United States mostly come up short.
This shortage is unfortunate because we’re facing twin crises—climate change and biodiversity loss. To combat both, we need more “climate forests”—vibrant ecosystems full of older trees that absorb and store carbon. Our national forests and grasslands are home to 3,000 species of wildlife, and according to the Forest Service, “forests in the U.S. remove the equivalent of about 12% of annual U.S. fossil fuel emissions.” No other technology can match forests for carbon removal at this scale. We don’t even have to invest in research and development to spin up new forests. We simply have to let our existing forests grow.
Approximately 38% of forestland in the United States is publicly owned, most of that is managed by the federal government. If we are to restore old growth, combat climate change, and preserve wildlife habitats and have forests for future generations to experience, we must change the way that we manage our public forest lands.
The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have their work cut out for them. Step one should be to finalize this proposed amendment so that it protects as many trees as possible. The administration must simultaneously be working on step two: developing durable policies for protecting the rest of our “climate forests.” We’ve heard too many trees fall in our forests. Now, it’s time to keep them standing.
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