Potential Repeal of Roadless Rule Could Permanently Damage Midwest National Forests

Following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rescission of a longstanding rule that protects thousands of acres of national forests against logging, experts say that the repeal would not only damage natural beauty, but also ignores the interests of Midwest residents and industries. 

On June 23, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said at a Western Governors’ Association conference that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) would be rescinding the Roadless Rule. The 2001 rule protects thousands of acres in national forests—about 30 percent of National Forest System lands—from logging and road development.

Although Rollins argued that the repeal will help with forest management, mitigate wildfire risk and allow for more responsible timber production, those familiar with Midwest forests caution that the opposite is true. 

“This rollback of the rule harms all of the other uses of the national forests besides timber. It’s going to result in less wildlife habitat, less recreational opportunities for the American people, more sediment loading to surface waters. It’s just harmful all the way around, unless you’re in the logging industry or forest products industry,” said Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center. 

Although the rule still has to go through administrative procedures such as a public comment period and congressional hearings before it is officially repealed, the fact that the USDA is rescinding it has significant implications for the future of national forests, Olsen said. 

The rule, implemented at the end of the Clinton administration, prohibits road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of USFS land, effectively protecting them as remote wilderness areas. 

National forests in the Midwest contain thousands of acres protected under the rule, mainly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan. Ottawa National Forest in Michigan, Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin and Shawnee National Forest in Illinois are of top concern for some experts. 

Olsen, whose work for ELPC is reflected in Farm Bill legislation and who has worked across sectors to lead renewable energy efforts in Wisconsin, said forests in Wisconsin not only have cultural significance and natural beauty, but also serve as a huge natural carbon sink. 

“It’s nearly suicidal. We’re in a climate crisis, and we need to protect the forests that protect us by capturing and holding carbon,” he said.

The USDA announcement comes as states in the upper Midwest experience hazardous air quality due to wildfire smoke from Canada. In May, the Midwest experienced record heat and dry conditions that created elevated wildfire risk. 

Opening up areas to logging that were previously protected could result in a host of environmental problems. For example, although forest fires are often a concern in the American West, Olsen speculated that a repeal could cause conditions that could make fires a bigger concern in the Midwest. 

The repeal would open up acres of land that contain mature and old growth trees, which are vitally important to forest health and are more resistant to fires, serve as critical habitat for many species—such as the endangered American marten, wood turtle, moose, deer and trout—and store more carbon than younger trees. 

Olsen added that while there are no ongoing lawsuits against this yet, he has “no doubt that there will be lawsuits.” 

“It’s nearly suicidal. We’re in a climate crisis, and we need to protect the forests that protect us by capturing and holding carbon.”

— Andy Olsen, Environmental Law and Policy Center

Even on a policy level, Olsen said repealing the rule is unnecessary. Many of the items of concern for the USDA are exceptions that already exist within the rule. 

These exceptions can be applied if the road is needed to protect public health; completes an environmental response action; is necessary for road realignment; and if the road is pursuant to outstanding rights or provided for by statute or treaty. 

However, the process of deploying an exception—which takes time—would not exist if there was no rule, technically speeding up the process for industry.

“Repealing the rule means that there’s no exception, that there are no restraints,” Olsen said. “It’s really hard to take a lot of the arguments that are made [in favor of the repeal] seriously, because they’re so flawed and [on] such shaky scientific ground.”

USDA claimed that repealing the rule will improve forest management for better wildfire prevention, remove limitations on road construction and reconstruction and help economic development in rural areas. 

Representatives for the USDA and the Forest Service did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

But Olsen refuted all of these claims, and instead only sees a short-term benefit to industry with many long-term consequences. 

“If you have a very, very myopic view of the economy and you ignore the contributions from the environment, then removing America’s beautiful forest will boost the bottom line for loggers and it will help the forest products industry,” he said. “In terms of the dollars that will flow to industry, that’s the only benefit that I see.” 

He added that staffing cuts at USFS worsen potential outcomes, as the experts who typically consult loggers on which trees to cut down are no longer employed. In an April letter from six former USFS chiefs, they criticized “the random firing of some 3,400 probationary Forest Service employees, some with years of experience as seasonal firefighters, others with jobs ranging from managing prescribed fire and fuel reduction, timber sale layout, fish and wildlife habitat improvement to campground maintenance,” lost expertise that could worsen conditions even more if a repeal happens. 

There is also uncertainty about how much repealing the rule would actually benefit industry. In addition to the rule already having exceptions, there is already land allotted specifically for timber production in national forests.

For example, the Chequamegon-Nicolet is already one of the top timber-producing forests in the National Forest System, selling approximately 120 million board feet of timber annually, according to the Forest Service. 

“I don’t think the amount that could be opened up here for [logging] to be expedited is going to make a huge difference, because they’re already producing so much. I think the relatively small expanse here has more value being habitat and serving that part of the multi-use mission of the Forest Service,” said Chris Collier, the Great Lakes program manager at Trout Unlimited. 

The same goes for Michigan, which has over 2.8 million acres of national forest, more than any other state east of the Mississippi River. Within that acreage, 16,000 acres in the Ottawa, Hiawatha and Huron-Manistee national forests are roadless. 

“We don’t believe that the 16,000 acres of roadless area [in Michigan] will add significant economic benefit to the state, and it’s unclear if the roadless areas could even be economically harvested in a way that makes sense,” said Calvin Floyd, a conservation advocate for the environmental advocacy organization Environment Michigan. He added that while his organization supports the economic value of a sustainable timber industry, much of the state’s industry revolves around pulp and paper making, and the forests in the roadless areas might not even be suitable for those types of materials. 

National forests also serve as important parts of the tourism economies in Wisconsin and Michigan as people travel to roadless areas, and in some regions the tourism industry is even larger than the timber industry. If roadless areas are lost, he explained, the tourism industry in rural communities would suffer, as the natural beauty in recreational areas that bring people to do activities like canoeing, kayaking, fishing, hunting, off-road vehicle riding and more could be destroyed. 

Collier echoed this, saying that Trout Unlimited values the timber industry for jobs and local economies within the areas they work. He said that their stream-crossing work with the USFS benefits timber-hauling routes while restoring rivers, and having roadless areas not only provides recreation and economic opportunities, but also “complements timber activities that happen in other parts of the forest” in northern Wisconsin.

Excess logging could harm water supply and cause soil loss and flooding, Collier said. In areas with steeper slopes, excess rain and water can cause soil loss as soil is carried into waterways. This results in sediment in streams, which has a number of negative impacts such as reducing water clarity, carrying pollutants into waterways and disrupting aquatic life and fish habitats.

It could also lead to increased flood damage of existing roads and infrastructure, which Collier said would directly harm rural communities in northern Wisconsin that already lack state funding and tax revenue to maintain existing roads and infrastructure. Building more roads would be an even bigger strain on local governments and economies. 

Community water sources could be compromised as well. “What happens upstream goes downstream,” he said, so if high quality cold water habitats in streams are compromised from sediment pollution and road materials, so is the entire fish population. That water contamination could trickle into water systems for households in Wisconsin, decreasing the stability of water quality for everyone, he said. 

The proposed rescission is in line with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 31 “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” executive order targeting energy and the environment with the goal of streamlining permitting processes for industry, according to a June 23 press release from USDA.

The USDA further justified more logging in national forests with an April 4 memorandum from Rollins declaring an “Emergency Situation Determination” on over 112 million acres of National Forestry System land that the agency claims needs to be logged for wildfire prevention and national security. This is in accordance with a March 1 order from the White House that makes similar arguments. 

Olsen explained that “under this logic, or lack of it,” importing timber from Canada can pose a national security threat due to tariffs on timber as well as an economic security threat, so additional logging in national forests in the U.S. addresses those threats. 

He said the rescission goes against the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, which established that forests should be managed for multiple uses. While that includes timber production, it also includes hunting, wildlife habitat, water protection and recreation. 

“‘America the Beautiful’ is something that we used to celebrate, but we don’t make America more beautiful with more logging, more fields of stumps, more sedimentation into waterways and less habitat,” Olsen said. “The national forests are the property of all Americans. They are not the property or province of the logging and forest products industries.”