Wuerthner Op-Ed Urges Keeping Roadless Rule on National Forests

Ninety-nine percent of respondents to a public comment period opposed rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule Conservation Act, yet the Trump administration is seeking to dismantle the protections that keep 58.5 million acres of Forest Service roadless lands, including portions of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, off-limits to new road construction, logging, and road reconstruction.

Ecologist and author George Wuerthner laid out the case for preserving the rule in a guest opinion published Saturday. Wuerthner, whose work spans numerous books on natural history and environmental issues, frames the proposed rescission as both ecologically damaging and fiscally indefensible.

The economic argument starts with what is already broken. Wuerthner cited the Forest Service's own acknowledgment that "the roughly 370,000 miles of existing Forest Service road network could not be maintained." An $11 billion backlog in road maintenance already exists, and building additional roads into currently protected lands would only deepen that deficit.

Fire risk sharpens the financial picture further. Nearly 85% of wildfires that start on National Forest land are human-caused, Wuerthner noted, and a study spanning 1992 to 2024 found that wildfires were four times more likely to ignite within 50 meters of a road than in a forest without motorized roads. Wuerthner cited $2.5 billion in firefighting costs and argued that new logging and roading would push that number higher.

The Forest Service reached a similar conclusion when it first adopted the rule. In its original review, the agency found that roadless lands "have the greatest likelihood of altering and fragmenting landscapes, resulting in immediate, long-term loss of roadless area values and characteristics."

For Union County, the stakes are direct. The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest falls within the scope of any rescission, bringing a national policy dispute into terrain that local residents hike, hunt, and rely on for watershed integrity.

Wuerthner closed without ambiguity: "When all these opportunity costs, as well as actual economic and ecological costs, are considered, any rational person would keep the existing 2001 Roadless Rule Conservation Act intact. Let's hope a few rational people are working in the current administration."

Wuerthner can be reached at 541-255-6039.