The Trump administration is trying to repeal a rule that prohibits new road construction in large swaths of national forests. They say this will aid fire response, but new research is calling that into question.
Last summer, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins argued that rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule will open the door to road construction and maintenance - as well as timber harvesting - on millions of acres.
“Of the 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas covered under the 2001 Roadless Rule, 28 million acres are in areas at high or very high risk of wildfire,” a department release from June reads. “Rescinding this rule will allow this land to be managed at the local forest level, with more flexibility to take swift action to reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure.”
Greg Aplet, a senior forest scientist with the Wilderness Society, which strongly opposes the rescission, doesn’t disagree that roads can speed fire response.
“But it's also going to increase the number of fires that you have to put out,” he said. “So have you really bought yourself anything through the construction of the road?”
Aplet is also the lead author of a new paper in the journal Fire Ecology that concludes that the highest wildfire ignition rate is found near roads. The paper confirms the findings of a number of previous studies of smaller landscapes, but the new research is based on data from all national forests in the contiguous U.S from 1992 to 2024.
“We found the area within 50 meters of roads to have experienced four times the ignition density … of areas more remote from those roads, in wilderness and roadless areas,” he said.
“More roads mean more fire,” he added.
In response to a request for comment, the Forest Service acknowledged that roads “can increase the likelihood of human-caused fires,” but said they improve access to fire crews “when timing is critical, and lives are at risk.”
“Roads also allow access for forest health and wildfire risk reduction projects, which include prescribed burning, mechanical treatments, and timber harvest,” the agency continued.
Aplet agrees that roads have a place in fire management, including policies like prescribed fire that can help address the enormous deficit of fire on many Western landscapes. Centuries of tree ring data clearly show that fires were much more pervasive in the West prior to 1880, before aggressive suppressive policies dramatically changed historic fire regimes, and allowed for the buildup of fuels.
“Roads can actually help us put fire back on the land,” he acknowledged. “And we don't want to pretend that that's not the case – that all roads are bad – any more than we want to say ‘all fire is bad.’”
When it comes to their effectiveness at aiding fire suppression, however, Aplet argued that the reality is more complicated than federal agencies let on. Roads will certainly help agencies respond to fires and put many out more quickly, but that will be the case disproportionately for wildfires burning at lower intensities.
“To the extent that roads aid in the suppression of fire under less extreme conditions, it's exactly those kinds of fires that we want to encourage,” he said.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
