Removing the roadless rule won’t protect us from wildfires
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has moved to rescind protection for nearly 45 million acres of roadless areas, justifying the move in part as being necessary to “reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure,” despite the existing rule’s exception that allows for the removal of small diameter trees in roadless areas.
Rescinding roadless area protections is not the answer. Roadless areas do not burn at significantly higher rates than other areas of national forests. Since wildfires in national forests are more likely to start in proximity to roads than in roadless areas, building more roads could increase human-caused wildfire ignitions. And, as this story map shows, roadless areas have accounted for only 1% of all significant wildfires in the lower 48 states since 2010.