Sponsors (5)
The bill speeds and expands road access to enable faster fuels reduction and restoration near communities, but it weakens long-term protections for undeveloped forest lands—raising environmental, water-quality, and fiscal risks while limiting future conservation policy options.
Rural communities and towns in the wildland-urban interface gain improved access for hazardous-fuels reduction, lowering wildfire risk to homes and neighborhoods.
Forest Service restoration projects can be implemented more quickly because roads needed for restoration work are required to be built, speeding hazardous-fuels and ecosystem work.
Watersheds and forest ecosystems may benefit when the law allows replacement or decommissioning of roads that currently harm forest, rangeland, or water-resource health.
Rural communities, recreationists, and wildlife face higher risks because the bill rolls back Roadless Rule protections, allowing new road construction that can fragment wilderness and harm biodiversity and recreation.
Downstream communities, tribal areas, and municipal water suppliers may experience increased sedimentation and degraded water quality as a result of new road construction in sensitive watersheds.
Taxpayers and local communities could incur higher federal and local costs and experience local disruption from expanded logging, road-building, and the ongoing maintenance of new roads.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Repeals the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation rule and requires the Forest Service to build roads as needed for restoration and hazardous fuels reduction, subject to environmental laws.
Official title: To provide that the final rule titled "Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation" and issued on January 12, 2001 (66 Fed. Reg. 3244) shall have no force or effect and require the Secretary of Agriculture to construct certain roads on National Forest System lands, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 25, 2026 by Harriet Hageman · Last progress February 25, 2026
Nullifies the 2001 Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation rule and prohibits the Agriculture Secretary from issuing a substantially similar rule. Requires the Forest Service, consistent with environmental laws like NEPA, to construct permanent and temporary roads on National Forest System lands when needed for restoration, hazardous fuels reduction in at‑risk communities and the wildland‑urban interface, replacing or decommissioning roads that harm forest or watershed health, or to carry out the 1897 Organic Act's purposes.