Sponsors (5)
The bill speeds and expands road access to enable faster forest restoration and wildfire-risk treatments—benefiting at-risk communities and some watershed fixes—but does so by rolling back roadless protections and banning similar future rules, increasing risks to ecosystems, water quality, recreation, and future conservation policy options while raising costs.
Communities in the wildland-urban interface (rural communities, nearby towns) will have improved access for hazardous fuels reduction, lowering local wildfire risk to homes and towns.
Forest Service restoration projects can be implemented more quickly because roads needed for restoration work are required to be built, speeding project timelines and enabling faster on-the-ground treatments.
Rural communities and water-resource interests can see roads that harm forest, rangeland, or watershed health replaced or decommissioned, potentially improving ecosystem condition and water-resource outcomes.
Rural communities and public-lands users will face increased habitat fragmentation, reduced recreation quality, and biodiversity harm because the bill rolls back Roadless Rule protections to allow new road construction.
Downstream communities and municipal watersheds could experience increased sedimentation and degraded water quality from new road construction and associated disturbance.
Local governments and rural communities lose a future regulatory option because the bill prohibits any similar rule in the future, limiting policymakers' ability to conserve undeveloped forest areas going forward.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Terminates the 2001 Forest Service Roadless Rule and requires the Forest Service to build roads on National Forest lands as needed for restoration and hazardous fuels reduction, subject to environmental laws.
Nullifies the 2001 Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation rule and bans the Forest Service from adopting any substantially similar rule. It requires the Secretary of Agriculture, through the Forest Service Chief, to construct permanent and temporary roads on National Forest System lands as needed to support restoration work, hazardous fuels reduction near at-risk communities and the wildland-urban interface, replace or decommission roads that harm ecosystem or watershed health, and to carry out purposes of the 1897 organic act, while complying with environmental laws such as NEPA. The bill changes federal Forest Service land management by removing a long-standing roadless protection, directing more road construction for restoration and fuels projects, and limiting the agency’s ability to promulgate roadless-area protections in the future.
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