The Trump administration formally moved Tuesday to rescind a 25-year-old rule blocking road construction and logging on roughly 45 million acres of national forest land, and the usual suspects are calling it the end of nature itself — despite saying nothing when the Biden administration opened millions of acres to foreign mining interests.
The U.S. Forest Service filed a proposal to scrap the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a last-minute Clinton-era order that locked up nearly a quarter of national forest land from development. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called the rule a failed one-size-fits-all restriction that has turned healthy forests into tinderboxes. "Our forests can't afford another decade of inaction," Rollins said.
Salon framed the move as "Trump's destruction of national parks" — even though national forests and national parks are entirely different designations with different governing statutes. The Guardian called it an assault on "old-growth forests" and quoted the Sierra Club's Alex Craven warning of "industrial exploitation." The New York Post, alone among the three, reported the administration's wildfire rationale straight and noted that Alaska state leaders have long supported exemptions for economic reasons.
The coordinated hysteria is predictable. The National Parks Conservation Association, the Center for American Progress, the NRDC, and the Sierra Club are not dispassionate conservationists — they are well-funded lobbying operations that exist to litigate and fundraise off public land fights. The Center for American Progress, quoted by Salon, is a Democrat-aligned think tank that has never met a federal land restriction it didn't like and never met a Biden-era extraction deal it didn't bury.
And that's the tell. When the Biden administration reversed Trump's first-term Tongass exemption and then opened millions of acres to foreign mining interests, Salon and the Guardian had nothing to say. Foreign extraction on public land under a Democrat gets a shrug; American logging under Trump gets called destruction.
The administration's case is straightforward: Forest Service chief Tom Schultz said more than 40% of inventoried roadless areas face high wildfire hazard potential, and only 5% have received hazardous fuels reduction treatment since 2014. The Sierra Club's Craven countered that the roadless rule already allows targeted fuel reduction and that roads lead to more ignitions, not fewer. Fair point — but if only 5% of at-risk acreage has been treated in a decade, the existing system clearly isn't working.
The proposal does not mandate logging or road construction. It returns authority to local forest managers. A public comment period is now open. The Tongass, America's largest national forest and the perennial battleground, sits at the center of the fight — Alaska's political leaders want economic access; environmental groups want it locked up.
The real question isn't whether forests should be managed. It's who manages them — and who profits from the management or the lockup. The green lobby raises millions every time a Republican touches a tree. The logging lobby raises millions every time a Republican opens one up. Both are selling Americans a story while the forests burn.
