When the U.S. Department of Agriculture first announced its intention to rescind the Roadless Rule in August 2025, Southern Environmental Law Center staff received around 8,000 mailed public comments opposing to the decision, which they stuffed into boxes and delivered to the Forest Service.
In all, the agency received 625,930 public comments, despite a historically short comment window.
The next step of the recission, the still-unreleased Draft Environmental Impact Statement, initially slated for publication in March before being pushed back will give Americans a second opportunity to weigh in on the proposal. The federal government has yet to hold a public hearing or clarify its revised timeline.
By comparison, before the Roadless Rule was implemented in 2001, Clinton administration officials engaged the public in more than 600 hearings and received a record-breaking 1.6 million comments.
Pending DEIS release, North Carolina environmental groups are stepping into the role of the federal government. By hosting public hearings and soliciting public comments, they’re staying one step ahead of the policy — and ensuring it stays relevant.
On April 15, 17 national and regional conservation organizations — including MountainTrue, NC Audubon, NC Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, Center for Biological Diversity, NC Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Pisgah Area SORBA, The Outdoor Alliance — held an Asheville roundtable about the recession to collect written and spoken messages. Throughout the month of April, peoples’ hearings were also held in Brevard and Hayesville.
Research shows the Roadless Rule has massive payoffs — and few, if any, costs.
“Wildlife — including hellbenders, warblers, and trout — depend on roadless areas, and we need them, too. They protect our drinking water and scenic views, and they safeguard a vital part of our heritage and humanity,” said Southeast Director at the Center for Biological Diversity Will Harlan in a MountainTrue press release.
The Roadless Rule protects 58.1 million acres of vulnerable, diverse land from road-building — and while only 2% is in the Eastern United States, a significant chunk of that 2% is in Southern Appalachia. Plus, many endangered species find a haven in the roadless areas of North Carolina, which constitute the entire habitat of the North Carolina Flying Squirrel. What’s more, Roadless Rule-protected reservoirs in the Southeast alone provide 4.5 million people with drinking water. Nationwide, that figure jumps to 124 million people. Clean water from these areas reduces the cost of wastewater treatment by $18 billion each year.
“There is no better initiative to protect national forests than a roadless designation. It stops pretty much all of the other sorts of damage that come into damage public lands, and that’s something that we’re hoping to preserve here and galvanize all the people here in Asheville,” NC Sierra Club Grassroots Organizer Michal Brzezicki told The Smoky Mountain News at the Asheville Roundtable, which he said had over 200 registrants.
The event, held at The Mule by Devil’s Foot, was introduced by several speakers. Buncombe County Commissioner Drew Ball explained how the Roadless Rule protects Western North Carolina forests.
“When you stand on a ridge in the Nantahala or Pisgah [National Forests], and you look out, you’re seeing more than just stretches of forest … You’re seeing what makes us who we are. For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has helped keep that promise,” he said.
Ball went on to thank the Forest Service for its work in North Carolina coordinating wildfire response, engaging in risk management and showing up for the land and its people.
Hunt explained the implications of a Roadless Rule recission at the Asheville roundtable. Lily Levin photo
“Our county’s relationship with the North Carolina Forest Service is strong because it is built on trust, respect and a shared mission to store these lands responsibly for the people who depend on them today and for those who will inherit them tomorrow.”
Buncombe commissioners recently passed a resolution celebrating the Roadless Rule’s 25-year anniversary, acknowledging “that a US Forest Service proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule places approximately 2,657 acres of roadless areas in Buncombe County at risk.”
“Good relationships are based on sound policy, and the roadless rule is sound policy,” Ball said, insinuating the consequences of a Roadless Rule rescission.
These relationships might be further undermined by agency reconfigurations. The Trump administration in late March announced that 57 Forest service research facilities will be “evaluated for possible closure” under a new agency consolidation. Among the 20 facilities slated to remain nationwide are those in Durham and Asheville.
The USDA asserts that “there is a job for every existing employee in the reorganization, although it may be in a different role or at a different location,” but Forest Service employees are worried the current administration is trying to weaken the Forest Service with the goal of eventually selling or privatizing every acre of land under its stewardship. While USFS Chief Thom Schultz has denied this accusation, Trump’s FY2027 budget request for forest service management — comprising of salaries and administration — was 44% lower than last year’s appropriations.
On the land management side, passed during Trump’s first three weeks of office, Executive Order 14192 “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation” mandates agencies to repeal 10 protections for every one that’s instated. Meanwhile, federal timber sale management could see its budget rise by nearly 450%, even as timber sales in one western US forest accrued a four-decade net loss of $1.73 billion.
Abigail Hunt, an associate attorney at Southern Environmental Law Center, described the non-economic downsides of inflated timber production.
“One of the Forest Service’s mandates is to manage our forest to produce timber … which in some cases is important for local communities, and also in other cases, it can have serious ecological downsides,” she said.
Hunt shared a photo of a recent Forest Service logging operation on the Brushy Mountain side near the Chautauqua River that destroyed a rare and old-growth forest as an example of what could happen to currently protected areas.
On April 1, a federal court voided the North Carolina Forest Service’s 2023 Pisgah-Nantahala Forest Plan, claiming it was based on incorrect analysis that understated harm to at-risk species, thus violating the Endangered Species Act. The plan would’ve significantly increased timber production, opening sensitive forest areas to logging, including the habitats of federally protected bats.
The U.S. Forest Service has claimed removing roadless protections will enhance firefighting capacity as roads will grant emergency responders access to remote burning areas. But Hunt debunked that position.
“When fires do burn in roadless areas, they tend to be at a much lower severity and more in line with something called the natural range of variation, which is a scientific way of saying that there are healthy fires that are better adapted to our landscape,” she said.
A January 2026 peer-reviewed study of all contiguous Forest Service areas over the course of three decades found that wildfire ignition density is four times lower in roadless areas than within 50 meters of a road.
Wildfire activity is rising amid a confluence of variables specific to Western North Carolina. All four counties in The Smoky Mountain News coverage area are experiencing “extreme drought” conditions, a phenomenon that’s likely to become more common and severe as climate change accelerates. Downed timber and debris from Helene serve as potent fuel sources.
According to the Forest Service, since the start of 2026, the state has had over 4,300 wildfires — 99% of which were human-caused. Adding roads to the mix, which facilitate human activity and access, might have devastating consequences.
Hunt concluded her talk by encouraging the public to share their stories — the more, the merrier, because everything will be counted.
“All public comments go into this thing called the administrative record that goes before the agency and before any court that ultimately ends up reviewing that action. So ultimately, the agency has to be able to justify the reasonableness of its action in light of all the comments and input that it gets,” she explained.
Names were called one by one, and participants’ stories were recorded to later become part of the record. The first speaker, Pat Davis, brought up the drought plaguing the region.
“I would like for those of you that pray to pray for rain,” she said before pivoting to the Trump Administration’s decision to rescind protections.
“We have a leader that doesn’t care. I know people want to call him a leader. I don’t,” she said as laughter echoed throughout the venue.
Robin Kirkpatrick grew up in Charlotte, which she said, “was once called the city of trees.”
“It has lost most of its canopy,” she said, adding that’s last thing she wants for Western North Carolina.
Another speaker, Tim Thompson, had not anticipated his name would be called.
“I had no intention of signing up,” he said, also inspiring laughter among the audience. “I thought I was just signing in, full disclosure.”
Thompson said he’s infuriated that at his age, he has to be advocating for something so basic as the continued protection of national forests.
But either way, “we’re here to fight,” he said. “All of us.”