Congress moves to gut 25-year forest protection, opening 58M acres to industry
H.R. 7695 — 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. · Filed by Harriet Hageman (R-WY) · 4 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 25, 2026 · Hearing held
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What it does
This bill nullifies the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protected roughly 58 million acres of National Forest from road construction, and mandates the Secretary of Agriculture to build roads on National Forest lands for restoration, fuel reduction, and other purposes. The primary beneficiaries are timber, mining, and energy extraction industries that depend on road access to federal forests; ordinary citizens lose protections against industrial development in roadless areas and face potential environmental degradation.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is to remove a conservation rule and mandate road construction on federal forests. While framed around restoration and fuel reduction, the mechanism directly opens protected lands to industrial access—timber, mining, and energy sectors. The stated purposes (restoration, hazardous fuels reduction) are legitimate but serve as the legal vehicle for broader deregulation.
- Requirement to construct roads 'to carry out the intent of the Act of June 4, 1897' (16 U.S.C. 473–482, 551) is substantively unrelated to roadless-rule nullification and appears designed to resurrect 19th-century timber-access authority.
What the text implies
- Nullifying the Roadless Rule removes a blanket conservation standard and replaces it with case-by-case discretion—lowering the bar for road approval and shifting burden of proof from industry (justify access) to conservationists (block each project).
- The bill's framing around 'restoration' and 'hazardous fuels reduction' may be used to justify roads that primarily serve timber extraction or mining, since those activities can be characterized as forest management.
The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
timber companies; mining companies; energy extraction firms (oil, gas, renewable energy development)