Roads have long played an important role in managing fires on public lands, but newly published research found that roads have also increased wildfire ignitions and ecosystem damage.
The scientific study, published by members of the Wilderness Society in Springer Nature’s Fire Ecology Journal, examined patterns of fire size in a nationwide dataset of U.S. Forest Service regions from 1992 to 2024.
The researchers found that the highest wildfire-ignition density among the lands studied was in lands within 164 feet of roads, at just under 8 fires per 2,471 acres, while the second highest wildfire-ignition density was in other national forest lands outside the 164-foot buffer, but not in wilderness or roadless areas, at 3.5 fires per 2,471 acres. Wildfire-ignition density was at its lowest in designated wilderness areas without roads, at 1.75 fires per 2,471 acres.
The study’s lead author, Wilderness Society Senior Forest Scientist Greg Aplet, told Wildfire Today that the study’s findings directly contradict the US administration’s plans to rescind the federal “roadless rule,” which has blocked logging of national forest lands since 2001. The administration claims the removal of prohibitions on road construction and timber harvest within the National Forest System would allow for more fire prevention.
“Opening the door for more roads and logging in our country’s most intact, backcountry forests isn’t a wildfire solution, and it never will be,” Aplet told Wildfire Today in an emailed statement. “Despite what the administration says, the Roadless Rule repeal has nothing to do with keeping our communities safe from wildfire. It’s a backdoor agreement that will hand millions of acres of our protected public lands to private industry.”
Aplet said the research confirms that more roads mean more human activity and more wildfires in the nation’s previously protected lands. He also said he hopes this research leads the administration to base its policy reforms on sound science.
That’s a high hope, considering the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins previously labeled the rule as an “absurd obstacle.”
“This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests,” Rollins said in the department’s original announcement in June 2025. “It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.”
Click here to read the full research study.
4 Comments
There is an error in this sentence:
“The study’s lead author, Wilderness Society Senior Forest Scientist Greg Aplet, told Wildfire Today that the study’s findings directly contradict the US administration’s plans to rescind the federal “roadless rule,” which has blocked logging of national forest lands since 2001. The administration claims the removal of prohibitions on road construction and timber harvest within the National Forest System would allow for more fire prevention.”
The roadless rule has not blocked logging on NF lands,
It has blocked logging on SOME NF lands.
Much of the country that is roadless is unsuitable to marginally suitable for timber management, meaning that where there is timber, it is mostly only suitable for the kind of timber mining that the USFS practiced across the West back in the mid to late 20th Century—management misdirection that led to lost credibility for the FS.
Those lands were and are roadless for a good reason. The costs of new road building greatly exceeds the value of any timber down those new roads. Randall O’Toole documented the financials quite astutely in Reforming the Forest Service.
Rescinding the Roadless Rule was a bad policy decision, driven by an administration that seems proud of it’s inability to look out for the taxpayer. I worked on fires in both Wilderness and Inventoried Roadless Areas. Even here in the relatively big timber of the northwest, timber sales in these areas would almost certainly be deficit sales. That is, they would cost more to administer than the value of the timber. Long distances to the mill, expensive road construction, mulitiple re-plant costs, all factors that make these sales a ripoff of the taxpayer.
The Wilderness Society has been philosophically opposed to logging on National Forests and the roads associated with them and lobbied for the roadless rule. Any study presented by them is tainted by their bias. This article should present a more balanced approach to the argument. It’s taken decades, much of it under roadless management, to create the fire danger we experience today on our public lands.
The way to “…create the fire danger we experience today on our public lands” is pretty straightforward. Follow a policy of replanting at high density, do minimum slash treatment on timber sales and put strict limits on controlled burning. Then have budget cuts and staff reductions from time to time. National Forest management in the 21st century.