Written by HLRBO Staff|
Last updated
The Forest Service has proposed erasing the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule from 44.7 million acres of national forest, and the comment window closes at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on October 6, 2026. The proposal is Federal Register document 2026-16965, published August 20, 2026, filed under docket FS-2025-0001 and RIN 0596-AD66. Comments go to regulations.gov.
The deadline, and why two federal sites show different dates
The original comment period ran 30 days and would have ended September 21. On September 11 the agency published an extension, document 2026-18648, at 91 FR 57841, adding 15 days. The Federal Register now states that comments must be received by October 6, 2026.
The regulations.gov docket entry shows a comment end date of 2026-10-07T03:59:59Z. Those are the same instant. Four in the morning UTC on October 7 is one second before midnight Eastern on October 6. The calendar date on the Federal Register page and the timestamp in the docket look a day apart only because one is written in local terms and the other in UTC. Hunters on Pacific time should note that the clock runs on Eastern, not on their own.
What roadless status does, and what it does not do
This is where most of the arguing goes sideways, so it is worth being literal. Subpart B of 36 CFR part 294 contains two prohibitions. Section 294.12 says a road "may not be constructed or reconstructed in inventoried roadless areas of the National Forest System," with seven listed exceptions covering imminent threats to life or property, CERCLA response actions, reserved or outstanding rights, realignment to prevent irreparable resource damage, safety projects on existing classified roads, certain federal-aid highway projects, and existing mineral leases. Section 294.13 says timber "may not be cut, sold, or removed," with exceptions for small-diameter cutting that improves habitat or reduces uncharacteristic wildfire effects, incidental cutting, personal or administrative use, and previously altered ground. The rule states that such cutting "is expected to be infrequent."
Nothing in either section closes ground to hunters. The rule does not set seasons, does not restrict foot or horse access, does not prohibit prescribed fire, and does not prohibit maintenance of existing roads, which section 294.12(c) expressly permits. The definition matters too. Under section 294.11 a road is "a motor vehicle travelway over 50 inches wide, unless designated and managed as a trail," which is why ATV trails and two-tracks managed as trails sit outside the prohibition entirely.
The agency's own draft environmental impact statement counts 21,808 miles of trail inside the affected roadless areas, including 5,200 miles open to motorized use and 16,208 miles non-motorized. Those trails exist under the current rule. A reader who has been told roadless areas are locked up has been told something the regulation does not say.
The agency's case
USDA's argument is management flexibility and fire. The draft EIS states the purpose plainly: the Department is acting "to reduce regulatory burden and return land management decision-making for inventoried roadless areas to local Forest Service officials," and says a "single, national blanket approach" keeps officials from exercising "the timely, place-based discretion needed to meet the Forest Service's multiple-use mission."
The fire numbers are specific. Across potentially affected roadless areas outside Alaska, the draft EIS puts 42 percent of the land in the high or very high Wildfire Hazard Potential classes, with regional values running from 5 percent in the Eastern Region to 60 percent in the Pacific Southwest. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, in the agency's August 18 announcement, said: "Active forest management is not an option. It's essential. More than 40% of inventoried roadless areas, primarily in the West, have high or very high wildfire hazard potential. And only 5% of those areas have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014." He went on to say that more than a quarter of these lands, 11.3 million acres, are already near existing roads. That figure comes straight out of the draft EIS, which puts 11.3 million acres, or 28.3 percent of the affected environment, within half a mile of an existing road. It is the agency's sharpest answer to anyone picturing all 44.7 million acres as untouched backcountry.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins put it this way in the same release: "For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities." Deputy Secretary Stephen A. Vaden, who signed the proposed rule, added that "the first step to managing forests is to have access to them."
The draft EIS also concedes a point the agency's critics raise. It states that the 2001 rule "does not prohibit and has not entirely prevented hazardous fuels reduction in IRAs," notes there are no prohibitions on prescribed fire, and says the rescission "does not mandate timber cutting or road construction."
Two numbers worth doing yourself
The agency's press release says 44 million acres. The rule preamble says 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. Both are correct, and the gap is the record of how the rule has been narrowed by two state-specific rules over twenty-five years. The draft EIS reconciles it in a footnote: the original 58.5 million figure fell to 58.2 million after mapping modernization and technical corrections, and the 2001 rule now applies to about 44.7 million acres because the Idaho and Colorado state-specific roadless rules, at 36 CFR 294 subparts C and D, replaced it on roughly nine million and four million acres respectively. Subtract 44.7 from 58.2 and the remainder is 13.5 million acres. That is Idaho and Colorado, and neither is affected by this proposal.
The second calculation is the fuels one, and the base matters. Run the Chief's 5 percent against the 44.7 million acres the 2001 rule still covers and you get about 2.2 million acres treated across fiscal years 2014 through 2024, roughly 203,000 acres a year over eleven fiscal years. Run it against the narrower base the draft EIS actually analyzes, the 40.1 million roadless acres affected under Alternative 2, and it is about 2.0 million acres, or roughly 182,000 acres a year. Whether that figure reads as evidence of a rule blocking work or evidence of an agency that has not funded the work it is already allowed to do is the argument, and both sides are using the same number.
The hunting and conservation case
The draft EIS is also where the agency records what its own science says about elk. It states that "elk avoid areas near roads and select for habitat away from roads," citing Rowland and colleagues, and summarizes a northern Idaho study finding that ideal summer elk habitat "consists of unroaded land with at least 40 percent canopy cover and forage." It cites a Bureau of Land Management comparison in which daily elk movement rates fell during a road-restriction period and survival rates rose, then fell again when the closure gates came off.
Michael O'Casey, TRCP's director of public lands, said in the group's August 19 response that "national forest backcountry areas provide valuable habitat for big game, cold and clean headwaters for trout and salmon, and some of the best hunting and fishing opportunities that can be found in America." The organization has pointed to the Idaho and Colorado rules as workable models rather than opposing all change.
Ryan Callaghan, president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, said in the group's August 18 statement: "The Roadless Rule works. It provides quality habitat for big game, keeps trout streams cold and clean, and keeps taxpayers from footing the bill for thousands of miles of new roads that the Forest Service can't afford to maintain."
Not every access group agrees. The BlueRibbon Coalition supports rescission, arguing that roads are firefighting infrastructure and that reopening the 44.7 million acres restores camping, overlanding and motorized access for older hunters and people with limited mobility.
What the record already shows
USDA received more than 220,000 comment letters during the 21-day scoping period on the 2025 notice of intent. Counting petition signatures individually, the draft EIS says those letters represent over 625,000 submissions. It also says that "approximately 99 percent were generally opposed to the proposed rule recission, while approximately 1 percent were generally in support," and, in the same passage, that "more than 90 percent of the letters received contained brief sentiments or opinions." Both halves of that finding are the agency's own.
What would actually change on your ground
Nothing changes the day a final rule publishes. The rescission would remove the national prohibition and hand the decision to each forest's land management plan, where site-specific analysis, NEPA review and public comment still apply. The draft EIS expects new roads to be "reasonably foreseeable" and says some would improve access for dispersed camping and hunting while reducing the quiet, remote settings that other hunters drive nine hours to find. Table 49 of the draft EIS puts $753 million in annual visitor spending on fishing, hunting and wildlife viewing across the non-wilderness dispersed areas of the forests that contain affected roadless areas. The agency then attributes 31 percent of that total, about $226 million, to the roadless areas themselves, because those areas are about 31 percent of the non-wilderness acreage on those forests. Its upper-bound loss estimate for the roadless share of that spending is about $2 million a year.
The regional split is real. Of the $753 million, Northern Region forests account for $91 million and the Eastern Region $171 million, the largest single regional share, so a Montana elk hunter and a Pennsylvania deer hunter are not looking at the same proposal. Wherever you hunt, the operative document after any rescission is your forest's plan, not a national rule, and your state wildlife agency sets the season and the tag regardless.
Comment while the window is open, then read your forest plan. The rule that governs your elk ground in 2030 will have your forest's name on it, not the country's.
If you are rethinking where your fall hunts come from while the federal picture moves, HLRBO's Lease Finder matches hunters with private ground by state and species, and the HLRBO blog tracks access and regulatory changes as they land.