Senate committee passes short-notice Roadless Rule repeal
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) While public land lovers are still awaiting the Trump administration’s expected repeal of the Roadless Rule, a Utah senator is trying to pass a law to eliminate the rule.
On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources met to consider 17 bills, including Senate Bill 140, the Wildfire Prevention Act. Introduced by Sen. Barrasso, R-Wyo., in January, the bill was originally written to direct the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to increase logging and burning projects on federal public land.
However, on Wednesday morning, Committee Chair Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced an amendment to S.140 that would repeal the Roadless Rule. It would also prohibit any effort to issue a similar rule in the future.
Republicans on the committee, including Montana Sen. Steve Daines, passed the amendment and advanced the bill on a party-line vote of 11-9. Vice Chair Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, said he was disappointed over how Lee’s amendment tainted an otherwise good bill.
“The biggest issue, the elephant in the room, is that the wildfire legislation became a trojan horse for repealing the roadless rule. That’s the tail wagging the dog. That is a huge change for our country,” Heinrich said. “We took a mostly bipartisan, constructive, wildfire effort, and now, it has become a partisan pitched battle over repealing the roadless rule. That is a poster-child example for how not to get successful legislation done.”
Conservation groups had caught wind of the amendment on Tuesday and put out a call to action for their members to contact committee members to ask them to vote no on the amendment. In a social media post on Wednesday, the Montana Wildlife Federation said its members asked Daines to vote no and to pressure the Forest Service to hold public meetings on the proposed Roadless Rule repeal.
“…he instead votes ‘Yea’ on an 11th hour committee amendment back in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, anti-public land Senators will need to assemble 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to pass this legislation, and that is an unlikely threshold if hunters, anglers and all who value backcountry roadless public land in the United States pressure their Senators. How will our junior Senator, Senator Tim Sheehy cast his vote if this hits a full vote of the Senate?” the Montana Wildlife Federation said in its social media post.
Land Tawney, American Hunters and Anglers director, took Lee to task in his social media post.
“With the support of 10 fellow Republicans on his powerful Senate committee, Senator Mike Lee just launched another sneak attack on our public lands. He used a last-minute, poison pill amendment to wipe out the 2001 Roadless Rule, politicizing what should have been a bipartisan plan to address wildfire. Yet again, so much for nature being nonpartisan,” Tawney said. “We have another bite at this apple (in the full Senate). The accountability that has to happen right now is huge.”
In the past, Lee has led a number of efforts to reduce or sell federal land, including an amendment he proposed to the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of acres of public land up for sale to turn into housing and infrastructure. He withdrew that amendment.
However, motorized vehicle groups - riding high after Trump recently nullified two executive orders from the 1970s that sought to protect sensitive public lands from the damage of roads and ATV trails - threw their support behind S.140 and its companion bill, H.R. 7695, in the House of Representatives.
“For decades, (Blue Ribbon Coalition) has fought to preserve access and promote responsible recreation on public lands. H.R. 7695 and S. 140 represent important steps toward restoring balanced land management policies that recognize recreation access, forest health, and conservation can coexist,” the Coalition said in a statement.
The Blue Ribbon Coalition claimed the Roadless Rule should be rescinded because it prevents access for logging and burning that mitigates wildfire. However, the Roadless Rule doesn’t prevent management activities. For example, the recently proposed West Reservoir project near Hungry Horse Reservoir includes more than 4,600 acres of prescribed burns in roadless areas.
On Wednesday, Heinrich mentioned all the forest management activities occurring in New Mexico and said the Roadless Rule wasn’t the hindrance.
“It’s not broke in New Mexico. So don’t let D.C. come tell me that we have a problem in New Mexico, when our biggest problem is just getting enough resources and enough staff to get into our forests to do treatments. Because we do treatments, hazardous fuel treatments, in roadless areas,” Heinrich said.
Aside from Lee’s efforts to eliminate the Roadless Rule, the Trump administration is still going through an administrative process to rescind the rule. In June 2025, Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins proposed rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects water, wildlife and ecosystems in existing roadless areas by prohibiting road construction and some resource extraction.
The U.S. Forest Service held no public meetings, but during a 21-day public comment period in September, almost 656,000 people commented, and more than 99% opposed the rule’s repeal, according to a Center for Western Priorities analysis of around a third of the comments. In spite of overwhelming opposition to the proposal, politicians expect that Rollins will soon finalize the repeal, but that should be followed by one more comment period.
“The Roadless Area Conservation Rule is facing attacks from both anti-public lands members of Congress and the Trump administration because it has been highly effective at protecting America’s last wild places,” said Addie Haughey, Earthjustice Action Legislative director in a statement. “Attacking this rule is not about wildfire prevention — it already allows for wildfire prevention efforts — this is about gutting our remaining pristine public lands and opening them up for industry to exploit. Members of the Senate should reject this partisan attack and instead pass the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which would codify the Roadless Rule and permanently protect roadless areas in national forests.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.