Years of unchecked logging from the 1800s to the early 1960s led to the near extinction of many keystone species, such as the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest and created ecological instability, sparking devastating wildfires. Federal laws in the ’60s and ’70s gave conservationists tools to start preserving the forests and, in 2001 conservationists successfully lobbied for the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which aimed at keeping old-growth forests intact and roadless, protecting them from logging industries nationwide.
“So it just recently had its 25th anniversary, but it’s really one of those bedrock conservation policies that has protected large swats of land across the county. These are our last remaining intact old growth forested areas,” says Grace Brahler Newsome, wildlands director for environmental nonprofit Cascadia Wildlands.
Old-growth forests have been proven to store more carbon dioxide, support thriving ecosystems and reduce wildfires. Studies show that forests naturally prevent and mitigate wildfires due to moister microclimates. Roadless areas are designated by the U.S. Forest Service and currently federally protect 45 million acres of forests nationwide. Roadless areas provide thousands of miles of recreational hiking trails, premier hunting and fishing areas. They also prevent forest fragmentation and protect critical habitats for endangered species while providing clean filtered drinking water for many living in the Willamette Valley.
After U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced his intent to rescind the Roadless Rule in 2025, several of Oregon’s federal representatives proposed a law to codify environmental protections into place. The Roadless Area Conservation Act was sponsored by Rep. Andrea Salinas of Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, and supported by every Democratic representative in Oregon — except for Rep. Val Hoyle of Oregon’s 4th District, which includes Lane County.
This act was proposed in response to the Wildfire Prevention Act of 2025, which aimed to overturn the rule through legislative means. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, attached an amendment to the bill before the vote, negating environmental protections under the Roadless Rule.
When the Roadless Rule initially passed there was overwhelming support from the public and from environmental organizations. When the public comment period opened to address the repeal in September 2025, over 200,000 people wrote saying they wanted to keep this rule in place, according to Regulations.gov.
“The Trump administration has made it very clear that that’s their priority. The only reason that we see this rule being repealed is to facilitate more logging, more mining and more development in the future,” says Chandra LeGue of Oregon Wild.
While every other Democrat in Oregon’s congressional delegation has signed onto legislation protecting roadless areas and codifying it into law, environmental groups say that Hoyle continues to hold out on supporting the bill. This has frustrated many conservation groups amid the push to repeal the protection all together. The provisions of the bill have key environmental protections to prevent habitat fragmentation and prevent wildfire risks within the state — and it stalls commercial logging projects in old-growth forests.
Eugene Weekly reached out to Hoyle’s team, and Ella Seaman, digital manager and press assistant, responded in a statement saying that Hoyle “is deeply concerned about the threat climate change poses to Oregon’s forests and the growing risk of catastrophic wildfire.”
The statement says that in some areas of federal forests, “dangerous fuel loads need careful thinning to reduce the likelihood of large stand-replacing fires.”
Seaman says, “There are other areas of intact old growth left out of the 2001 Roadless Rule that need to be incorporated. She supports the goals of protecting roadless areas, but she believes the bill is going nowhere in the right-wing Republican House and has less of a chance in the Senate now or in the foreseeable future where it would need 60 votes.”
Federally protected forests cover a quarter of the state and only two million acres are protected from logging and commercial development under the current roadless rule, according to LeGue. Many of Lane County’s popular natural recreation sites are roadless — Iron Mountain in Santiam Pass, the majority of the Oregon Dunes Recreation Area and the forests of Hardesty Mountain and Mount June.
Other than recreation, roadless areas are vital to drinking water quality. “There’s roadless areas in the drinking water source for Eugene, Bend and Portland. Any place that’s sort of intact and has a functioning ecosystem, produces higher quality water that we drink,” LeGue says.
Roadless areas also protect wildlife.
“They are some of our last remaining intact and old growth forested areas that store carbon and help fight climate change. They support habitats for fish and wildlife,” Brahler Newsome says. “When we carve roads into these intact forested areas, we’re fragmenting the habitats.”
If the rule was to be rescinded it would impact eight at-risk species in the Willamette National Forest, including the gray wolf, northern spotted owl, Chinook salmon and North American wolverine, Brahler Newsome says.
“I think a key concern for us is that we’re seeing an increase in fire risk potential, both through that habitat fragmentation and the introduction of non-native species that spread really fast and increase fire risk within the area,” Newsome says. “It’s incredibly dangerous, it puts not just communities that live in these rural areas at risk, it’s putting everybody at risk.”
A study by the Association for Fire Ecology found that roads significantly increase the number of ignitions and don’t meaningfully change the likelihood of a fire growing large. The study examined wildfire ignition patterns across all national forests in the contiguous U.S. from 1992 to 2024, and discovered wildfire ignition density was the lowest in designated wilderness and roadless areas.
“There is a staggering amount of miles and road systems that are supported with public taxpayer dollars — we’re talking hundreds of thousands of miles. There’s a huge backlog of maintenance costs totaling in the millions, and with the reductions in staffing [and] capacity — the resources to maintain these roads just aren’t there,” Newsome says.
Currently, environmental organizations and advocates are waiting for the U.S. Forest Service to release a draft environmental impact statement, An EIS is an analysis or report that looks at the impacts federal actions may have on the environment and wildlife.
Sangye Ince-Johannsen, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, explains that after the final EIS is released, another abbreviated public comment session will open. Ince-Johannsen expects it to be around 15 days, which is significantly shorter than when the Roadless Rule was first adopted. He says he anticipates it may be significantly shorter than when the rule was first adopted, when the Forest Service opened a 90-day comment period.
He says, “So we’re putting that documentation of all the science on the threats and impacts to affected wildlife in comment letters and getting it in front of the agency. What that means is, if and when the agency does rescind the Roadless Rule, our clients and partner organizations will be positioned to challenge that decision in court.”
The lawsuit would be brought under a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal statute that requires an administration to consider relevant harms of a decision and make administrative rulings consistent with facts. The APA was initially enacted to set uniform standards for agency rulemaking and avoid arbitrary changes.
However, a congressional legislative initiative would codify the rule, ensuring that the rule wouldn’t be up for interpretation under the courts.
“I feel like a lot of conservation groups have been disappointed that [Hoyle] hasn’t taken a stronger stance against the push of this administration to increase aggressive logging of public lands. I know a congressional representative doesn’t have control over what the president does, but they can send a message by sponsoring legislation like the Roadless Area Conservation Act in addition to speaking out against the Rule’s repeal,” LeGue says.
LeGue says one of the previous disappointments was when Hoyle voted in favor of the Fix Our Forests Act, which aimed to mitigate wildfires and restore forest ecosystems by expediting federal forest management. Environmental organizations argued that the bill bypassed ecological standards, limited public oversight and created loopholes for commercial logging operations.
Hoyle received $71,300 in campaign contributions for her 2026 re-election from groups that have been prone to support timber harvesting. She received $9,550 in campaign contributions from environmental advocacy groups, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission.
“We’ve urged her to reconsider that position time and time again,” Newsome says of Hoyle, “and I know there are a lot of people in her district that have as well, but she has maintained her position to choose not to co-sponsor at the time.”