Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it was rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, but a study that followed indicated that by overturning the rule, wildfires were much more likely in areas near forest roads.

The government agency said the rule was outdated and that rescinding it would remove prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System, allowing for fire prevention and responsible timber production.

The rule impacts 30% of the National Forest System land, and of the 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas covered under the Roadless Rule, 28 million acres are in areas at high or very high risk of wildfire.

“Rescinding this rule will allow this land to be managed at the local forest level, with more flexibility to take swift action to reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure,” the federal agency stated in a June 23, 2025, press release.

The study, conducted by The Wilderness Society, examined data from 1992 to 2024 in 8 contiguous U.S. Forest Service regions.

It found that the highest wildfire-ignition density was in lands within 50 meters of roads.

For human-caused, natural, and undetermined fires, wildfire-ignition density decreased as the distance to a road increased.

“Our results suggest that building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires,” the researchers stated. “These fires will, on average, be smaller than fires farther from roads, but there will be more of them, and some of them will grow to become large fires.”