Wyoming lawmakers, counties push changes to federal 'roadless rule' to ease forest management and reduce wildfire risk

U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) told the Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee on Oct. 26, 2025, that the U.S. Forest Service’s 2001 ‘‘roadless rule’’ has blocked routine management across millions of acres of national forest and contributed to insect outbreaks and catastrophic fires in Wyoming and the Interior West.

Hageman, joining the committee by Zoom, recounted that she was hired by the state of Wyoming as a special assistant attorney general to challenge the rule, won a preliminary nationwide injunction in federal court before Judge Brimmer, and argued the rule violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Wilderness Act and other statutory requirements. "It was the roadless rule that made it so that the Forest Service could not properly manage these resources," she said.

Why it matters: Committee members, county commissioners and forestry officials said the rule constrains access and long-term timber contracts, limits managers’ ability to reduce hazardous fuels and has been embedded in forest plans and resource management plans (RMPs). Committee witnesses described options that range from local technical corrections to maps, to state- or Congress-led rule changes, to targeted statutory exemptions intended to allow road building and timber harvest in limited circumstances.

Hageman said the 2001 rule designated roughly 58.5 million acres of national forest land as inventoried roadless areas and that about 3.2 million acres were in Wyoming. She argued the rule was prepared quickly, relied on outdated maps produced during the Forest Service’s 1970s inventory, and was implemented without the level of site-specific NEPA analysis typically required for large federal land decisions. The congresswoman described Judge Brimmer’s ruling in Wyoming as finding NEPA and Wilderness Act violations, and she said that a subsequent nationwide…