“Protection”? More Like Performance: Big Greens and Roadless Logging Loopholes

As public lands face escalating attacks, poll-driven caution is becoming capitulation

A recent polling report from a large environmental group is being used not to educate the public, but to justify maintaining loopholes in the Roadless Rule that log trucks have been driving through for over two decades. We are a bit dumbstruck by the polling report’s resistance to correcting the misapprehensions of voters that “fuels reduction” curbs wildfires and that “fuels reduction” is somehow different from logging, and the report’s failure to recommend leaning into the polling responses that crossed all demographics–that logging should not occur in Roadless Areas and wildlife protection is paramount.

This polling-as-cover strategy is unfolding at the exact moment when public lands protections are under direct, escalating attack. Just this week, Senator Mike Lee introduced an amendment that would remove the Interior Department’s obligation to retain national parks, national trails, and wild and scenic rivers as federal lands—effectively opening the door to their sale or transfer. This is not rhetorical excess; it is a concrete attempt to make once-protected public lands disposable. In a political environment where the right is openly testing how much of the public estate can be dismantled, Big Green’s insistence on maintaining loopholes and managing perceptions rather than building durable public understanding is not caution—it is capitulation.

Here is one example: the Roadless Rule, as currently written, and the version that these groups wish to get passed through Congress as a statute, allows roadbuilding in Roadless Areas and allows logging to reduce so-called “fuels”. Sure, the roads are supposed to be temporary and built only in emergencies (whatever the agency decides is an emergency). But the Forest Service can pretty liberally justify punching a road in anywhere they want, logging most of the trees, so long as they are “generally small diameter”. A common Forest Service definition of “small diameter” is a tree that is up to 24 inches in diameter at breast height. To give you some perspective on this, in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California less than 1% of the trees in the forest are larger than 24” in diameter, meaning that very few trees in a Roadless Area would be protected from logging. Needless to say, these provisions do not bode well for protecting our Roadless Areas. And these threats are not theoretical – an investigation by Friends of the Clearwater into roadless area logging found that tens of thousands of previously unroaded acres in Idaho and Montana have been logged under these loopholes, with projects often labeled as “restoration” or “forest health,” while in reality these projects just opened roadless lands to industrial timber exploitation, eliminating the roadless character of these areas and damaging or completely removing wildlife habitat.

What we see here is a completely missed opportunity. The voters polled want Roadless Area protection; they want to protect wildlife. They are afraid of wildfire and want forests to be protected from wildfire, and they disfavor logging. Once you look at the facts and lean into correcting the misunderstandings, the path for a truly protective Roadless Rule is available. First let’s address the wildfire issue: logging and roadbuilding do not protect communities from wildfire; these activities will not stop roadless areas from experiencing wildfire and often intensify wildfires; building roads in roadless areas increases, rather than decreases, the chance of ignitions; roads are not necessary for fire suppression activities; and, further, wildfire is overwhelming beneficial to wildlife and forest ecosystem function. Second, let’s address what is actually happening in Roadless Areas under the existing rule – roads are being created and logging projects are being planned and executed, often removing the larger, older trees in the forest and degrading or outright removing habitat, including in areas where sensitive, threatened and endangered species exist, all under the false claim of wildfire risk reduction.

The disconnect here is that rather than help cure the voters’ misbeliefs that (a) “fuels reduction” is something other than logging and habitat destruction and that (b) roads are necessary in areas that currently have no roads, the polling report advises that we should support these misheld beliefs and assure voters that both roads and “fuels reduction logging” are permissible under the existing Roadless Rule while also telling them these areas are being protected. This is exactly the type of double speak that voters are sick of. Do we want these areas protected or not? Because the way that the polling report is being used, protection will be in name only.

As we highlighted in our August post, “A Better Way”, Really? – Big Green Groups Mislead on Wildfire in Countering Roadless Rollback, this is a persistent problem within mainstream environmental groups. The Wilderness Society and others have leaned into wildfire disinformation–echoing this administration’s exaggerated claims about roadless areas near communities–to justify logging and roadbuilding in places that were supposed to remain protected. Meanwhile, grassroots groups who are fighting projects on-the-ground like ours have been sounding the alarm for years about these loopholes and the real science: homes burn due to weather, not distant forests, and “fuels reduction logging” in roadless areas do not protect communities. Big Greens’ messaging gives political cover to the administration while distracting from evidence-based strategies that actually work.

Fire is natural and essential in most ecosystems. Mixed-severity fire creates diverse habitat, rejuvenates forests, and maintains critical ecological processes. Intact roadless forests are far more resilient to fire than logged or thinned forests. Yet, Big Greens and their polling reports treat fire as a boogeyman, avoiding education and transparency to justify inaction. But it is not too late for Big Greens to change direction. NGOs and policymakers could team up with those of us raising alarms to educate the public on fire-adapted landscapes and advocate for closing the loopholes in the Roadless Rule once and for all (we already did the redline of the bill).

It’s time to stop letting fear of fire be weaponized against ecological reality and stronger protections. Roadless areas must remain roadless – without chainsaws, fellerbunchers, or roads marching through them under the guise of wildfire “management.” Public lands, communities (both human and forest), and biodiversity deserve nothing less.

Call your Members of Congress—especially if they sponsor or support H.R. 3930 / S. 2042, the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2025—and tell them plainly: codifying the Roadless Rule without closing its logging and roadbuilding loopholes is not protection. Send them our redline and ask why they are willing to lock weak standards into law rather than strengthen them.

And if wildfire safety is truly their concern, ask why they have not also supported H.R. 582, which invests in community-centered wildfire resilience instead of backcountry logging. If Congress insists that fire justifies weakening roadless protections, it should be prepared to explain why it is not prioritizing the strategies that actually protect homes and lives.

We do not need more poll-tested messaging or symbolic wins. We need lawmakers and Big “Greens” willing to choose ecological reality over political convenience—and to protect roadless areas as if they actually intend them to remain roadless.