On 21 August 2026, the Trump administration released a plan to repeal the Roadless Rule and strip environmental protections from roadless national forests. Environmental groups urged the U.S. Forest Service to maintain the protections.
On August 19, 2026, the Trump administration initiated action to remove protections for 66 million acres of National Forest land from the Roadless Rule, opening previously protected areas to logging and development. In North Carolina specifically, 172,000 acres including Linville Gorge and South Mills River are at risk.
The Trump administration on August 19, 2026 advanced plans to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, removing protections from approximately 45 million acres of national forests to permit road construction and logging. Democratic lawmakers pledged to challenge the repeal.
The Trump administration filed a proposed rule with the USDA Forest Service to repeal the 'Roadless Rule' and allow commercial logging and construction in millions of acres of untouched national forests, with the draft environmental impact statement filed by August 21, 2026. The move reverses decades of environmental protections on federally protected forest land.