Study says roads bring more fires to forests; USDA wants more roads to fight fires

March 25, 2026

Here's something that might surprise you — building more roads into forests actually seems to make wildfires worse, not better. Zoë Rom from Inside Climate News points out that the Trump administration's push to remove limits on roadbuilding and logging in national forests is being justified as a way to fight fires. But many critics argue that increasing roads just opens up the forest to more human activity, which often sparks more fires. According to a report, wildfires on federal lands have nearly doubled in size since the late '80s, with about 8 million acres burning each year between 2017 and 2021. Top land managers are now saying that these forests are the front line of the growing wildfire crisis. So what does this actually mean for us? Well, if more roads lead to more fires, then policies aimed at increasing access might be doing the opposite of what’s needed — especially when the real goal could be protecting these vulnerable landscapes. It's a complicated puzzle that Zoë Rom highlights — more roads might not be the answer, after all.

When the Trump administration announced plans last year to rescind a rule limiting roadbuilding and timber harvests on millions of acres of national forests and grasslands, officials called the repeal necessary to prevent and manage wildfires.

But as the US Department of Agriculture prepares to release its draft environmental impact statement for the rescission, that justification is unraveling. And many critics of the move see the claim that roads are needed to fight fires in remote forests as cover for a giveaway to the timber industry.

On average, about 8 million acres have burned each year between 2017 and 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly double the average from 1987 to 1991. Wildfires on federal lands average about five times the size of those in the rest of the country, leading some of the nation’s top land managers to argue that national forests are a front line for fighting the nation’s steep increase in wildland blazes.

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