Noted ecologist Donald J. Trump has praised America’s “massive forests” as rich in timber that could “make a lot of money.” Pursuant to that aim, President Trump’s agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans last year to rescind a bipartisan “roadless rule” in place since 2001, lifting “prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest” for nearly 59 million acres of national forest.
But decisions like this are protracted bureaucratic affairs, requiring a notice-and-comment period that can take up to a year or more. There’s still plenty of time, in other words, to consider new research on the likely harm that rescinding this rule would do to drinking water that millions of Americans rely on. Specifically, conservation scientists led by the University of Washington (UW) have now crosschecked maps of roughly 110,000 square miles (284,900 square kilometers) of these forests, determining where 2,488 official “roadless areas” overlap with the nation’s key protected rivers. All told, over 80,000 miles (128,748 km) worth of rivers across the continental U.S. that were once at least partially protected by the roadless rule are now at risk.
“The roadless rule supports the drinking water supply for 25 million Americans and offers critical protection of wildlife habitat,” the study’s lead author Julian Olden explained in a statement.
“In short, rivers in roadless areas are essential for both people and nature,” Olden said.
A natural filter
Decades of studies have borne out forested land’s ability to improve water quality via a cascading sequence of benefits, from capturing rainfall and promoting its infiltration into the soil to removing contamination via soil microbiome and root network processes. Best of all, this ecological symbiosis passes those savings on to the American taxpayer, reducing public utility costs downstream.
“Forest cover is well recognized for generating economic benefits by avoiding the large capital costs of water treatment plants needed to ensure clean, safe drinking water,” according to Olden, a professor of aquatic and fishery science at UW. (Some utilities, in fact, have even successfully invested in watershed protection to save money.)
Olden and his colleagues turned to a U.S. Forest Service mapping tool, National Forests to Faucets 2.0, to assess which regions of the country benefit most from rivers protected by the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Policy. Based on their analysis, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Water, a few states east, including Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee, were particularly at risk.
But, judging from their maps, permitting new roads in these protected forests would especially jeopardize access to cost-effective clean water out west—most dramatically in Idaho, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming (all states whose electoral votes went to Trump in 2024, by the way).
“Any decision to rescind or downgrade the roadless rule that may put forested lands at risk requires careful consideration of the numerous benefits they offer to people and nature,” Olden noted. “Our study offers data to inform such decisions.”
A democratic filter
Almost 2 million people weighed in during the comment period that came with the Roadless Area Conservation Rule back in 2001, revealing a large bipartisan majority in favor of the policy. A recent study from the nonprofit Center for Western Priorities found a similar result during this new comment period: over 99% of those weighing in oppose rescinding the roadless rule. (Although, certain Republicans in Congress are now trying to make an end-run around this public outcry.)
“Anyone who thinks this is a fight between red and blue is deeply mistaken,” as Charles F. Sams III, director of the U.S. National Park Service from 2021 to 2025, put it in a recent op-ed for The Guardian. “Few things unite the people of this country like their love of the land.”
“Hunters, anglers, hikers, campers, families of every stripe support the national treasures that are our wild places,” Sams said.
