The Trump administration says it wants to repeal the longstanding Roadless Rule, which protects national forest lands from logging and new roads, to reduce wildfire risk. But new research shows that fires haven’t burned significantly more in roadless areas than in developed forest areas across the West.

Scientists at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University analyzed 40 years of wildfire data across national forests in 11 western states where most roadless areas are located.

“Essentially there’s no difference in the extent of fire in inventoried roadless areas than in areas that have lots of roads,” said James Johnston, a co-author of the paper and professor at the University of Oregon. “In fact, in the last 12 years or so, there’s been slightly less fire in inventoried roadless areas than in those developed areas.”

The Trump administration has argued that the Roadless Rule has increased wildfire in national forests, and it is one step closer to repealing the rule, releasing a draft environmental impact statement last month.

To assess how fires have spread across national forests in the West, Johnston and his colleagues looked at burn data for Congressionally designated wilderness areas, developed national forest lands and inventoried roadless areas, which are managed according to the Roadless Rule.

They found that fires burned 26.9% of developed lands, 30.1% of roadless areas and 55.2% of wilderness over the past 40 years. In more recent years, from 2014 to 2023, fires burned 14.5% of developed land, 12.9% of roadless areas and 20.4% of wilderness.

The researchers attribute the greater spread of fire in wilderness areas to resource allocation. During intense fire years, like this one, incident managers prioritize putting scarce resources nearest to homes and other valuable infrastructure often far from remote wilderness areas.

Patterns at the regional level vary at smaller scales, though. Some states experienced more roadless areas burned while others saw less.

In Utah, fires burned 10.2% of developed land, 17.6% of roadless areas and 21.5% of wilderness during the past 40 years. Over the past decade, fires occurred on 4.3% of developed land, 7.5% of roadless areas and 15% of wilderness.

In Oregon, roadless areas burned at more than twice the rate of developed national forest lands, while there was significantly more burning on developed lands in Nevada and Wyoming, according to the study.

The researchers concluded that repealing the roadless rule is unlikely to have a significant effect on wildfire across the West, but analysis at smaller scales may show potential revisions that could be help specific states and forests.

The Trump administration, though, argues that removing the rule would give land managers more tools to reduce wildfire risks.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a press release last month.

The rule currently allows prescribed burning and some tree removal for safety purposes and fire mitigation, according to the Forest Service.

The agency found in its environmental analysis that repealing the roadless rule could open some areas to increased mitigation work like forest thinning, but steep, rugged terrain could limit those possibilities in Utah and the Intermountain West.

Repealing the rule, the Forest Service found, could also lead to more fire starts since human-caused fires are more likely near roads.

“There’s things in that document that really doesn’t support what they’re trying to say publicly,” said Brad Washa, professor of wildland fire science at Utah State University.

“This is a political, social question that some are trying to use science to justify,” he added, “but I don’t necessarily feel that the science is saying that we need more roads in these roadless areas.”

Johnston and his colleagues attribute the spike in wildfires across the West to climate change, land management and over a century of fire suppression. The federal government has a full suppression policy this year.

“The fire problem in the American West is every bit as serious as the problem that we faced in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” Johnston said. “I think that it’s going to require the same sorts of large and strategic investments by the federal government to see us through to the other side.”

Those resources, Johnston added, would be most useful near existing road systems close to where humans live.

Wildfire is a “paradox,” Johnston said. “Most western forests need fire to thrive.”

A blaze helps reduce fuels and rejuvenates forests by adding nutrients to soil, releasing seeds from pine cones and creating space for some plants to grow.

“It’s this big public benefit,” Johnston said, “but it also comes at a cost, which is risk to valued infrastructure and people’s homes.”