Apr 30, 2026
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Joni Mitchell said she was inspired to write that lyric, from her 1970 hit Big Yellow Taxi, after looking down at a parking lot from her hotel window during a trip to Hawaii (1).
Fast forward to 2026, and 58.5 million acres of U.S. forest and grasslands currently protected under 2001’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule could be seen as the “paradise,” with industrial logging as the “parking lot (2).”
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President Donald Trump, as part of his Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation (3), is looking to repeal the 25-year-old Roadless Rule, removing roadblocks to timber harvest (4) in protected woodland.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in an announcement this past summer that the repeal is “common sense management of our natural resources,” which will allow “future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.” (4)
Could saving forests save money?
In a statement (4) announcing plans to rescind the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service said that, in addition to lifting “burdensome barriers that hamper American business and innovation,” the move would give the agency “more flexibility to reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure.”
However, four former chiefs of the Forest Service have voiced their support for the Roadless Rule.
In a statement released through The Wilderness Society (5), Dale Bosworth, who led the agency from 2001-2007, said the rule offers “unparalleled opportunities for families seeking backcountry experiences” while giving officials the ability to reduce wildfire danger and fight fires when needed.
Tom Tidwell, chief from 2009 to 2017, said resource management initiatives work because “they are based on science, have strong public support and make economic sense,” adding that the Roadless Rule “has prevented waste of natural resources and taxpayers’ dollars.” (5)
Between 2019 and 2023, the Forest Service spent an average of more than $2.4 billion a year fighting fires (6).
Building new roads to allow remote areas to be “properly managed for fire risk,” as the Forest Service explains, could lead to more fires and higher costs for taxpayers (4).
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Authors of a 30-year study (7) released in January said: “building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires.” The research found wildfire ignition density was lowest in designated wilderness areas, followed by Inventoried Roadless Areas. The highest wildfire ignition rates occurred within 50 meters of a road.
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Could cutting forests cut home prices?
In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order (8) calling for the “immediate” expansion of timber production in the U.S. The order said the country’s resources are “more than adequate to meet our domestic timber needs,” but that “heavy-handed federal policies have prevented full utilization of these resources and made us reliant on foreign producers.”
American homebuilders rely on imported softwood lumber, with about a quarter of the U.S. supply coming from Canada (9), according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
When tariffs on Canadian softwood imports hit 35% in October 2025 (10), builders were effectively on the hook to pay 35% more for a quarter of the softwood lumber they used.
Softwood plays a major role in home construction. Citing Home Innovation Research Labs data, the NAHB says the average new home uses more than 2,200 square feet of softwood plywood and roughly 15,000 board feet of framing lumber (11), along with materials for cabinets, windows, doors and trusses.
The NAHB says increasing domestic lumber production by raising timber sales from public lands and opening more federal forest lands for logging (11) is key to reducing costs. Those costs, the group notes, directly impact new home prices and contribute to declining affordability.
However, the NAHB also says ramping up domestic production to meet demand could take years (9). In the interim, imported softwood lumber is vital to building, remodeling and repairing homes. In the short term, meaningful relief on home prices may depend on changes to tariffs affecting foreign suppliers.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
Joni Mitchell (1); GovInfo (2); Federal Register (3); USDA (4); The Wilderness Society (5); National Interagency Fire Center (6); Springer (7); The White House (8); NAHB (9); Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP (10); NAHB (11)
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Tara Losinski is an associate editor for Moneywise.
