by Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile

Rep. Harriet Hageman wants to stop future administrations from reinstating a 25-year-old policy that prevents roadbuilding on 59 million acres of the national forest, including 3.3 million acres of federal land in Wyoming. 

A rescission of the Clinton-era 2001 Roadless Rule is already underway. In June 2025, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her intention to repeal the “roadless” class of land that’s found on nine national forests in Wyoming. 

Subsequently, Rollins solicited public comment on that plan, which, based on the responses, is extraordinarily unpopular. More than 99% of the 200,000-plus people and groups who responded opposed the proposed rescission, according to a Center for Western Priorities analysis. 

A Hageman-led bill, House Resolution 7695, would codify the Trump administration’s undoing of the Roadless Rule in law and also prevent it from reappearing. The legislation states that any future secretary of agriculture “may not take any action to propose, finalize, implement, administer, or enforce any rule substantially similar to the rule.” 

On Thursday, Wyoming’s lone representative touted the bill at a congressional hearing, saying that it undoes an “environmental catastrophe.” 

“The Roadless Rule has been devastating to the Interior West,” Hageman testified to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources’ Federal Lands Subcommittee. “The Roadless Rule has been devastating to Wyoming.” 

As an attorney a quarter century ago, Hageman was a staunch opponent of the Roadless Rule and litigated against it on behalf of Wyoming.

Hageman pointed out to her fellow members of Congress on Thursday that nine of the 10 “most catastrophic” national forest wildfires have occurred since the rule’s 2001 implementation. 

U.S. Forest Service Associate Chief Chris French testified that his agency supports the administration’s proposed rescission, along with Hageman’s legislation and he offered to provide “technical assistance” to help pass the bill.  

“The Forest Service is currently in the process of analyzing the more than 220,000 comments we received,” French told the subcommittee, “and anticipates issuing a final rule and draft environmental impact statement for public comment in the coming months.” 

Several Democrats who sit on the Subcommittee on Federal Lands expressed concern about Hageman’s bill. 

Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Oregon, who in 2025 attempted to codify keeping the Roadless Rule, argued that roadbuilding can lead to more wildfires. 

“The Forest Service’s own assessment found that building roads in these areas would actually increase the risk of fire,” Salinas said, “and another analysis shows that 85% of wildfires are human-caused.” 

A newly created logging road cuts into the Black Hills National Forest’s Bearlodge Ranger District in May 2026. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Earlier, Hageman called the claim that eliminating the Roadless Rule would create more wildfires “absolutely wrong.” 

“The science and the facts and the history demonstrate, without question, that you are absolutely wrong,” Hageman said. 

But French, the Forest Service associate chief, acknowledged that it’s a “longstanding fact” that “most” wildfire ignitions are human-caused and “most are going to be associated with where humans go, including roads.” 

The equation, however, is not that straightforward, French said. Other research has found that wildfire severity is greater in “untreated” roadless areas, he said.

“You have to look at the whole scenario,” French said. “I think that’s why it’s often polarized. There are different facts you can pull out to support an opinion.” 

National hunting and angling groups have strongly opposed the elimination of the Roadless Rule, which has helped ensure that non-wilderness backcountry remains a part of national forests across the country. 

The idea of eliminating the rule also hasn’t gone over well with Wyoming conservation groups. 

Gabby Yates, public lands program manager at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, pointed out the unpopularity of Hageman’s plan.  

“By sidestepping the already scant public process that the administration is using to rescind the rule, H.R. 7695 adds insult to injury and ignores hundreds of thousands of Americans who are currently opposing the rescission,” Yates wrote in a statement. 

The rescission, however, has been favored by many Western state Republican political leaders hoping to stimulate withering timber mills and a logging industry that’s been in the doldrums for decades. Many governors and congressional members have gone on record supporting the elimination of the Roadless Rule, including Gov. Mark Gordon and Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis.   

Hageman, who in 2022 soundly defeated Liz Cheney with an endorsement from President Donald Trump, is running for a U.S. Senate seat that’s opening up due to Lummis’ retirement. 

In the Republican primary, she’ll face Sam Mead, a rancher and whiskey distiller who’s the nephew of former Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead and great-grandson of late Wyoming U.S. Sen. and Gov. Cliff Hansen. 

Mead, 36, is a political newcomer running on a pro-public lands platform. He did not respond to WyoFile’s inquiry on Thursday before this story was published.

This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Related

Attend any neighborhood meeting in Bayview-Hunters Point, whether it’s put on by tenants groups, the neighborhood’s air protection program or the Hunters Point Shipyard’s citizens advisory committee, and you are bound to come face to face with Arieann Harrison. 

Harrison, the CEO of the Marie Harrison Foundation, an environmental justice nonprofit named after her mother, is a formidable opponent to anyone with a key interest in projects that could pose a health risk to her neighbors. 

That’s because Harrison has skin in the game. 

Harrison lost her mother in 2019 after a long battle with lung disease. She had never been a smoker. Although it has not been proven, Arieann Harrison blames the Hunters Point Shipyard, a toxic Superfund site where her mother worked in her youth. 

Later, as an adult, Marie Harrison tirelessly advocated throughout the 1990s for a transparent cleanup of the site, and fought on behalf of environmental concerns throughout the neighborhood.

Her efforts eventually helped lead to the closure of the Hunters Point Power Plant, which prior to 2006 spewed pollution over the neighborhood. 

“I guess you could say it’s in my DNA,” said Harrison, when asked why she decided to turn to activism herself. 

But it wasn’t an automatic calling. “I’ll be the first person to tell you,” Harrison said, sitting in Bayview’s Southeast Community Center, “I didn’t want to be nothing like my mother and father.” 

As a teenager, Harrison had a taste for rebellion. At night, she would climb out of her bedroom window and change her clothes in the dark to follow the Bayview-Hunters Point-born, all-Black heavy metal band Stone Vengeance to their next gig.

“I was an angry kid,” said Harrison, who now laughs about it. “When you’re young and carefree, you don’t give a shit about anything.” 

Harrison’s first love was for music. While following the band, she played her own music, writing lyrics and playing the keyboard in now-closed holes-in-the-wall across San Francisco and Oakland. 

“It was a wild time,” Harrison said, recalling one memory in which she dared a member of Stone Vengeance to dive headfirst — in his leather pants — into a lake in Golden Gate Park.

“It got scary fast. It was so dark, we could just hear splashing,” said Harrison. “But it was so fun, we went back the next weekend.” 

But when Harrison went to her first social-justice meeting at City College, it fit like a glove.

“I grew up in those rooms,” said Harrison, whose father was also an activist and a member of the Black Panther Party. “And I grew up with the notion that you had to do something.” 

Harrison worked as a case manager in Bayview for decades, never moving from the Hunters Point waterfront, and often taking care of her younger sisters and brothers while her mother worked to gather evidence that the U.S. Navy had botched its cleanup of the shipyard. 

When her mother died in 2019, Harrison was left with a very large shadow. Neighbors who knew her mother will often stop her in the street, including during Mission Local’s interview, exclaiming how they knew her mother.

“Hey, I know you!” called out one Bayview resident. “I knew her when she was just a little girl,” he said. “I knew her mother very well.” 

But her fear, she said, is that one day her mother will be forgotten.

“I don’t want us to just be memorialized in pictures and street names,” she said, sitting in the community center’s cafe, in which murals of community activists are plastered over the walls. “I want our children to see the fruits of all that she’s done.” 

The year after her mother died, Harrison hosted an Earth Day event. “Kids came from everywhere,” said Harrison. “There were so many kids, they covered it from the air to the ground.” 

Harrison started the Marie Harrison Foundation in 2023, working with children in Bayview and across San Francisco to teach science and environmental justice.

“I wanted to see it through,” said Harrison. “I wanted to make sure that what she started did not end without a greater outcome.” 

The foundation has also worked to pressure industries to reduce truck traffic and air pollution in the neighborhood and has worked to hold the U.S. Navy accountable at the shipyard. She’s also started a scholarship in her mother’s name. 

When she watched her kids march into City Hall and towards the mayor’s office on Earth Day in 2019, Harrison stood back, in awe.

“I almost broke inside,” said Harrison. “Someting in me broke. I just thought, this is why. It’s like my mom’s spirit was with me, and I haven’t stopped since. And I won’t stop until we get the desired outcomes that we need.” 

DENVER — The pattern of warmer temperatures across Colorado continues, with a chance of a few isolated afternoon and early evening showers and thunderstorms.

Sunday’s afternoon high will reach the low to mid 80s across the Denver metro area and eastern plains as an upper ridge remains over the state.

However, there is a chance that enough moisture could bring isolated showers to scattered areas on Sunday.

These storms will produce light rainfall and possible gusty outflow winds up to 30 mph.
Memorial Day will stay warm with highs again in the 80s.

There will be an increase in moisture on Monday, especially east of the mountains.
The best chance is Monday afternoon and evening hours.

Good news, if you’re heading to Bolder Boulder on Monday morning, we’re expecting a dry start to our day with temperatures in the 40s.

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No widespread severe weather is expected, and many areas will remain dry for much of both days.

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