The Property and Environment Research Center has a report worth a look: “The Roadless Rule and Wildfire Management:
More targeted policy could better balance costs and benefits across different landscapes.”
Highlights:
Road Access and Ignitions: Existing research on human and road access identifies competing effects. While limited access to roadless areas may make initial firefighting efforts more difficult, rescinding the Roadless Rule could lead to more ignitions. A Fire Ecology study by Aplet et al. earlier this year found that ignition density is roughly four times higher within 50 meters of roads than in inventoried roadless areas, particularly for human-caused fires.1
Community Risk: Inventoried roadless areas contain roughly 74,000 acres, or 2 percent of national forest acreage in direct-exposure zones—areas with buildings or populated land directly adjacent to flammable wildland vegetation—and 7.3 million acres, or 16 percent of acreage in broader wildfire-transmission zones, which include vegetated land within approximately 2.4 kilometers of clusters of buildings, where wildfire fuels may cause fires to spread into populated zones.
Emissions Risk: Fires igniting in roadless areas generate less fine inhalable particulate matter (PM₂.₅) in total than fires igniting in managed forests, although associated emissions per acre of roadless land are about one-third higher.
Suppression Costs and Damages: From 2010–2020, fires that ignited in inventoried roadless areas accounted for roughly 25 percent of reported suppression costs across Forest Service lands ($3.9 billion of a total of $15.6 billion). These fires were associated with approximately 1,700 reported lost properties, or about 11 percent of the nearly 16,000 total property losses reported. Suppression costs per acre of roadless land are higher than for managed forests but lower than for wilderness areas. These outcomes are assigned by ignition location, not by assessing all areas where fires eventually burned, suppression resources were used, or damages occurred