Read the comments.

I oppose the rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule and request that it be abandoned forthwith as a waste of taxpayer dollars, a dangerous flouting of established wildfire and water science, and a top-down, anti-democratic, anti-local forcing through of something that was overwhelmingly opposed at the NOI stage. I also protest the inadequate process surrounding the proposed rescission; if the rescission is not abandoned, the process must be corrected. Regarding process, the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule received extraordinary public input, largely positive, through 2 60-day comment periods and over 600 public meetings drawing over 23,000 participants. This rescission proposal initially allowed only a 21-day comment period on the NOI and a 30-day comment period on the DEIS, inadequate to a broad rule that affects nearly 45 million acres all across the nation. Even with the DEIS comment extension, the total comment period is little half that of the original rule. If the rescission is not abandoned, the comment period should be extended another 45 days and it should include at least one meeting per forest—half of what was provided for the original rule. Communities surrounding the forests should have every opportunity to state their opinions and share the likely impact on their livelihoods and lifestyles. Also, although the USDA correctly determined that Tribal consultation is warranted by the proposal, it has held fewer than half of the requested consultations, per the TSIS has held no consultations since the DEIS has been released, and it misconstrued what consultation means. Sending line officers without decision-making power to record opinions before alternatives have been publicized is not the same as decision-makers meeting with Tribes regarding the actual impacts of proposed alternatives. The TSIS nonetheless shows that the majority of Tribes oppose the rescission, and yet this rescission is being forced through. Furthermore, alternatives proposed by Tribes were not analyzed in detail. If this rescission is not abandoned, government-to-government consultation should be correctly held with the requesting Tribes, a Tribally-proposed alternative should be analyzed in a supplemental DEIS, and an updated Tribal Summary Impact Statement should be issued for comment before the final rule. As for the impacts of the rule itself, as a tax-payer I am infuriated that the enormous backlog of deferred maintenance on current Forest Service roads is being passed over in favor of building new roads in areas that, if they were easy to build roads in, would already have them. I have recently traveled Forest Service roads in Mendocino National Forest, where my companions and I had to navigate a landslide and a washout. While fire trucks might have been able to navigate the landslide, after a delay for digging it out, the washout was barely navigable in a passenger vehicle. In the best case trying to get engines through there would have delayed fire response by forcing the engines to be rerouted; in the worst case it could have caused injuries or even deaths to our firefighters. Rather than attempt to build new roads, the backlog should be better funded and roads should be prioritized for repair according to their impact on public safety. Adding insult to potential injury, timber sales from areas newly opened to logging are unlikely to pay for themselves or the roads; essentially, they are a corporate giveaway. The rescission will not, as claimed, make it easier to manage fire in forests. I have seen fuels management in Caples Creek, one of my favorite inventoried roadless area, that successfully protected the area from the massive, severe Caldor Fire 2 years later, and the DEIS acknowledges that the 2001 Roadless Rule does not "meaningfully constrain hazardous fuel treatment activities". It also acknowledges that IRAs have far fewer ignitions than roaded lands. In other words, rescinding the rule—according to the DEIS—can be expected to increase ignitions without improving fuels management. Firefighters themselves state that in rugged areas air support is preferable to trying to get engines in, and point to delays caused by poorly maintained roads. More roads will not make this better. Adding more roads also decreases water quality at a time when fresh, clean water is of utmost importance and in short supply. Roads increase erosion and sediment, while maintaining forests captures sediment. Turbidity is a major, costly problem for downstream water users, who have to bear the indirect costs of the new roads. The DEIS barely addresses this impact other than to say that it likely exists. There are far more reasons to oppose rescinding a rule that preserves our forests and clean water for the generations to come. The rescission should be abandoned and our taxpayer dollars used for something useful like restoring the many fire fighter support personnel who have left the Forest Service.

Dear U.S. Forest Service, I am writing to express my strong opposition to any efforts to rescind, weaken, or roll back the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. As an avid outdoorsman, I rely heavily on the integrity and protection of our inventoried roadless areas and cherish their wild, serene, and unfragmented nature. I frequently visit the Caples Creek and Grouse Lakes Areas near my home in Sacramento. Protecting these unfragmented landscapes is deeply personal to me because I value the opportunities they provide for backpacking and wild trout fishing. It is important to me that these areas be preserved not just for my use today, but for my son as well, to whom I would like to pass onto the traditions of American outdoorsmanship. I urge the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to abandon the proposed rescission and instead maintain full protections for all currently designated inventoried roadless areas. Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment. Sincerely, Dylan Huntzengel

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 Fifty years of living near the Eldorado National Forest, and a career spent working for the Forest Service itself, put me in a particular position to say this plainly: rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would be a mistake the land cannot recover from. We know what we've got and we love it and will fight tooth and nail to protect it. I have fished creeks on the Eldorado, Tahoe, Stanislaus and Inyo National Forests for trout my whole adult life. I have seen the logging slash left behind after timber operations, clogging streams with debris, slowing their courses, and triggering runoff from denuded slopes. Seldom have logging outfits been required to really clean up the mess they have made, from the quickly cut-in roads to the limbs, stumps and general debris left behind. The agency's own record confirms what I have watched with my own eyes: roads and their skid trails and landings contribute up to 90 percent of the sediment from a timber sale, and that sedimentation can cause egg and juvenile mortality and reduced suitable habitat for trout. I want the agency to explain, on the record, how it reconciles its own sedimentation data with a proposal that invites exactly that activity into watersheds that are presently functioning. The negative impact to our water supply could be devastating, and the great care the agency has historically taken through its NEPA processes to protect streams, creeks, rivers and lakes is precisely what this rescission would dismantle. The Caples Creek and Silver Fork areas are where I do much of my birding, watching for songbirds, woodpeckers, owls and raptors from spring through summer and into fall. The birds there have water, cover and food because the habitat is intact. The DEIS cites the finding that bird richness declines with road presence in forested habitat, and that road-noise experiments in a roadless area cut bird abundance by over a quarter, with 31 percent of species avoiding the noise entirely. Constructing roads and allowing timber harvests or mining operations would destroy critical habitat, and I and many others would no longer be able to enjoy birding on our National Forests if these protections are removed. The agency must explain what analysis it has conducted of cumulative bird habitat loss across the affected roadless areas in California, which total 4,389,760 acres across 381 inventoried areas, and what mitigation it proposes. The DEIS cites the finding that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75 percent. That range is stated and then left hanging, with no projection applied to the 40.1 million acres of potentially affected environment. I ask that the agency apply that cited fragmentation range to the full affected acreage and publish the result before any final decision. I spent years working in fire support, in contract management of fire and aviation resources during suppression and post-fire rehabilitation, and I have been part of advisory input to fire management on land management decisions during and after fires. I have seen the agency open old jeep trails and abandoned logging roads when fire access required it, using the equipment already available for that purpose. There are so many roads already on the maps that are not maintained, building new ones makes no sense. We do not need new roads. Finally, The agency's 428-page draft biological assessment closes: "Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule will increase the likelihood of road construction and timber harvests occurring in locations previously considered inventoried roadless areas. In many cases the Forest Service anticipates this increased activity to adversely affect some ESA-listed species and their designated critical habitats." The DEIS tallies the determinations: "may affect, likely to adversely affect" for 327 ESA-listed species and 71 designated critical habitats. The agency anticipates the harm and proposes no mitigation for it. It must disclose, species by species, how those likely adverse effects will be avoided or mitigated, and ESA consultation must be completed and published before any final rule is issued. The agency's motto is the greatest good for the greatest number. That means these lands are managed for everyone, including those of us who fish for trout in the Eldorado's creeks, watch woodpeckers along Caples Creek, and photograph the wildness of places that are invaluable precisely because they remain undeveloped. The Caples Creek roadless area, all 17,854 acres of it, and the countless other roadless areas like it, are our heritage. We intend to pass them along intact. Sincerely, Kathryn Griffin Sacramento, California Kathryn Griffin See attached file(s)

Subject: Oppose rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule – Docket FS-2025-0001 As registered Republicans and 32 year-long residents of rural El Dorado County, my husband and I oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. We have spent a great deal of high-quality time hiking, birding, and enjoying wildflowers in the Caples Creek Roadless Area, which is about 2 hours from our home. Visiting there and other Inventoried Roadless Areas in the northern Sierra Nevada has been one of our greatest joys over the years. Our local forest, the Eldorado National Forest, is only about 50 miles east of the state capitol of Sacramento. It’s crisscrossed with old forest roads that are in very poor repair, in many instances degrading to a point where high-clearance 4-wheel drive vehicles are required to navigate these massively eroded former logging roads. The Eldorado National Forest has a huge backlog of these roads needing stabilization and treatment to arrest the head-cutting gullies. The Roadless Rule has been an effective bulwark that has protected high-value backcountry recreation in the Caples Creek Roadless Area from a similar fate. It has protected the wildlife habitat, water quality, and carbon storage in a watershed readily accessible to millions of people living in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, and the Lake Tahoe Basin. If the Roadless Rule is repealed and decisions are made only at the local level, protections will become fragmented and uneven. That weakens the overall conservation framework, without any credible evidence that the national rule itself is what limits our ability to address forest health or wildfire risks. The NOI cites changing conditions, wildfire, insects, disease, and WUI growth. Those realities deserve targeted, site-specific tools. They do not require removing the national safeguards that prevent road building and timber extraction in places where intact landscapes are the very asset we are trying to conserve. Existing authorities already allow necessary exceptions and fuels work with environmental review. Before rescinding the rule, the EIS should rigorously analyze: (1) alternatives that retain the Roadless baseline while enabling time-bounded, decommission-on-completion access for hazard reduction near communities; (2) lifecycle costs and maintenance liabilities of any new roads; (3) impacts to municipal watersheds, fisheries, and backcountry economies; and (4) cumulative effects from increased access on invasive weed spread, already a significant problem on the Eldorado National Forest; and (5) wildlife habitat fragmentation. Finally, a 21-day scoping window is not sufficient for meaningful participation on an action of this magnitude. Please extend the comment period to at least 60–90 days, hold regional public meetings, and ensure the draft EIS includes a robust No Action and Modified Roadless alternative. Thank you for considering these comments. Rosemary Carey and Carl Mesick Eldorado County hikers, boaters, birders, botanists, trout lovers, and nature photographers

“I strongly oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I live near / recreate in [specific place — e.g., the West Shore of Lake Tahoe, Castle Peak, Granite Chief, Caples Creek area, or the Eastern Sierra]. These roadless forests protect clean water, provide the quiet backcountry experiences I value, and support the outdoor recreation that sustains our local economy. The Roadless Rule already allows important wildfire resilience work — Nearly 250,000 acres have been treated in California roadless areas since 2001. Removing the national protections would open these last intact forests to new roads and industrial logging at a time when agency capacity for careful planning and public engagement is already stretched. Please keep the Roadless Rule in place.” Urgently! National protections must be kept in place! This administration is destroying our Parks, Reserves and Ancient Forests. These areas are critical for the survival of many species of Life on earth, including Mother Earth Herself.

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The roadless areas I am naming in this comment are real places I care about: Pyramid in the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Dardanelles, Caples Creek, Tragedy-Elephants Back, Salt Springs, Rubicon, and Raymond Peak in the Eldorado National Forest, Freel in the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, and Mokelumne-Hawkins Peak and Waterhouse B in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. California holds 381 inventoried roadless areas totaling 4,389,760 acres. The Humboldt-Toiyabe alone holds 354 inventoried roadless areas totaling 3,383,849 acres, scattered across mountain ranges that rise from the Great Basin desert like islands in a sea of sagebrush, each range a sky island carrying its own water, its own ecology, its own wildlife, including Lahontan cutthroat trout, greater sage-grouse, pygmy rabbit, and mountain goat. Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would put all of this at risk, and the agency's own record does not support that step. The proposal argues that opening roadless areas to road construction will help manage wildfire. The agency's own findings say otherwise. Its record states: "Building a road into a forest at high risk from uncharacteristic wildfire effects could increase the incidence of human-caused fires. A human-caused wildland fire is nearly five times more likely to occur on essentially roaded lands than on essentially unroaded lands." The areas I have named, from the dry Sierra Nevada flanks of the Eldorado to the sky islands of the Humboldt-Toiyabe, already face fire pressure. Adding roads into them to reduce fire risk contradicts the agency's own ignition data, reported in DEIS Table 21, which shows far higher fire density on roaded land than inside roadless areas. I ask that the agency explain why this proposal departs from those prior findings and reconcile the rescission with that data. The economic case is no stronger. The agency's own analysis records that "the total timber volume affected by this rule is less than 0.5 percent of total United States production, and the total oil and gas production from all National Forest System lands is currently about 0.4 percent of the current national production." Against that marginal production, the agency's own Cost Benefit Analysis projects timber revenue to the Forest Service of $5.2 to $11.4 million a year, set against recreation losses of at least $6.1 million a year and a net present value ranging from -$92 million to +$199 million. That range does not establish a net benefit. The Forest Service road system already carries a $6.9 billion maintenance backlog. Across the Pacific Southwest region, which includes California, 1,034 municipal water intakes sit in watersheds containing affected roadless areas, and degraded watershed function is a cost the agency's numbers do not adequately capture. The agency must reconcile this proposal with an economic record that cannot demonstrate the action is worth its price. The argument that state-by-state rulemaking can substitute for a national rule has been tried before. The record itself shows that "the USDA discussed its dissatisfaction with the Roadless Rule and highlighted its rejection of the Roadless Rule's 'inflexible "one-size-fits-all" nationwide rulemaking approach.' 70 Fed.Reg. at 25,656." That state-petition approach was subsequently reviewed by the Ninth Circuit and found wanting, in part because local decision-making can incrementally erode roadless values that are nationally significant. The areas I have named cross administrative boundaries and support connected watersheds. The agency has not explained how this proposal avoids the deficiencies identified the last time it tried to replace national protection with a state-level substitute, and it should do so. Finally, the proposal questions whether the agency had statutory authority to issue the 2001 rule. That question has been litigated. The Tenth Circuit held: "Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Section 1291, we REVERSE the district court's order granting Plaintiffs declaratory relief and issuing a permanent injunction, and REMAND the case for the district court to vacate the permanent injunction." The court found the 2001 rule within the authority Congress granted under the Organic Act and the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act, and held it did not create de facto wilderness. The agency has not explained what legal basis supports a contrary position now. That explanation belongs in this record before any rescission moves forward. Sincerely, Concerned Citizen South Lake Tahoe, CA

I, Alejandro Cota strongly oppose options 2 and 3 proposed in regards to fully or partially rescinding the roadless rule. As a resident of El Dorado County, California, I have a common cultural background with many Americans based on our recreational activities in the wonderful wildernesses of this country, like many, I depend on the resources safeguarded by the roadless rule. In El Dorado County and many other counties countrywide people are dependent on both in-stream reservoirs and groundwater aquifers for reliable clean water for drinking, agriculture, and household and municipal use, and wildlife and the human lifestyles and industries dependant on wildlife. Our upland roadless areas are key hydrological landscapes and road building would have significant destructive and pollutive consequences by breaking the subsurface flow of water through the topsoil, which filters and sinks precipitation into aquifers as well as streams, and also holding up to 27,000gallons/acre/1%organic matter. With roads cutting across places in my own region like Pyramid IRA, North Fork American IRA, Mt Rose IRA, Dardanelles IRA, and Caples Creek IRA, we would see massive channelization of precipitation, especially as we are tending to see the snow line climb and more moisture falling as rain instead of snow than we used to, which would rip apart these steep, gravelly, wildernesses, sending cascades of sediment down through the entire watershed, potentially decimating keystone fish populations and endangered and endemic species treasured across the west. This would also burden our reservoirs, causing reduced holding volume and lifespan if not catastrophic failure to some aging infrastructure. As we’ve just seen in Texas where border wall construction has disrupted the delicate hydrology, leading to both structural undermining and complete burying of the wall by channelized water, when a place with inherently erosion prone soils, intense rainfall patterns, and slopes has roads carved into it, destruction erosion is inevitable. With a deferred maintenance backlog of $6-$12 billion usd, the taxpayers, and the USFS clearly cannot shoulder the burden of new road construction and maintenance in the most remote and erosion prone locations in the country. Additionally, we in El Dorado County and elsewhere cannot afford to increase our risk of wildfire, which according to 32 years of wildfire data, is likely to happen with any new road development in roadless areas, I quote,” Although proponents of rolling back the Roadless Rule claim it is needed for wildfire management, the peer-reviewed science shows the opposite. A 2026 study in Fire Ecology by Aplet, Hartger & Dietz analyzed 32 years of wildfire data across all eight contiguous-U.S. Forest Service regions and found wildfire-ignition density was 7.99 fires per 1,000 hectares within 50 meters of roads, compared to just 1.97 fires per 1,000 hectares in inventoried roadless areas—a fourfold difference. A separate national analysis (Balch et al., PNAS 2017) found that 84% of all U.S. wildfires are human-caused. Roads are the primary vector for human ignitions, so building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires, not fewer.” Endemic and endangered wildlife as well as common and iconic wild game species, all benefit from or even depend on roadless areas for survival and reproduction, and the industries and subcultures who depend on them eat or starve depending on the health of those wildlife populations. Our culture in America, and particularly the west, has been a pioneering one, at first in charging headlong into the wilderness to tame it, and then in conservation of it before it, changing the world with the administrative decision to protect wildernesses for their own sake and for public enjoyment throughout the generations. These roadless places are our most cherished landscapes, even held sacred by many, and even if they weren’t so valuable to they outdoorsman and the artist, we would still have a responsibility to preserve them to protect our water, dams, wildlife, and forests from fire, and not further burden our agencies and taxpayers with backlog and debt. I strongly encourage solution 1, the no-action alternative to be adopted by the US Forest Service in consideration of the roadless rule. Sincerely, A.Cota

The western states have been in a drought for nearly my entire lifetime. National Forests including the Inyo, Sequoia, El Dorado, and Sierra protect valuable headwaters that provide a significant percentage of California's exurban residents' water. For example, I fail to see how constructing roads through Caples Creek in the El Dorado National Forest would positively impact the nearly 100,000 residents who rely on this undeveloped land as a source of drinking water. Even if there is no immediate intention to begin construction in this area, without proper studies detailing the impact on downstream residents that construction may have on this, and other areas like it, removing the protection of the Roadless Rule endangers communities across the United States. In addition, I fail to see how these additional roads will be good for the taxpayer. The Roadless Rule was instituted in part to stop the NFS from draining America's coffers building and maintaining new roads, when it could barely afford the upkeep on the roads it was already responsible for managing. The NFS is currently on the hook for nearly $7 billion in deferred costs for roads they are supposed to be fixing. While I could see an argument being that by adding additional roads for wildfire prevention it saves the American taxpayer in the grand scheme of things by drastically reducing fire damange and relief costs, the fact is the NFS' own research on the impact of roads on wildfires shows that roads cause more fires than they prevent. So why would we build more roads, costing taxpayers millions, while compounding the risk of wildfires? The logic does not make sense. Finally, the roadless areas are beloved by millions of Americans who enjoy hunting, fishing, backpacking, and adventuring. The adventurous, untamed American spirit lies at the heart of the Roadless Rule, and despoiling public lands against public opinion (which is decidedly in favor of the Roadless Rule) is undemocratic in the extreme.

Subject: Comment in Opposition to the Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule I oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I regularly visit public lands across the Sierra Nevada, including the Tahoe Basin and the Tahoe, El Dorado, Stanislaus, Sierra, and Inyo National Forests, and I have seen how much these undeveloped landscapes matter. Rescission would expose more than 44 million acres nationwide to new roads and commercial logging, including 4.4 million acres in California. The rule already allows for safety. Existing provisions permit thinning, hazardous fuels removal, prescribed fire, and temporary emergency access to protect public health and safety. In California, over 240,000 roadless acres have been treated, including work at Caples Creek that helped protect communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire. Rescission isn't needed to manage fire. More roads can mean more fire. A peer-reviewed study published this year found wildfire ignition density within 50 meters of national forest roads was roughly four times higher than in inventoried roadless areas. Expanding roads risks adding ignition sources, not reducing danger. These lands sustain water and local economies. National forests supply an estimated 65% of California's water, and roadless areas protect headwaters, wildlife habitat, and the recreation that rural communities depend on. For a state that frequently oscillates from drought to deluge, protecting our hydrological systems are critical to sustain our communities, agriculture and wildlife. I urge the agency to withdraw this proposal and keep the Roadless Rule in place.

I emphatically oppose the attempt to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule for wilderness areas. I write on behalf of the over 4 million acres of Roadless Rule wilderness protected areas in California. Specifically, I oppose the rescission of the Roadless Rule in two areas: (1) the Ventana Wilderness and Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County, California, and (2) the Inventoried Roadless Areas surrounding and buffering the Desolation Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. First, the Ventana Wilderness and the Los Padres National Forest should remain Roadless Areas. These areas of wilderness contain the headwaters of Santa Lucia Creek and the Carmel River. These watershed areas provide critical habitat to endangered and threatened species, as well as providing local water supplies for human use. In addition, peer-reviewed studies have shown that fire ignitions increase four-fold near roads transitting forested areas, versus ignitions in those wilderness areas which are not crisscrossed by roads. The Roadless Rule should be preserved to ensure that the Ventana Wilderness and the Los Padres National Forest's irreplaceable watershed resources are not damaged, endangered and threatened species' habitat is protected, and wildfire ignition risk is mitigated. The second set of Roadless Rule areas that are particularly important to me are the Roadless Areas that abut the Desolation Wilderness in the El Dorado National Forest and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the U.S.D.A. as follows: the Pyramid Inventoried Roadless Area, the Upper Truckee/ Dardanelles Inventoried Roadless Area, and the Caples Creek Inventoried Roadless Area. The Desolation Wilderness and its surrounding Inventoried Roadless Areas represent an exquisite national treasure. I live in the Lake Tahoe Basin and I hike the Desolation Wilderness and its surrounding Roadless Areas. These three Inventoried Roadless Areas protect pristine alpine streams, lakes, and old growth forests. They preserve contiguous high elevation, back country ecosystems in non-motorized terrain. Watersheds in the Desolation Wilderness and its surrounding Inventoried Roadless Areas drain directly into Lake Tahoe, whose water clarity is world-famous. But Lake Tahoe's water clarity is under threat from the soil erosion, watershed damage, and other ecological insults that would result from the insertion of roads into the Inventoried Roadless Areas surrounding the Desolation Wilderness in the El Dorado National Forest, and within the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. I entreat you not to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule! Instead, maintain the Roadless Rule in effect to protect our irreplaceable wilderness heritage for generations to come. In addition, to more permanently protect our precious national wilderness, I strongly urge the United States legislature to codify the 2001 Roadless Rule into law, by passing the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2025 (H.R. 3930). I want my children and my children's children to experience what John Muir meant when he wrote of the trackless wilderness: "The mountains are calling and I must go".

October 5, 2026 To: Public Comments Processing, Attn: Forest Service Roadless Team Agency: U.S. Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Docket ID: FS-2025-0001 Subject: Formal Comments on the Proposed Rule to Rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule To Whom It May Concern: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I'm writing this comment while 31 weeks pregnant to urge you to keep the Roadless Rule for my child and future generations of Americans. I want my child to have access to the beautiful, biodiverse roadless areas across our country, like Caples Creek Inventoried Roadless Area and Pyramid Inventoried Roadless Area in Northern California. Roadless areas across our beautiful country provide endless opportunity - the opportunity to explore, to recharge, to take a break from digital devices. In addition to the many mental health and wellness benefits, roadless areas provide local economic opportunities for outdoor retailers, restaurants, lodging, and tour companies. One reason why the administration says they want to rescind the roadless rule is because of wildfires. There is ample research showing that wildfires occur more frequently near roads, not in the remote backcountry roadless areas (one example: https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/features/fire-never-starts). There is also the fact that there's a lack of funding. USFS already has a $6.9 billion deferred maintenance backlog for roads and bridges. How does the agency plan to maintain new roads when it already cannot maintain existing roads? The Roadless Rule is immensely popular amongst Americans. A recent poll commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts finds that "support for the Roadless Rule is broad-based, bipartisan and includes strong majorities regardless of party affiliation, age, geographic region of the USA, ethnicity, gender, or educational background. Among Republicans and Trump voters, 77% and 76% support the Roadless Rule, respectively. Among Democrats and Independents, support is 76% and 73%, respectively." (https://www.pew.org/-/media/assets/2026/02/national-poll-on-roadless-rule.pdf) I urge the USDA to retain the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule by selecting Alternative 1, the No Action Alternative, in the final decision. Please protect these public lands for the communities and businesses across our country that rely on them, and the people that find joy and adventure in recreating in them. Please stand on the right side of history and think of future generations of Americans and their right to access these lands. Sincerely, Carol Shu

Docket ID: FS-2026-0100-0001 (RIN 0596-AD66) Subject: Strong Opposition to the Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule Dear Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination, I am an avid hiker, backpacker, backcountry skier, wild ice skater, climber, and lover of forests and wilderness—and I am a California resident who has been deeply impacted by catastrophic wildfire. I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I urge the U.S. Forest Service and the USDA to keep the current Roadless Rule completely intact. My opposition is rooted in direct, personal experience. I used to live in Kirkwood, California, and I was directly impacted by the devastating 2021 Caldor Fire and the resulting emergency evacuations. During that evacuation, I moved to the Mammoth area, and in 2025, I was once again evacuated during the Pack Fire, which destroyed a number or homes in the McGee Creek drainage, right down the street from my current residence. I know firsthand the terror and upheaval that extreme wildfires inflict on rural communities. I’ve lived in the mountains of California since 2014, and I spend a significant portion of my life recreating locally across the Inyo, Tahoe, and Eldorado National Forests, as well as traveling to explore other national forests throughout the United States. Proponents of this rescission claim that dismantling the 2001 Rule is vital for wildfire mitigation, but recent ecological reality proves otherwise. During the Caldor Fire, the protected, unroaded Caples Creek Roadless Area actively shielded the Kirkwood community. This resilience was no accident: it was the direct result of a healthy ecosystem reinforced by strategic, proactive prescribed burns. The Roadless Rule already grants managers the exact flexibility they need, explicitly permitting fuel reduction and forest thinning. In fact, California alone has successfully treated over 240,000 roadless acres without laying a single inch of permanent, destructive industrial road. Introducing new road construction and commercial timber harvests into our last remaining wild spaces will drastically increase—rather than decrease—wildfire risks. Decades of U.S. Forest Service research show that nearly two-thirds of human-caused forest fires ignite along roadsides, where human traffic and highly flammable invasive grasses converge. Rolling back these protections means building the very infrastructure that invites new fire ignitions closer to mountain communities. The 4.4 million acres of roadless forests in California—and the 44 million acres nationwide—are foundational to our clean drinking water supply, our carbon storage capabilities, and our robust outdoor recreation economies. As an avid backcountry recreationalist, I know firsthand that these pristine wild landscapes provide irreplaceable, primitive recreational values and ecological integrity that cannot be restored once fractured by heavy machinery and road construction. For the safety of wildland-urban interface communities like Crowley Lake and Kirkwood, and for the preservation of our national public lands, please withdraw this rescission and maintain the 2001 Roadless Rule. Sincerely, Eva Eilenberg CA

I live near, and frequently fly fish on Caples Creek within the Caples Creek Roadless Area, in Alpine County, California. Caples Creek is a tributary to the American River and is unique in large part because of its relative inaccessibility. In areas the creek departs from soil and carves its way through granite, creating living sculptures of stone and water. Wild trout thrive in Caples Creek. If you are willing to hike, it is possible to fish in stretches which rarely see an angler, and in these waters the trout eagerly take flies. In 2021, the Caples Creek Roadless Area was hit by the devastating Caldor Fire but, because of the fuel management practices implemented here, the impact of the fire was minimal, wild trout populations continue to thrive, and habitat for mule deer, bald eagles and so many other species, remains healthy. Proponents of abolishing the Roadless Rule argue that removing Roadless Rule restrictions is necessary in order to successfully manage wildfires. Such arguments are largely debunked by comprehensive, multi-decade forestry data and the U.S. Forest Services own internal reviews. The Caples Creek Roadless Area's resilience against the Caldor Fire is a real-world example which belies these arguments. It would break my heart to see this truly singular landscape ruined forever due to the removal of existing protections, which are demonstrably effective, practicable and reasonable. The Forest Service should keep the Roadless Rule intact exactly as it is. Do not weaken or repeal this critical policy. National forests are the heart of our public lands. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects some of the wildest forests we have left, forests that protect critical wildlife habitat and drinking water for millions. Revoking the Roadless Rule puts landscapes, wildlife, and communities at risk. Not only is the Roadless Rule good policy, it's also wildly popular across the country, with over 600,000 people submitting comments to the US Forest Service last year in support of keeping the rule in place. And more than 20 years ago, the American people overwhelmingly called for our national forests to be protected for future generations. Revoking the Roadless Rule would destroy the natural inheritance we leave for our children.

I am a resident of South Lake Tahoe, California. I hike year-round in the national forests around the Lake Tahoe Basin, and I regularly camp and hike with my dog on trails and in undeveloped country that stay quiet because they are not laced with new roads. I oppose the proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule by removing and reserving 36 CFR part 294, subpart B. I also oppose the draft EIS preferred alternative that would eliminate national roadless protections on inventoried roadless areas, including those on the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Tahoe National Forest, Eldorado National Forest, and nearby Humboldt-Toiyabe lands. These are the places that make living here worth it. I use local trails and high country near South Lake Tahoe — including walks along the Upper Truckee and routes into the meadows, ridgelines, and backcountry that sit behind and above town. I take my dog camping and hiking in settings that still feel like forest, not a project area. Roadless protections are a big part of why those trips stay quiet, why streams run clearer, and why I can get off a trailhead and be in intact country within a short drive of home. The 2001 rule does not lock these forests up. It already allows hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, existing road maintenance, Tribal uses, firefighting, and wildfire-resilience work, including thinning and fuels treatments. Hundreds of thousands of acres of California inventoried roadless areas have been treated since 2001. Local examples, including work in the Caples Creek area before the Caldor Fire, show that the current rule can accommodate fuels reduction without opening the last intact forests to a new road network and industrial logging. If the problem is implementation or funding for treatments already allowed, that is not solved by deleting the national standard. What the proposed rescission would change is the default. Decisions would fall to individual forest plans and project-by-project review on more than 44 million acres nationwide, including roughly 4.4 million inventoried roadless acres in California and tens of thousands of acres in the Tahoe and Plumas country. Around Tahoe, that includes inventoried roadless ground on Tahoe National Forest (on the order of 147,000 acres in the original inventory, including Castle Peak and Grouse Lakes) and on the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. New roads and commercial harvest in those areas would bring erosion into headwaters that feed Lake Tahoe, more sediment and noise on trails I use with my dog, and a slow conversion of quiet backcountry into managed access corridors. The draft EIS itself identifies potential water-quality, habitat, and quiet-recreation effects where roadbuilding and timber cutting occur. Those are not abstract impacts here. They are the difference between a Saturday hike and a Saturday next to a new road cut. Local forest planning is important. It is not a substitute for a national sideboard on the last large undeveloped national forest blocks. The Forest Service is already stretched. Shifting every roadless decision to plan revision and project NEPA does not create more capacity for careful public involvement; it creates more pressure to punch roads for access, timber, and “management” in places that have stayed roadless for a reason. I support active fuels work where it is needed, including near communities and in the wildland-urban interface around South Lake Tahoe. I do not support repealing the 2001 rule in its entirety in order to get that work done. The rule already allows it. Please retain the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, reject the proposed removal of 36 CFR part 294, subpart B, and select the no-action alternative in the final EIS. Thank you for considering my comments. Andrew Scott-Jester South Lake Tahoe, CA

Comment Opposing Roadless Rule Rescission Robert Henry Davenport, California Sept 28, 2026 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Re: Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation — Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule (91 FR 53827; Docket FS-2025-0001) To Secretary Rollins and the U.S. Forest Service: I am a California resident writing to oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I urge the Department to withdraw the proposal and keep the Rule in place. My family is deeply connected to roadless areas and have hiked, backpacked, fished, hunted in roadless National Forests across the Siera Nevada to the Shasta Trinity and Montana to Alaska. The experiences we have had in these areas embody our core values and our fundamental identities. California has a great deal at stake. The Roadless Rule protects about 4.4 million acres across 20 national forests in California, from Mount Shasta and the Trinity Alps to the Sierra Nevada and Tahoe region, the Los Padres on the Central Coast, and the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains in Southern California. For 25 years these lands have safeguarded clean water, wildlife habitat and some of the best recreation in the country, at lower management cost than roaded land. These forests are California's water supply. National forests provide nearly two-thirds of the state's water, and roadless lands anchor the headwaters of the Smith, Eel, Sacramento, San Joaquin, American and Kern Rivers. The water from California's national forests is valued at roughly $3.2 billion a year and underpins our farms, cities and industries. Opening these headwaters to new roads and commercial logging puts that supply at risk. Rescission would likely increase wildfire risk, not reduce it. The proposal leans on the claim that the Rule stands in the way of wildfire protection, but the Rule already allows thinning, brush clearing, prescribed burning and temporary emergency roads where the Forest Service finds a threat to public safety. More than 240,000 roadless acres in California have already been treated to reduce fire risk; fuels work in the Caples Creek roadless area helped protect communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire. Meanwhile, a 2026 study in Fire Ecology (Aplet, Hartger & Dietz) found ignitions are far more concentrated near roads — roughly four times more likely than in roadless areas. Most fires that threaten California communities are human-caused, and roads bring the cars, equipment and campfires that start them. Building new roads into remote country invites more fires, not fewer. The recent Timber and Plaskett fires in Big Sur demonstrate the link between roads and costly wildfires. The Forest Service cannot afford more roads. The existing national forest road network already carries a large maintenance backlog, and the budget pressures described in the 2001 Rule have only grown. Adding new roads adds long-term liabilities to an agency that cannot maintain what it has, on top of the higher firefighting costs that more ignitions would bring. Roadless areas support rural economies. California's outdoor recreation economy generates more than $81 billion and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. The state's national forests draw about 33 million visits a year, and the lodging and sales tax revenue from those visitors pays for services in rural counties that could not otherwise afford them. Roadless areas protect thousands of miles of trails used for hiking, hunting, fishing and mountain biking, and hundreds of miles of paddling and rafting runs. Opening them to logging, mining or oil and gas leasing would undermine the very places that draw visitors. The public has already spoken. The 2001 Rule was adopted after extensive public involvement, and according to the California Natural Resources Agency, 99 percent of the roughly 600,000 comments submitted on the initial rescission announcement supported keeping it. A rule that has worked well for 25 years should not be undone on a short comment period and over such broad public opposition. I ask the Department to select the no-action alternative and retain the 2001 Roadless Rule in full. If there are specific obstacles to fuel reduction work, they can be addressed with targeted guidance or clarification, not by removing protections from millions of acres of California's forests. Thank you for considering my comments. Sincerely, Robert Henry

I am writing in strong opposition to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Docket FS-2025-0001, RIN 0596-AD66). I live at high elevation in California and spend most of my time in our national forests, hiking, backpacking, and climbing. I am submitting this comment because the stated justification for this rule, reducing wildfire risk, is contradicted by the Forest Service's own research, and I want that contradiction on the record. A peer reviewed study covering three decades of wildfire data across all eight contiguous U.S. Forest Service regions found that wildfire ignition density is lowest in designated wilderness and inventoried roadless areas, and highest within 50 meters of roads, roughly four times higher than in roadless areas. Nationally, close to 89 percent of wildfires are human caused, and ignitions cluster overwhelmingly near roads, since roads are what bring people, vehicles, and ignition sources into the forest in the first place. In California specifically, mapping of human caused fires on national forest land found that nearly two thirds sparked along roadsides. This is not a matter of interpretation. Roadless areas do not drive the wildfire crisis. Roads do. The proposed rule claims that rescinding roadless protections will give forest managers more flexibility to address wildfire risk. But California's own Natural Resources Agency has stated that the roadless rule has not hindered active forest management, pointing to more than 240,000 acres of roadless land in California that have already undergone vegetation treatment under the existing rule, including work in the Caples Creek roadless area that helped protect communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire. The tools to manage fire risk within roadless areas already exist and are already being used. This rule does not add wildfire protection. It adds roads, and roads are what the data shows increases ignition risk. Beyond fire, opening these areas to road construction and logging fragments wildlife habitat and migration corridors, increases sediment and erosion into the watersheds that supply drinking water to millions of Californians, and permanently alters some of the last intact, unroaded forest land left in this state. Forests including the San Bernardino, Angeles, Cleveland, and Los Padres are not abstract acreage. They are the source of the water I drink and the places I go to be outside, and once they are roaded and developed, that character does not come back. I also have not seen a cost benefit analysis in this proposal that accounts for the increased wildfire suppression costs, watershed and water treatment costs, and lost recreation and tourism value that come with rescinding this protection. An analysis that omits those costs is incomplete and does not support the conclusion that this rule is a net benefit. I urge the Department to withdraw this proposed rule and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule fully in place. Please enter my opposition into the official record.

I have been an active user of public lands, including roadless areas, my entire life. I frequently recreate in roadless areas in several states, but primarily in California, Nevada, and Wyoming. Some of my life's best memories are from experiencing nature away from roads, such as hiking with my young daughter in the South Beartooth Highway roadless area south of Gardner Lake in Wyoming in 2015. I regularly hike and camp in roadless areas in California, including the Grouse Lakes area in California (Region 5). Just in the last year and a half, I have gone on four separate overnight backpacking trips in the Grouse Lakes area, visiting Penner Lake and the Five Lakes Basin. I have also camped and hiked twice in the Dardanelles area in the last year. I also frequently hike in the Caples Creek area, including one overnight trip in 2024 to Shealor Lake with my husband and daughter. Roadless areas provide an opportunity for outdoor recreation while protecting nature from excessive trash and dumping issues. I explored the Boundary Peak roadless area in June 2025 with my husband. We hiked and camped overnight by Cottonwood Creek. As we hiked along the former jeep trail upstream along the south fork of Cottonwood Creek towards McCloud camp, we had not yet seen any vehicles, but I suddenly noticed a proliferation of garbage along the trail. Instead of the pristine creek surrounded by nothing but native plants, I saw bottles, cans, and wrappers. I checked the map and realized that we had just left the roadless area. Soon enough we reached the McCloud camp area and met campers fishing for and eating the protected trout, as well as the continued proliferation of garbage. As an amateur naturalist, I observe plants, animals, birds, and insects in all of these areas. As is well-documented, roadless areas are important for habitat preservation and provide an opportunity for people to observe rare and threatened species in their natural habitat. I ask the Forest Service to keep the Roadless Rule in place for continued recreation, for the preservation of habitat, and for the prevention of littering and degradation of resources.

Do not rescind the Roadless Rule. My understanding is that the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (“Roadless Rule”) went into effect 20 years ago because the Federal government had created a mess of logging roads in the forests that were a problem because they were not being maintained and were causing watershed/habitat damage. As a small partial solution, the Roadless Rule policies were instituted to cover a small portion of the forests: the more pristine, but also more inaccessible and less readily timber-able. These areas (Inventoried Roadless Areas) were also identified as having special watershed, habitat and recreational value. One of my favorites of the Inventoried Roadless Areas is the Caples Creek Proposed Wilderness lRA located in the Eldorado Forest in Northern California. It includes the high elevation Jake Schneider Meadow and walking trails through granite boulder rubble in the Caples Creek watershed. The area survived the Caldor Fire (2021) partly because it had been prescribed burned (2019). I helped clear around the gigantic legacy trees in Caples prior to the prescribed burn (2020-05-12 Caples-Volunteer-Presentation-v3-1 for detail of this work), so that they would more likely survive the burn and most did. Some of these trees took 5 people holding hands to encircle their girth! The USDA possible action of rescinding the Roadless Rule is just a publicity stunt, not truly a bureaucracy-reducing measure. Really, the USDA should be doing everything they can to maintain and/or reduce the multitude of now unused roads in the NON-Roadless Rules areas and continue doing the very difficult work of reaching consensus among the many users of the national forests. That is what real governing is about. In any event – Do not rescind the Roadless Rule.

I’m deeply disturbed by your plans to remove protection from Forest Service roadless areas. These are places where we can enjoy fishing, hiking, and the natural quiet of the forest. They should remain as they are. The roadless areas in the Eldorado National Forest and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit are particularly valuable. I hike and camp there regularly and work as a volunteer with the Desolation Wilderness Volunteers. Roadbuilding in the lands surrounding Desolation will reduce the area that can be enjoyed for its scenic values and natural quiet. It would also degrade the wilderness experience as noise from vehicles, logging, and roadbuilding encroaches in the wilderness. The Desolation and Mokelumne wildernesses are very heavily used. The most popular trails there are at their carrying capacity and cannot take any more use. Nearby wildlands help relieve pressure on these areas. Although not designated wilderness, the Meiss Country and other roadless areas south of Lake Tahoe are places where people can enjoy fishing and hiking and get away from engines and roads. These areas should remain roadless. Further west is the Caples Creek roadless area. This area has excellent fishing and, with its lower elevation, is a good place for early-season camping and hiking. This area also shows how roadless areas can contribute to fire protection. The southeast flank of the 2021 Caldor fire—started in a roaded area—was held back in the Caples Creek area. Here, fuel reduction projects done a few years earlier without any roadbuilding protected this area along with Kirkwood and lands along State Route 88. The roadless rule protects lands for all of us. I urge you to adopt Alternative 1—the “No action alternative” and keep the Roadless Rule intact. Sincerely, Adrian Griffin

I strongly oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I live near / recreate in [specific place — e.g., the West Shore of Lake Tahoe, Castle Peak, Granite Chief, Caples Creek area, or the Eastern Sierra]. These roadless forests protect clean water, provide the quiet backcountry experiences I value, and support the outdoor recreation that sustains our local economy. The Roadless Rule already allows important wildfire resilience work — nearly 250,000 acres have been treated in California roadless areas since 2001. Removing the national protections would open these last intact forests to new roads and industrial logging at a time when agency capacity for careful planning and public engagement is already stretched. Please keep the Roadless Rule in place