Read the comments.

Roadless Rule Comment—FS-2025-0001-223869 My family and I have had a concession on USFS lands since 1917. I grew up literally living on USFS land in the summers, and directly adjacent to National Forest in the Lake Tahoe Basin in the winters. I have skied, backpacked, hiked, biked and driven throughout multiple national forests in our country. Additionally, I own property adjacent to the Los Padres National Forest and frequently recreate there as a OHV trail user with my Jeep. I am writing to urge you to support Alternative 1, no change. I am disturbed and appalled that despite receiving over 600,000 comments advocating for no change to the roadless rule from all different types of public land owners (hunters, anglers, OHV’ers, hikers, and others), the USFS has prepared an EIS recommending rescinding the rule, and states that this is largely to better manage wildfire. Over the last 50 years of living on the National Forest and managing recreational use, I personally have experienced both the 2007 Angora Fire and the 2021 Caldor Fire in Lake Tahoe. I have also personally put out at least 5 human-caused fires that were started on or near a road. I’ve also seen the ineffectiveness of roads and bulldozed lines as large fires in CA such as the 2025 Gifford, 2021 Caldor and 2018 Carr fire jumped lines and roads multiple times. The Draft EIS states that "the number, frequency, and density of wildfire ignitions are lower in designated wilderness and potentially affected Inventories Roadless Areas compared to other NFS lands" and acknowledges that "if there is an increase in public road access, there could be increase the number and frequency of wildfires as human-ignitions are more likely near roads" (Comparison of Alternatives, pp. 20-36). This ignition-density comparison is uncited, and the agency's own admission that road access correlates with human-caused ignition is never reconciled with any fire-risk rationale for expanding road access under Alternatives 2 and 3. A peer-reviewed three-decade national forest fire record found ignition density near roads reaching 7.99 fires/1000 ha versus 1.97 fires/1000 ha in Inventoried Roadless Areas — evidence squarely on point that the agency should engage. Under Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project v. Blackwood, 161 F.3d 1208 (9th Cir. 1998), and Sierra Club v. Marsh, 872 F.2d 497 (1st Cir. 1989), the agency must confront contrary evidence rather than ignore it. I request the agency cite its ignition-density source and add explicit reconciliation analysis before finalizing this document. In addition, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz recently testified to the Senate that 24.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas are within one mile of the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)—calling it "our primary concern." A GIS analysis by The Wilderness Society using the Forest Service's own data found the actual figure is just 2.8 million acres—a nearly ninefold exaggeration. Less than 5% of inventoried roadless area acreage is in close proximity to the WUI, not 42% as Schultz claimed. The administration has 23.3 million acres of non-roadless forest land already available near the WUI for fuel reduction—without ever touching a roadless area. The argument that rescission is needed for more fuels management and is false. The current roadless rules allows for fuels management under certain circumstances, including to reduce fuel loads in the wildland-urban interface and to improve habitat for threatened, endangered, or sensitive species. This already has been done in multiple roadless areas in the Tahoe Basin. The Forest Service’s own research shows that roadless areas have historically received a larger proportion of fuels management projects than other areas of the National Forest System. (Sean P. Healy, Long-term forest health implications of roadlessness, Environmental Research Letters. September 2020. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aba031). As a property owner and business owner near wildfire-prone areas in two parts of California, your decision impacts me personally and professionally if a fire starts off a newly built road because Alternative 2 or 3 was approved. I could lose my home and my business. Please choose Alternative 1. Thank you for considering my comment.