Read the comments.

I love hiking in the Prescott National Forest near my home. Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule would compromise my wilderness experience, and threaten the survival of wildlife.

I am an Arizonan and I recreate on public land almost daily. Public lands are central to the lifestyle and traditions that citizens like myself deeply value as Americans. I recreate on the Coconino NF, Kaibab NF, Tonto NF, Coronado NF, Prescott NF and the Apache Sitgreaves NF. I am an angler, hunter, backpacker, archer, recreationist, and roadless areas are central to my way of life. It is imperative that backcountry areas are conserved for my children's generation and for generations to come. As a scientist, I believe that the rationale behind rescinding the roadless rule is built on faulty logic and poor presumptions instead of evidence. The rescission of the Roadless Rule is dangerous and not backed by solid science. The benefits of the Roadless Rule as they are written protect wildlife, watersheds, ensure proper wildfire management, protect clean water while providing the flexibility land managers need. The Roadless Rule does not limit active forest management. Land managers are able to treat high fuels areas while preventing the construction of permanent roads. The data clearly show that wildfire risk increases in areas with roads. I support scientifically informed forest management from local experts who understand the impacts of recreation and forest health. Eliminating the Roadless Rule is dangerous and puts our forests, citizens, wildlife and firefighters at greater risk. In Arizona, wildfire ignitions are nearly seven times more likely near roads according to a report from The Wilderness Society. Introducing new road systems will increase fire frequency and put our fire fighters in harms way. The impact of rescinding the Roadless Rule will affect 45 million acres of land while federal land management agencies remain underfunded and understaffed. This proposal is being made while the Forest Service is experiencing a major reorganization including the elimination of regional offices, relocation of staff and a reduction in force. How does removing long-standing protections amid a major agency restructuring benefit the American people and the lands we all share? It does not. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Roadless Rule.

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The quiet, secluded areas of northern Arizona are where I take my kids. That is what I am fighting to protect. Arizona holds 78 inventoried roadless areas totaling 1,174,256 acres, and I hike and camp across this part of the state specifically because those unroaded places still exist. Two of the lakes where I paddle near Prescott are managed by the Prescott National Forest, and those waters and the land around them carry the character they carry precisely because roads have not been pushed into every corner. There is already enough infrastructure in Arizona. What I want for my children are places where they can escape the busy world and encounter nature that has not been carved up. Being outside is proven to be good for mental health, and this rescission would only reduce the opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. That is not a speculative harm. It is the direct and predictable result of the action being proposed. The agency's own record makes the wildfire case against rescission, not for it. The 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." I have watched what happens in and around the Prescott National Forest when access expands. People use roads to camp illegally, fire danger increases as vehicles travel further in, and untouched land disappears. The agency must explain, in specific terms, why this proposal departs from its own prior findings on fire occurrence, and it must reconcile the rescission with the ignition data in its own DEIS, which reports far higher fire density on roaded land than inside the affected roadless areas. The economic rationale is no stronger. The agency's own record states: "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, the agency's own Cost Benefit Analysis projects $5.2 to $11.4 million a year in timber revenue to the Forest Service against recreation losses of at least $6.1 million a year, a net present value ranging from -$92 million to +$199 million, and a road maintenance backlog of $6.9 billion already sitting on the books. The agency must reconcile the proposal with that analysis and explain on the record how expanding a road system already burdened by that deficit serves the public interest when its own numbers cannot establish a net benefit. The proposal also overstates the regulatory problem the rescission is meant to solve. The rule as written states that it "generally banned road building subject to limited exceptions including: the preservation of 'reserved or outstanding rights' or discretionary Forest Service construction necessary for public health and safety. 36 C.F.R. Section 294.12(b)(1),(3)." The agency has not identified which specific permitting or administrative burdens fall outside those existing exceptions, including those covering public health and safety, existing mineral leases, and community wildfire protection. I ask that it do so, with specifics, rather than rescinding a rule built over more than 600 public meetings and 1.6 million comments on the basis of burdens it has not quantified. The small-business certification accompanying this proposal is similarly unsupported. The agency certifies no significant impact on small entities while its own DEIS names outfitters, guides, and tour operators as affected and its own Cost Benefit Analysis books lost recreation benefit at a minimum of $6.1 million a year. That conclusion is reached by spreading an expenditure loss across every small firm in the sector nationally rather than examining the outfitters and guides actually holding permits in the affected areas. Across the Southwestern region alone, 739 municipal water intakes sit in watersheds containing affected roadless areas, and the communities and businesses that depend on those watersheds are not a national average. The agency should withdraw the certification and assess the impact on the small entities actually operating in these places. My children deserve to inherit at least as much unroaded country as I found. The agency has offered no record-based reason why they should not. Sincerely, Sara Sexson Prescott, Arizona

As a daily hiker of the Prescott National Forest, I am strongly against proposed docket fs-2026-0100, ie. Forest Service Travel Management Regulations. The regulation as stated is ridiculous, as it details all anticipated uses (some warranted), and then leaves the door open to “any” use by stating “ and other motorized recreation”. Why bother with all the detailed uses when this clearly proposes any motorized use for any reason. Another consideration is the increase in potential fire risk by opening road use deep in forested areas. My neighborhood abuts a Prescott National Forest, and this plan increases the chances of fire destroying not only the forest, but my neighborhood as well.

The Roadless Rule protects nearly 1.2 million acres in Arizona, including roughly 140,000 acres on the Prescott National Forest and about 50,000 acres on the Coconino National Forest. These are the backcountry lands that surround residential areas in the Verde Valley. They are full of valuable ecosystems and biomes, wildlife (endangered and otherwise), and provide wilderness that invaluable to our spiritual and mental health, as well as the overall health of the earth. I firmly oppose repealing the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation. And you should also! It's our moral and ethical responsibility, as humans, to protect these areas for future generations. Thank you.

Hello, As a wildlife biologist frequently tasked with evaluating short- and long-term impacts of development, I strongly oppose rescission of the roadless rule. Among many other benefits, roadless rule minimizes forest fire risk in these beloved areas. According to a 2026 study, the vast majority of human-caused fires (per 1,000 ha) occurred within 0-250 meters from a road. Under the proposed alternatives 2 and 3 (full rescission and modified rescission) ALL lands protected in my home forest, Coconino National Forest (and neighboring Prescott NF), would lose protection. The Coconino National Forest presently allows logging on millions of acres and opening roadless areas on the Coconino NF is unnecessary and irresponsible. I strongly urge USDA to reevaluate impacts of rescinding the roadless rule, as it is clear that the agency has not correctly estimated impacts. Alternative 1- No Action- is the only responsible option.

I am submitting this comment as a livestock grazing permittee on the Sycamore allotment, Prescott National Forest, in the Verde River watershed. I depend directly on National Forest System roads to manage my permit — moving and gathering cattle, maintaining stock tanks and other water developments, checking and repairing fence, and meeting the terms of my grazing permit. I ask that as this rule making moves forward, and as any resulting forest-plan or project-level decisions are made, the agency keep two things squarely in view. 1. Protect ranching access and infrastructure explicitly. Returning roadless-area decisions to individual forest plans and project-level review, as this proposal does, should not put existing ranching access at risk. The roads and routes permittees currently rely on to administer their allotments — including in inventoried roadless areas — are working infrastructure, not incidental use. I ask that the Forest Service commit, in guidance implementing any rescission, that (a) existing routes needed to administer active grazing permits remain open and maintainable without new procedural barriers, (b) permittees are treated as cooperating stakeholders — not just members of the general public — in any forest-plan-level roads analysis that follows this rule change, and (c) maintenance or reconstruction of a road needed to reach a stock tank, water development, or allotment boundary is not treated the same as new road construction for other purposes. 2. Don't open more roads than the agency can maintain. The proposed rule itself acknowledges a $6.9 billion deferred maintenance backlog for Forest Service roads and bridges. That backlog is not an abstraction where I ranch — roads I already depend on are washed out, rutted, or impassable because there has never been funding to maintain them properly. Rescinding the roadless rule without a funded maintenance plan risks making this worse, not better: every mile of new road opened for recreational access (OHV routes, dispersed camping spurs, etc.) is a mile added to a system the agency has already shown it cannot keep up. Recreational traffic accelerates wear on shared routes — the same roads ranchers use to move cattle and equipment — and when there's no maintenance budget behind that added use, degradation compounds and eventually falls back on permittees to work around washed-out or unmaintained roads just to do routine allotment work. I am not opposed to local, project-level decision-making replacing a blanket national rule — in principle, that flexibility could serve ranching interests better than a one-size-fits-all prohibition. But flexibility without funding is not flexibility, it's deferred cost shifted onto the roads people already use. I ask that any decision to open new roads in former roadless areas — particularly for recreation — be paired with a real maintenance funding commitment, and that expanding the road network not be prioritized ahead of maintaining the routes that grazing operations, and other working uses of the forest, already depend on.

I oppose the proposal to fully or partially rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I currently live on the doorstep of Appalachia but grew up in the equally beautiful American Southwest. As someone who loves the desert, its varied and vibrant ecosystems and wildlife, I am concerned about opening up these pristine wildernesses to mining. The Kaibab National Forest in AZ is home to the Apache trout, and the Gila National Forest in NM is home to the threatened Gila trout. Both national forests and their waterways would be heavily impacted by rescinding the Roadless Rule. I spent summers as a kid fishing and camping in the Prescott National Forest, Tonto National Forest, and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Many formative and wonderful memories were made under those ponderosa pines, crossing paths with elk, catching trout, and identifying the coolest-looking mushroom. In Appalachia, a region that has been the victim of an extraction economy for generations, the last thing we need is for roads to cut through our precious few remaining remote pockets of wilderness for logging and mining interests to take hold. Aside from increasing vehicle collisions with wildlife, encroaching roads in these landscapes would have a lasting negative effect on wildlife. And where roads go in, logging and mining follow. It is a repeatable cycle that we have watched play out for decades as our last wild spaces are slowly eaten away for corporate profit. Habitat loss due to deforestation, logging, and mining has led to the extinction of species in America that were robbed from all following generations. I will do my part to protect public lands to keep even just one species from the wretched fate of the Ivory-billed woodpecker and many others. As a reminder, public land belongs to the American People, who overwhelmingly support protecting the Roadless Rule fully and keeping public lands in public hands. The privatization of these lands is anathema to the American ethos and what is largely considered the greatest American invention, the establishment of National Parks and National Forests across the country. Saved, preserved, and restored for the American people forever. For the reasons listed above and a multitude more, fully or partially rescinding the Roadless Rule under Alternatives 2 and 3 of the draft EIS would be a grave mistake that would have a permanent and lasting effect on the beautiful biodiversity of MY public lands.

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The quiet of Arizona's roadless areas, the clean water they protect, the wildlife moving through them without the intrusion of machinery: these are not abstractions. They are what I go to the Prescott National Forest to find, and they exist because the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule has held. I oppose the proposed rescission of that rule, and I ask the agency to answer each of the following points on its own record. The agency's justification rests in part on the claim that rescission serves wildfire management, but its own prior findings cut directly against that logic. The DEIS 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 Prescott National Forest and the roadless areas I hike within it are places where that ignition differential matters. I want to know how the agency justifies departing from this finding, and I ask that it reconcile the proposed rescission with the ignition data in its own DEIS Table 21, which reports far higher fire density on roaded land than inside the affected roadless areas, explaining specifically why opening these areas to roads would reduce rather than increase fire risk. The agency also claims administrative and permitting burdens justify elimination of the rule, but the rule as written already accommodates the uses the agency now treats as blocked. The agency's own text acknowledges it "generally banned road building subject to limited exceptions including: the preservation of 'reserved or outstanding rights' or discretionary Forest Service construction necessary for public health and safety. 36 C.F.R. Section 294.12(b)(1),(3)." Those exceptions are not narrow loopholes. They address public health, safety, existing mineral rights, and community wildfire protection. The agency has not explained which specific burdens fall outside these categories, and I ask that it identify them by name, quantify them, and demonstrate that they cannot be addressed without discarding the rule entirely. The regulatory flexibility certification that accompanies this proposal is difficult to square with the agency's own economic analysis. The proposed rule certifies no significant impact on small entities while the DEIS names outfitters, guides and tour operators as affected and its own Cost Benefit Analysis books lost recreation benefit at a minimum of $6.1 million a year. The certification reaches its no-impact conclusion by diffusing losses across the national population of firms in the sector, rather than assessing the outfitters and guides who actually hold permits in the affected areas and who would bear the concentrated loss. I use these areas in part because skilled guides and outfitters operate there, and their viability is tied to the continued protection the rule provides. The agency must withdraw this certification, assess the impact on the small entities actually working in the potentially affected roadless areas rather than the national average firm, and publish that revised analysis for public comment. Finally, the agency has invited reliance interests and then declined to weigh them. The proposal solicits "any reliance interests in the current rule that could be affected by this proposal" (91 FR 53830-31), and the Cost Benefit Analysis weighs none. My own investment in these landscapes, in planning my time in Arizona's roadless areas with the expectation that the rule's protections would hold, is exactly the kind of interest the invitation contemplates. Arizonans who depend on these areas for clean water and clean air have organized their expectations around a rule that has been in place for more than two decades. An agency reversing a long-standing policy must account for what that policy's continuation led people to rely upon. The agency should identify and weigh the reliance interests described in the comments it receives, including this one, before it proceeds any further with this proposal. Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your City, State]

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The roadless areas I am commenting on span Arizona, Utah, and Florida, and the agency's proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would affect every one of them. I want the record to reflect what is at stake in each place and why the supporting analysis does not hold up. The Ocala National Forest in Florida sits directly on top of the Floridan Aquifer. Alexander Springs, a first-magnitude spring in the heart of the forest, pumps 80 million gallons of crystal-clear water per day through karst limestone that makes any road construction a direct contamination pathway to the drinking water supply of central Florida. The roadless areas of the Ocala total 4,855 acres, and the species that depend on them include the Florida scrub-jay, found nowhere else on the planet, the Florida black bear, the red-cockaded woodpecker, the gopher tortoise, and the eastern indigo snake. Red-cockaded woodpeckers recovered here from 7 breeding pairs to 98 family groups because the longleaf pine stands they need have never been fragmented by roads. Rescission puts all of that at risk for a state whose karst hydrology has no tolerance for the sediment and contamination that road-building brings. The agency should explain, specifically and on the record, how it evaluated the aquifer recharge function of the Ocala roadless acres and what mitigation, if any, it believes adequate for karst terrain. Arizona holds 78 inventoried roadless areas totaling 1,174,256 acres, including the Coconino Rim in the Kaibab National Forest and Black Canyon in the Prescott National Forest. Across the Southwestern region, which includes Arizona, 739 municipal water intakes sit in watersheds containing affected roadless areas. The proposal justifies rescission partly on wildfire and fuels management grounds, but the agency's own 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 agency must reconcile the rescission with the ignition data in its own DEIS, which reports far higher fire density on roaded land than inside the affected roadless areas, and explain why it is departing from its own prior findings. The economic case for rescission does not survive contact with the agency's own numbers. The record states: "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." The agency's own Cost Benefit Analysis projects $5.2 to $11.4 million a year in timber revenue to the Forest Service against recreation losses of at least $6.1 million a year, and a net present value spanning -$92 million to +$199 million. That range does not establish a net benefit. The proposal also expands a road system already carrying a $6.9 billion maintenance backlog. The agency should explain, with specificity, how an action whose own analysis cannot confirm a positive net value justifies that expansion. The proposal certifies no significant impact on small entities while simultaneously naming outfitters, guides, and tour operators as affected businesses in the DEIS and booking lost recreation benefit at a minimum of $6.1 million a year in the Cost Benefit Analysis. The supporting regulatory flexibility analysis reaches its no-impact conclusion by spreading the $9 million annual expenditure loss across every small firm in the sector nationally rather than assessing the guides and outfitters actually holding permits in the affected areas, and it concedes some of those firms may lose those receipts. That is not a serious analysis of small-business impact. The agency should withdraw the certification and assess the impact on the specific small entities operating in or adjacent to the affected roadless areas, Fishhook in the Dixie National Forest among them, rather than averaging the harm away across the national sector. Finally, the proposal solicits "any reliance interests in the current rule that could be affected by this proposal" (91 FR 53830-31), and the Cost Benefit Analysis weighs none. This comment is such an interest. The rule has been in place long enough that planning, investment, and permitting decisions have been made in reliance on it. The agency invited these interests into the record and then provided no mechanism for weighing them. I ask that it actually identify and assess the reliance interests described in the comments it receives, including this one, before any final action is taken. Sincerely, Katherine Piehl Phoenix, AZ

To: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) / U.S. Forest Service Subject: Public Comment in Strong Support of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule Dear USDA and U.S. Forest Service Officials, I am writing as a wildland firefighter serving on the frontlines in the Prescott National Forest to express my strong support for retaining the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in its entirety. Having spent years on wildland fire crews managing, containing, and putting out fires across rugged Western terrain, I know firsthand what works on the ground—and I can tell you that repealing the Roadless Rule will make fire prevention and suppression harder, more dangerous, and more costly. Claims that repealing the Roadless Rule will reduce wildfire risk or improve fire management ignore operational realities on the fireline: * Roads Are Ignitors, Not Safety Solutions: In the field, we see where human-caused ignitions actually happen: overwhelmingly along roads. Hot exhaust pipes, dragging trailer chains, abandoned campfires, abandoned vehicles, and reckless human activity along forest corridors account for the vast majority of wildfires in Arizona. Roads bring human ignition sources deeper into the backcountry. Unroaded areas naturally isolate fuels from the single biggest ignition vector we face—human behavior. * The Roadless Rule Already Allows Operational Flexibility: Reclaiming or repealing the rule is unnecessary for fuels management or fire suppression. Under current regulations, fire managers on the Prescott National Forest already have the flexibility to conduct hazardous fuels treatments, hand thinning, and prescribed burning within or adjacent to roadless areas. When an active incident occurs, firefighters can and do establish emergency access, construct helispots, and use tactical exceptions based on local fire behavior and safety needs. Repealing the rule changes nothing about our ability to fight fire, but it will significantly increase the number of human starts we have to catch. * The Terrain Is Unfeasible for Commercial Logging: The remaining Inventoried Roadless Areas across central Arizona, including the steep and rugged terrain across the Bradshaw, Verde, and Chino Valley Ranger Districts, remain unroaded precisely because the topography is extreme. Putting roads into these steep, highly erodible slopes for timber extraction is economically impractical and creates massive erosion and post-fire flash flood risks for communities down-drainage. * Firefighter Safety and Compounded Hazards: Pushing roads into steep, remote backcountry creates severe safety hazards for suppression crews. Tactical operations depend on solid anchor points and predictable fire behavior. Narrow, unmaintained backcountry roads in rough terrain quickly turn into dangerous traps with limited turnarounds and compromised safety zones. Furthermore, in places like Prescott, heavy multi-use traffic (OHVs, speeding vehicles, and recreationists) on unmonitored roads complicates evacuation logistics and tactical access when seconds count. * Fiscal Responsibility and Infrastructure Realities: The Forest Service already struggles to maintain hundreds of thousands of miles of existing roads, facing a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog. From an operational standpoint, building new roads into inaccessible roadless areas diverts limited federal dollars away from critical fuels reduction projects near the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), where thinning directly protects homes and lives. As wildland firefighters, our lives depend on sound forest management policies rooted in field experience rather than political convenience. Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule will not prevent a single wildfire or save a single home—it will multiply ignition sources, waste taxpayer dollars, and place wildland crews at greater risk. I strongly urge the USDA and the U.S. Forest Service to reject any proposals to repeal or weaken the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Thank you for your time, service, and commitment to public land stewardship. Sincerely, Wildland Firefighter Prescott National Forest, Arizona

Comment on the Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation I wish to register my strong Opposition to the Proposal to Rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Dismantling national protections across roughly 45 million acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) threatens intact wildlife habitat, clean drinking water sources, and local outdoor recreation economies—all while ignoring the agency’s own historical mandate to preserve these unroaded lands. 1. Inconsistency with Agency Purpose and Historical Record When establishing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the Forest Service explicitly justified its national action by identifying that unroaded lands contain "some of the last, best unprotected wildlands anywhere in our Nation." The agency recognized then that piecemeal, forest-by-forest planning had historically failed to prevent the fragmentation of intact ecosystems. Eliminating national prohibitions and returning management entirely to individual forest plans removes the vital baseline protection required to keep these unroaded characteristics intact across public lands. 2. Wildfire Risk and Human Ignition Realities The draft environmental impact statement relies heavily on the premise that road construction is necessary to manage wildfire risk. However, peer-reviewed fire ecology research demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of human-caused wildfires originate near road corridors. Expanding road networks into remote, unroaded interior areas increases ignition points rather than decreasing total risk. Furthermore, the existing 2001 Roadless Rule already contains explicit exceptions allowing land managers to conduct hazardous fuel reduction, forest health treatments, and emergency firefighting operations. Complete rescission is an unnecessary measure that opens pristine areas to industrial exploitation under the guise of fire mitigation. As one example, the Prescott National Forest is currently using mastication machines to efficiently and effectively reduce fuel loads in the Black Canyon Inventoried Roadless Area -- without requiring any roads in the IRA. Our forests can be effectively managed without rescinding the roadless rule. 3. Fiscal Responsibility and Road Maintenance Backlogs The U.S. Forest Service already faces a massive backlog in deferred maintenance on the existing network of more than 370,000 miles of national forest roads. Permitting new road construction and reconstruction in remote, topographically challenging areas creates long-term financial liabilities for taxpayers while degrading the natural infrastructure that provides clean municipal drinking water to millions of Americans. 4. Conservation and Economic Values Inventoried roadless areas provide core sanctuary for native fish, big game, and threatened species, forming the backbone of the nation's outdoor recreation economy. Fragmentation through logging road networks degrades irreplaceable old-growth ecosystems, harms watershed integrity, and destroys primitive backcountry recreation experiences that cannot be replicated once lost. Conclusion The Forest Service should uphold its long-standing duty to conserve wildlands and protect watersheds for present and future generations. Rather than rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the agency must maintain these bedrock protections. I urge the Department to select the "No Action" alternative in the Final Environmental Impact Statement and keep the national Roadless Rule intact. Thank you for considering these comments.

The Roadless Rule has helped protect our beautiful national forests for many years. My town is within the Prescott National Forest and provides us nurturing experiences on trails in our Forest. The most important rules should protect the water resources, keep a healthy wildlife balance, and limit intrusion into delicate ecosystems. The vast majority of damaging wildfires have been close to roads and started by humans. More roads means more human-caused wildfires. I would recommend modifying the roadless rule to allow for more fire suppression where it is obviously needed, but not allow easier access by the public to the current roadless areas. Please do not rescind this important rule.

Dear Secretary Rollins and Chief Schultz, As a parent, I submit that the administrative record before the Department reflects a systematic underweighting of future values relative to present ones — a bias that the agency's statutory mandate, properly understood, requires it to correct rather than institutionalize. I have raised my son in this forest community and beyond the recreational it is vital to the economy, and the future of this community. One visit made that connection concrete. My son was not particularly athletic nor motivated to be outdoors when he was young. We hiked and spent time in this beautiful area anyway. He has now grown to love and respect the forest beyond what I ever dreamed. Quality of life is utmost for all of us. The forest provides that-it improves and preserves mental health for many. It is against this background that I urge the Department to retain the 2001 Rule in its current form. Regarding the Ash Creek in the Prescott National Forest, Arizona: Balch et al. (2017) found human-started wildfires accounted for 84% of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season, and were responsible for nearly half of all area burned The 2001 Rule reflects a considered, notice-and-comment judgment that the Department has offered no adequate basis to reverse; it should remain operative. Thank you, CommentID: RLC-20260823-1WJ5TSP