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Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 I appreciate all wildlife in these Roadless Areas. Many species of wildlife need pristine areas such as these to thrive. I hike, backpack, camp and trail run in Wilderness and Roadless Areas, mostly on the Klamath and Rogue River National Forests. These unspoiled areas are important to me. National Forests are required to be managed for multiple use. This does not mean that every acre must be roaded and logged. The best use for our remaining Roadless Areas is to remain roadless. There are abut 300.000 miles of roads in the Forest Service system. The roads on the Klamath National Forest are in terrible shape, and I suspect this is true nationally. There are more roads than the agency can maintain, and there are more roads than are necessary for administration and public use. It makes no sense to add yet more roads to a broken system. Roadless areas are necessary to maintain clean water for municipal water supplies and for the survival of the fish and wildlife that depend on them. Roads, mining and logging are pollution sources. We don't need additional sources of pollution. I am a retired wildland firefighter. In my experience, Roadless Areas are not a significant impediment to fire suppression. Roadless areas tend to be healthier and more fire resistant. They provide an opportunity to let wildland fire play its natural role in forested ecosystems. Most fires start along roads. Roadless Areas tend to be in high elevation areas, which means that they are cooler, wetter, and fires that do start there tend to be near the tops of the mountains and so are less destructive; most roadless areas on the Klamath National Forest have burned several times over the past 50 years and so are no longer burdened with unnatural fuel loads. I commented on this subject last year and never got a response. It seems that, as with many other similarly destructive projects, the agency is just going through the motions and is not seriously considering public opinion. I have been to many roadless areas, and I value both the ones I am familiar with and the ones I have never visited. To me, more roads would be a symbol of the agency's managerial, ecological, political and moral bankruptcy. There is a reason that roadless areas are roadless. They are not economically valuable for commodity production. They are not needed for motorized recreation. They have been analyzed several times over the past 50 years or so and there was never any need to road them. Nothing has changed. Leave them alone. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through the Grider roadless area, which is quite wild and scenic. The Tom Martin roadless area is near the historic Lake Mountain Lookout, which I have been to many times. I have backpacked in and around the Boulder Roadless Area. Roads in this general area have had to be abandoned because of the instability of the terrain. The Shackleford Roadless Area is adjacent to the Marble Mountains Wilderness, which I have visited many times. The Mt. Eddy roadless area is adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail and is a very popular area for hiking and backpacking. The McDonald Peak Roadless Area is adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail and is a very popular area for hiking, trail running and backpacking. I am writing in opposition to the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, and specifically about these inventoried roadless areas: - Grider (10,647 acres), Klamath NF, California - Tom Martin (9,031 acres), Klamath NF, California - Boulder (435 acres), Klamath NF, California - Shackleford (1,679 acres), Klamath NF, California - Mt. Eddy (7,232 acres), Shasta-Trinity NF, California Mcdonald Peak (9,431 acres), Rogue River NF, Oregon Chips Creek (42,029 acres), Plumas and Lassen National Forests, California I ask that the agency disclose and analyze the site-specific environmental consequences of the proposed rescission for each of these areas, including the effects of the road construction and timber harvest it would newly allow. I request that the agency respond in the record to each of the issues raised in this comment, and that it analyze in the DEIS an alternative that retains the 2001 rule’s protections for the areas named above. Where this proposal rests on factual conclusions that differ from the agency’s own prior findings quoted here, I ask that the agency acknowledge the change in position and provide a reasoned explanation for it on the record. Sincerely, Jeffrey Stone Yreka, CA