Read the comments.

It is extremely important that we keep the 2001 Roadless Rule the way it is. Here are some quick facts: - From 1992 to 2024, wildfires were four more times as likely to start in areas with roads than in roadless areas. - Our National Forests are a vital source of water for millions of Americans. Roads are a major source of water pollution, threatening our clean drinking water. - Fragmented forest areas are worse habitats for the species that are vital for the health of forests and other ecosystems. - The Roadless Rule already has built in flexibility for exceptions. The forest service can build roads as needed to address fires, floods, and other catastrophes. The Roadless Rule is so important for protecting our public land and wildlife from pollution, fires, and other human caused threats to our ecosystems, and it already has built in safe-guards for preventing forest fires and other disasters. Our forests do not need to be 'productive.' We do not need to log every tree in the United States. Forests are valuable resources in their own right, especially when they are minimally impacted by humans. We need to take a step back and stop the ruthless commoditization of every square foot of land available in our nation. Rescinding the Roadless Rule is not a step back, but a dangerous step towards this commoditization. I grew up in North Idaho recreating on roadless lands. I grew up backpacking in Idaho Panhandle National Forests by Priest Lake in some of the most pristine forests I have ever seen. I took a group of friends from Wisconsin backpacking through Hells Canyon in Nez Perce National Forest, and then visited the canyon again the same year with my best friend. I've been exploring Sawtooth National Forest since I was 8 with my family. I've climbed huge mountains in Salmon-Challis National Forest. Idaho is one of the most beautiful and untouched states in our nation because so much of its national forest land has been designated as roadless, and one of the greatest pleasures of my life has been experiencing these places for myself. Rescinding the roadless rule creates so many risks that threaten to take these experiences away permanently, from myself and millions of other Americans. Logging, pollution, and increased risks of fires associated with human-constructed roads are extremely preventable issues: just don’t build the roads. We don’t need them. Please, listen to the pleas of the thousands and thousands of Americans asking you to keep the Roadless Rule intact. Henry DePew

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 Roadless areas are some of the few places where we can witness - and enjoy - the true majesty of unexploited nature. I oppose rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule because the agency's own record does not support the action, and because the forests I have traveled, paddled, and camped in since childhood will bear the consequences. Wildfire. The DEIS states: "A human-caused wildland fire is nearly five times more likely to occur on essentially roaded lands than on essentially unroaded lands." If roads increase ignition, the agency must explain why expanding the road network into 40.1 million acres of protected land advances fire management rather than undermining it, and reconcile the rescission with DEIS Table 21, which reports far higher fire density on roaded land. Economics. The DEIS acknowledges that "the total timber volume affected by this rule is less than 0.5 percent of total United States production." Its analysis projects timber revenue of $5.2 to $11.4 million a year against recreation losses of at least $6.1 million a year, with a net present value spanning -$92 million to +$199 million, while the Forest Service road system already carries a $6.9 billion maintenance backlog. The agency should explain how an action whose own analysis cannot establish a net benefit justifies expanding a road system in that condition. Fish and wildlife. I have rafted the Main and Middle Forks of the Salmon River through the Salmon-Challis National Forest, home to the largest roadless complex outside designated wilderness in the lower 48: 58 inventoried areas totaling 2,264,064 acres. The Salmon supports the longest salmon migration in North America, over 900 miles. The DEIS acknowledges that removing riparian vegetation can raise stream temperatures beyond what cold-water species tolerate, and that the affected area includes Essential Fish Habitat managed by NMFS. It also cites findings that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75 percent, yet never applies that range to the 40.1 million affected acres. The agency should do so before proceeding. Existing exceptions. The rule already accommodates the burdens the agency cites: it "generally banned road building subject to limited exceptions," including reserved or outstanding rights and construction necessary for public health and safety. 36 C.F.R. Section 294.12(b)(1),(3). The agency has not identified which operational burdens fall outside these exceptions. It should identify and quantify them on the record rather than treating administrative complexity as grounds to eliminate protections that have stood for over two decades. Born and raised in Idaho, I have camped, hiked, backcountry skied, and backpacked in Oregon's Wallowa-Whitman National Forest since childhood. If its 515,000 roadless acres are opened to roads and logging, that backcountry will not recover in any timeframe meaningful to the backpackers, anglers, hunters, and skiers who contribute more to the regional economy than logging ever could. Species that depend on these corridors, including Chinook salmon, steelhead, bull trout, wolverine, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, and gray wolf, need intact buffers around protected roadless areas. Our public lands should be managed for all citizens, not sold off to the highest bidder, and preserved for future generations, from the Salmon-Challis to the Wallowa-Whitman to the Olympic National Forest, already hemmed by clear-cuts visible from Hurricane Ridge. I urge the agency to withdraw the proposed rescission. Sincerely, Tracy Andrews Portland, Oregon

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 Everyone deserves to have access to intact, beautiful landscapes; not just for recreation, but for the ecosystem services that these places provide. The implementation of the Roadless Rule has helped maintain these ecosystems by protecting intricate watersheds, swaths of forests, and a plethora of wildlife. The agency's proposal to remove the Roadless Rule will have long-lasting, negative consequences on unique ecosystems that bring so much enrichment to millions of Americans. I oppose the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I fish for rainbow trout, bull trout, and cutthroat trout in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, including within the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Many of the places I fish are roadless or connected to roadless areas, and they boast relatively healthy streams because of it. The agency's own record states that roads and their skid trails and landings contribute up to 90 percent of the sediment from a timber sale, and that sedimentation from harvest can promote excessive substrate movement and negatively impact fish such as bull trout. Although this area is not at threat due to Idaho's Roadless Rule, this forest's ecosystem and waters rely on the health of surrounding national forests in neighboring states like Montana. I can't imagine how many places such as this one will be lost if the Roadless Rule is rescinded. I ask the agency to explain on the record what specific finding it relies on to conclude that expanded road access will not increase sediment loads in streams that currently support bull trout, cutthroat trout, and the other native species verified in that forest and other forests outside the state of Idaho. I have hiked, camped, and photographed in the Bridger-Teton National Forest for a good portion of my life, since I grew up near it. I was there twice in the last 3 months. The Bridger-Teton is the western wall of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest intact temperate ecosystem in the world. It holds 19 inventoried roadless areas totaling 1,417,499 acres. The elk herds that winter in the National Elk Refuge depend on summer range in these roadless mountains. The forest creates the habitat connectedness that grizzly bear, gray wolf, cutthroat trout, trumpeter swan, and sage grouse need to survive and thrive. It also supports the national parks it surrounds; when overcrowding limits access to Grand Teton and Yellowstone, the Bridger-Teton is where people like me still go. I go there to see beautiful, unique landscapes and wildlife that people have spent decades restoring and protecting. The agency built Alternative 3 because commenters asked it to maintain protections for big game habitat, fisheries, and wildlife connectivity, then chose the alternative that protects none of it. The agency must explain why it discarded that public demand. On wildfire, the agency's own text 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." Most human-caused wildfires are started near roads. More roads means more wildfires, which means more taxpayer money spent fixing preventable problems. The proposal invokes wildfire management as a reason to rescind the rule. That reasoning runs directly into the agency's own data. I ask that the agency 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 the proposal departs from its own prior findings on fire occurrence. 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." We should maintain the roads we already have, not spend money on new roads with no guaranteed economic benefit to the agency or local communities. Our public lands should be managed with the public's interests in mind. The agency held more than 600 public meetings and took 1.6 million comments to write the rule. It has held none to undo it. I mourn the places I never got to see because of poor decisions made by previous generations. I want my children and grandchildren to have the same opportunities I have had to enjoy these roadless areas. Clean water, intact habitat, and roadless country are not preferences of a special interest. They are what the public asked for, and the public has not changed that answer. Sincerely, Abbie Johnson Moscow, ID

Dear Secretary Rollins and Chief Schultz: I am writing to express my concern about losing roadless forest and wildlands. These beautiful places exist because they are roadless. We lose national treasures in losing these protections. I grew up with the opportunities to hunt and fish in the Gila NF. I worked for a time in wildland fire in the Gila NF, Wallowa-Whitman NF, Salmon-Challis NF and wildernesses. As a result my life style and values came to revere these majestic places. I went hiking, fishing, bowhunting, and visiting these places; just being there is a gift we owe anyone who ever wants to visit breathtaking places. I look forward to many years of hiking, horseback riding, and appreciating these inspiring places. We have no more precious places than these protected lands. Please steward them with the care and courage, honoring those who have sacrificed much, some all, to keep and protect these irreplaceable wild places. Respectfully submitted, Lynae CommentID: RLC-20261004-52Y038

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 Challenging myself with survival in the wild is an instrumental part of my fulfilled life. I walk the wilderness to connect with my innermost human spirit, and God is with me. I have personally experienced the freedom of mind and faith that our American wilderness areas afford to any hiker, hunter, angler, sportsman, or salvation-seeker, and I return to these untrammeled places again and again: the Kilkenny and Presidential-Dry River Extension units of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, the 1,483,000-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana, the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, the Hermosa and West Needle units of the San Juan National Forest in Colorado, Casto Bluff in the Dixie National Forest in Utah, and the Salmon-Challis National Forest in Idaho. These are not abstractions. They are where I seek what footpaths have always made possible. The creation of a road where none has been needed before, where footpaths have always sufficed, would greatly diminish the legacy I wish to leave to my children and generations to come. I do not want to be among the last Americans to experience wilderness in all these unique areas of our great country. The White Mountain National Forest exists in part because of what happened when New England's mountains were clearcut, a history that moved Congress to pass the Weeks Act of 1911. Its 16 inventoried roadless areas total 240,669 acres and form the headwaters for rivers flowing to the Connecticut, the Merrimack, and the Saco, drinking water for communities across New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Roads change what a watershed delivers downstream. The agency should explain to the communities drawing from these headwaters what standard it applied to their interest in this rescission. The Bridger-Teton contributes the western extension of the largest intact temperate ecosystem in the world with 1,417,499 acres of inventoried roadless land. The DEIS quotes the federal grizzly recovery plan: the increased contact and conflict that come with open roads in grizzly habitat can ultimately end in grizzly mortality, and shooting, habituation and food reward all increase with the use of even secondary unpaved roads. I ask the agency to explain, for the record, how it weighs that finding against the proposed rescission. The agency's own fire data does not support its direction. "Human-caused ignition density is 22.4 fires per million acres per year on roaded National Forest System land against 3.0 inside the affected roadless areas (DEIS Table 21, 2014-2024), and the DEIS states that human-caused ignitions increase in abundance with proximity to roads." The effects analysis concedes that road access could increase the number and frequency of wildfires. The agency should quantify the expected increase in human-caused ignitions from new road access and weigh it honestly against the claimed reduction in wildfire hazard before proceeding. The regulatory flexibility analysis reaches its no-impact conclusion by spreading expenditure losses across every small firm in the sector nationally rather than assessing the outfitters and guides actually holding permits in the affected areas. Yet "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 agency should withdraw that certification and assess the impact on the small entities actually operating in these areas, not the national average. Finally, the agency both restricts and expands its own scope in the same document. "The proposed rule concedes that subsequent revisions 'could increase the area where timber harvest and road construction would be allowed,' declares changes to plans beyond the scope of the proposal, and then requests public comment on them (91 FR 53830)." That revision scenario, including any expansion of timber harvest area, must be analyzed as part of this action, not deferred. The agency should identify and weigh ALL reliance interests described in the comments it receives before it acts. I have worked alongside NFS crews to clear trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness for better access by hikers and horseback riders, never for vehicles. And I have felt pride when making a new friend because I helped his or her passage on horseback through the Bob. I strongly advocate for a formal, affirmative policy for wilderness areas of "Keep it Wild". I strongly oppose removing the Roadless Rule and ask for the Forest Service to adopt a "no action alternative" to keep the Rule intact, as it was written in 2001. I urge you to conserve our nation's roadless forests and keep the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in place. Sincerely, David A. Carre Wayne, Pennsylvania

To the individual/s reading this comment. When was the last time you connected with nature, unattached from your phone? How did it make you feel? At peace, present, excited, made you wonder, got you asking questions, lessened your stress, made you feel small (in a good way), etc. The natural work can put a lot into perspective and connect you back to how we as humans used to live. It can be scary to go out into what may be unknown, but it is much more scary to loose that option to choose. Our National Forests are a place where we can go to connect with nature and heal from the stress of the constant buzz of everyday life. I have so many amazing memories in the Los Padres NF, Inyo NF, Tahoe NF, Salmon-Challis NF, and many more. These are places where I could be present with friends and family, enjoy connecting with the "untouched" natural world, and disconnecting from my devices because there was no cell service. Taking away the roadless rule will strip the America people of that connection, will continue to fragment wild habitat for North America's amazing wildlife, and increase the risk of catastrophic wildfire across the country. The American people want our public lands protected for the future. It is time for our representatives to fully hear that message and take action. It breaks my heart that we have to keep fighting so hard to have our voices heard. Please to whoever this comment reaches fight to protect our public lands so the next generations can enjoy and steward this amazing planet, because its pretty damn awesome and deserves our respect.

I hunt and fish all over the west but the two National Forest I spend the most time in is the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and the Salmon-Challis National Forest. National Forest inventoried roadless areas are so important to me because there is definitely less human disturbances and the wildlife can be how mother nature intended it to be and as well as an avid hunter I love roadless areas because it means less people and more wildlife. I support retaining durable backcountry conservation measures for while providing careful defined flexibility for forest restoration, community safe guarding, and fish and wildlife habitat improvement projects. The Forest service does not need to choose between healthy forest and conserving the intact backcountry landscapes on which hunters, anglers, wildlife, and communities depend on. Rather than removing the national rule, which would create inconsistent management across the country and potential conflict, I recommend the the Forest Service finalize a durable national Roadless Rule that safeguards intact backcountry habitat while providing flexibility for necessary community safeguards and restoration. Specifically the final rule should be set in place so that community safeguard for forest health, fuel reduction, and fish and wildlife habitat projects can move forward under clear conservation standards while limiting new road construction. The National Forest needs to retain strong national conservation measures for roadless areas and maintain durable conservation direction for intact backcountry lands including the 9.3 million acres of roadless area in the Tongass National Forest. The Forest Service should also take notes and draw from Idaho and Colorado's roadless rules and recognize these durable state based approaches as models that can inform a national rule to pair strong backcountry safeguards with carefully defined flexibility near communities and in areas where restoration is needed for wildlife and the habitat. With all this in place it will help prevent forest fires, have healthy forests and secure fish and wildlife habitat for hunters, anglers and all other recreationalist for generations to come. Thank you for your time.

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The entire point of getting out into nature is getting further away from civilization and crowds. I hike in national forests, particularly roadless areas, and I have done it in two states that have shaped how I think about this proposal. I lived in Idaho for six years. I summited Borah Peak (a roadless area) just a few years ago and I remember how special it was making that climb and gazing down at unencumbered wilderness to the north and south. I now live in Las Vegas, and I was just up hiking in the Angel Peak area (also inventoried as roadless) last week. It is beautiful, and there are hardly any properly protected roadless areas in national forest around here anyway… southern Nevada is not exactly known for vast woodlands. I am going back again and again in the fall to bag the smaller summits around Angel Peak. Our public land should be managed for now and for our children's children. Abolishing roadless areas and allowing ATVs and dirt bikes everywhere completely ruins what makes them worth visiting. I already see plenty of drunk idiots on Razors nearer to the accessible roads, starting illegal campfires and littering everywhere. I do not want that driven up into roadless backcountry. If you remove the roadless rule, the dregs of society will come for the Lost Rivers backcountry around Borah Peak. The Borah Peak roadless area covers more than 130k acres in the Salmon-Challis National Forest. That NF contains the largest roadless complex outside of designated wilderness in the lower 48, and it supports Chinook salmon, steelhead, bull trout, wolverine, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, and gray wolf. The Angel Peak North roadless area covers 12,577 acres in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, the largest national forest in the lower 48, where each roadless range rises from the Great Basin like a sky island with its own ecology, its own water, its own wildlife. The Humboldt-Toiyabe holds 354 inventoried roadless areas totaling 3,383,849 acres, and verified species there include Lahontan cutthroat trout, greater sage-grouse, pygmy rabbit, and elk. Stop trying to ruin what little we have. The proposal justifies rescission partly on wildfire and fuels management grounds. That argument contradicts the agency's own findings. According to the Forest Service, "more than 90 percent of wildland fires are the result of human activity, and ignitions are almost twice as likely to occur in roaded areas as they are in roadless areas (USDA Forest Service 1998, 2000)." Opening these landscapes to roads and motorized access does not reduce fire risk. It imports the ignition sources the agency's own data identify. I ask that the agency explain why this proposal departs from those prior findings and reconcile the 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. The agency also claims administrative burden justifies rescission, but its own record states: "It makes little fiscal or environmental sense to build additional roads in inventoried roadless areas that have irretrievable values at risk when the agency is struggling to maintain its existing extensive road system (FEIS Vol. 1, 1-5 and 3-22)." The rule as written already contains exceptions for public health and safety, existing mineral leases, and community wildfire protection. The agency has not identified which burdens those exceptions fail to address. I ask that it do so specifically, and that it quantify those claimed burdens on the record rather than assert them. The proposal's regulatory flexibility analysis certifies no significant impact on small entities. The agency's own CBA analyzes lost recreation benefit at a minimum of $6.1 million per year and names outfitters, guides, and tour operators among the affected parties, yet the certification is reached by spreading the $9 million annual expenditure loss across every small firm in the sector nationally (no case-by-case analysis whatsoever). The analysis even concedes some firms may lose these receipts. That is not a no-impact finding. The agency should withdraw the certification and assess the small entities actually operating in the potentially affected roadless areas, not the national average firm. Finally, the proposal itself 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. I have planned repeated fall trips into the Angel Peak North roadless area in the Humboldt-Toiyabe based on the protections the 2001 rule provides. That is a reliance interest. The agency invited these comments and must weigh what it receives. I ask that it identify and assess the reliance interests described in the record before reaching any final decision. Thanks, Maxwell Erickson North Las Vegas, NV