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The attached file is an aerial photograph taken during the month of October in 1990 showing the heavily clearcut logged headwaters of Asotin Creek in the Umatilla National Forest. The month of this photo is clearly demonstrated, because it was made during the time when the Western Larch has turned its beautiful golden yellow color. The bright sunlight is reflected from one of the branches of Asotin Creek, showing that this stream still contains significant water during the fall - - where it can support the important native fish populations present in Asotin Creek. Note the clearcut that has been made and broadcast burned to the edge of the stream, whose waters are clearly reflecting sunlight in this image. The extensive areas of clearcut landscape are also starkly evident in this image. This is clearly the kind of treatment that has been avoided by application of the Roadless Area Protection rule. That is why continuing the application of the Roadless Area Protection Rule is so vitally important.

The true value of our natural resources in the United States of America cannot be fully understood and appreciated unless one has experienced these personally. Land, clean air, healthy trees, adequate and clean water, and wildlife that survive and thrive in our national forests deserve to be protected. Over past decades I have hiked in, boated in, skied, and camped in a number of our spectacular national forests: the Olympic National Forest, Mount Baker Snoqualmie NF, Okanagon-Wenatchee NF, the Cherokee NF in my native state, the Deschutes NF, the Finger Lakes NF, the Gifford Pinchot NF, the Huron-Manistee NF, the Idaho Panhandle NF, the Malheur NF, Mount Hood NF, the Pisgah NF, the Santa Fe NF, the Tongass NF, the Tonto NF, the Umatilla NF, the Umpqua NF, the Wallowa-Whitman NF, and the Willamette NF. In 2001 when the Roadless Rule was enacted, it allowed the NFS get somewhat caught up on maintenance of the 44.7 million acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs). The 9.3 million acres of IRAs in the Tongass National Forest have also been better protected than prior to the RR. The claims being made in the Proposed Rule do not « hold water. » It was local control (one of the purported justifications for rescinding the 2001 RR) that led to enormous harm in the Wolverine Fire of 2015 in Washington state. Local pressure by regional fire departments persuaded the Director of the Firefighting Operations, a staffer brought up from the Tonto NF, ordered a CPL (Community Protection Line) that ended up a 50-mile long, 300-foot wide CPL and cut 40% of the critical habitat for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. Over 930 log trucks hauled out logs, with one tree being so large that it was the only tree on one of the trucks. In my view, it was criminal to do that much damage. The scientist on the Oka-Wen NF tried to persuade the fire director that the fire was not heading in the direction of the CPL cuts. « Managers continued logging even after weather conditions turned rainy and cool, and objections were raised by their own staff, who saw no emergency, internal records and emails to The Seattle Times by US Forest Service showed. The fire never came anywhere near. » (Lawsuit over firelines to curb forest firefighting tactics, August 22, 2016) Another purported reason given for the Proposed RR Rescission is to reduce wildfire. This is not logical or rational. By allowing access to more roads in the roadless areas, there would be a greatly increased likelihood of experiencing human and vehicle-related forest fires. Strong scientific studies support this and argue strongly against opening up our roadless areas to more traffic for logging or other forest treatments. In fact, fires are four times more likely to occur near roads than in roadless (DEIS, p. 87) Good water quality is also more available in IRAs because of limited disturbance. « Retaining the RR ‘provides the greatest protection of water quality’ for municipal water supplies. » (DEIS, p. 122) For these reasons, and in the hope that science and good evidence about the superb values of Roadless Areas in our USFS will prevail, I strongly oppose the Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule. I would appreciate your serious consideration of my comments. Another

I oppose the proposal to fully or partially rescind the roadless area conservation rule. I moved to Washington 15 years ago; I grew up in the Ozarks, an avid outdoor girl, loving nature, hiking, camping, backpacking... I thought I understood wilderness. But then I moved to Southeast Washington. Hiking in the Blue Mountains, in the Wallowa and Umatilla National Forest regions, as I explored some of the most rugged areas in the lower 48 my understanding grew and expanded in a profound way. For the animals who call them home, for the watersheds enshrined here, bringing clean water to hundreds of communities, for those who hunt, hike, wander, and meet the earth in her most intimate quarters? These places are sacred; these places are life; these places are our home. And they are for all of us. Which is why when politicians, thousands of miles away, try to tell us that slapping roads through groves will somehow benefit us? Those of us who live here know this to be a lie. We can tell the difference between people who know the land versus those who only see dollar signs. This land is our land; it is not for sale. Not for roads. Not for capitol. This land is for us, our children, our communities, our heritage, and for the creatures who we share this planet with. To desecrate these spaces will bring shame upon us all. Future generations will see it for what it is; a disgrace. But it is not too late to choose a different future. I raise my voice alongside many, and I oppose the proposal to rescind the roadless area conservation rule.

Last month I spent time driving and hiking in both the Umatilla National Forest and the Wallowa‑Whitman National Forest. Being surrounded by the vastness of these shared public lands was deeply invigorating. That time in the forest reminded me how important these landscapes are not only for recreation, but for the health of wildlife and the spirit of the people who visit them. While visiting 6,850 foot high Tower Mountain, I had the chance to speak with fire-watcher Mike Duffy about the many uses of the forest and the importance of protecting it for all users — hikers, hunters, local communities, and the wildlife that depend on intact habitat. Standing atop the tower, I watched a male Northern Harrier glide across the ridgeline. It was a beautiful and unforgettable sight, made possible by the open, undeveloped character of these forests. Experiences like that should be preserved for future generations, including my grandson. That is why I support the Roadless Rule and Alternative 1 – No Action in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Roadless areas in the eastern Washington and Oregon forests are limited, and once road construction begins, the impacts on wildlife habitat, forest connectivity, and the quiet backcountry experience cannot be undone. Maintaining the Roadless Rule is the responsible choice. It protects the ecological richness of places like the Umatilla and Wallowa‑Whitman, ensures that wildlife such as the Northern Harrier continue to thrive, and keeps these landscapes intact for the next generation to enjoy.

I oppose the proposal to revoke or partially rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I live adjacent to the Mount Hood National Forest. The Willamette National Forest is a place I visit often along with the Deschutes National Forest. Family who live in eastern Oregon rely on tourism dollars of people who are visiting the Umatilla National Forest and Walla-Whitman National Forest. My family hikes and fishes in these forests and changing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule will negatively impact our ability to enjoy it and the local and statewide tourism dollars. It would be a mistake to rescind this rule.

To whom it may concern, I am writing to voice my opposition to the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule. My name is Aaron Salb, and I grew up in rural Northeastern Oregon. I am an avid hunter and fisherman and often utilized both the Umatilla National Forest and the Wenaha Tucannon Wilderness Area. I still return every November to pursue elk there. In fact, tomorrow I am leaving on a high-country mule deer hunt in the nearby Eagle Cap Wilderness Area. I cherish our nation’s public lands. They provide a respite from daily, modern life. I would really lament it if areas like these were opened to motorized use, which totally detracts from the natural beauty and solitude they provide. One of the main reasons why the US Forest Service is recommending this course of action is to mitigate wildfires. This is a faulty line of reasoning. According to FUSEE (Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology), 80% of fires are human caused and 80% of all fires occur within a half mile of roads. May I candidly ask: how does building more roads, which are expensive to build and later maintain, prevent more fires if their initial ignition occurs near roads? It is counterintuitive in my opinion. As I understand it there have been over 900K public comments made on this issue and 99% of those are in opposition to the repeal of the Roadless Rule. The will of the people is very clear on this issue. I hope and trust that our elected officials will honor their obligation to listen and obey their constituents.

As a firefighter, sportsman, and public lands owner in Nevada and Michigan, with respect I urge the rejection of this proposed roadless area rule. This rule would harm wildlife habitat and water quality in places my family and I use and care about like the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF, Coronado NF, Kaibab NF, Coconino NF, Inyo NF, Modoc NF, Umatilla NF, Huron-Manistee NF, Ottawa NF and Hiawatha NF and others. It will also likely increase risk of human-caused wildfires, most of which start near roads. This unwise, politically-motivated rule fails the broad public interest for conservation of US forests, watersheds and rural economies. Thank you, Daniel R Patterson, Indian River MI / Boulder City NV

I am writing today in support of Alternative 1 – No Action, 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Keeping the status quo will continue to protect these roadless public lands and conserve fresh water and forests for people and wildlife. Currently, 94,000 miles of rivers are protected by the rule. Rolling back the rule will put the supply of drinking water for more than sixty million Americans at risk. Five of the eight species of western native trout rely on roadless areas for more than half of their habitat. Native Gila Trout use roadless areas for 99% of its habitat. Roadless areas provide safe habitats and migration routes for grizzly bears, wolves, elk and mule deer. The Tongass National Forest has 800-year-old trees and over fifty million fish. This is a critical habitat that sequesters carbon, provides recreational activities, and contains important cultural sites. I live in the state of Washington where several areas are protected by the roadless rule including Olympic National Park, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Okanogan National Forest, Olympic National Forest, Umatilla National Forest, and Wenatchee National Forest. These are pristine areas that provide habitat for a wide range of animals. They also provide recreational opportunities for hiking, fishing, hunting, and to simply enjoy nature. People travel from all over the country and even the world to enjoy these areas. The spending from this tourism provides ongoing jobs in rural areas where employment opportunities are few. The 2001 Roadless rule was developed after a lengthy and thorough process that included robust input from the public and tribal nations. The Forest Service held 600 public hearings and received 1.6 million comments on the rule. The current process includes NO public meetings and an extremely short comment period. The alternatives proposed by Tribal Governments were not included in the DEIS. The DEIS states “Timber Harvest and road construction in inventoried roadless areas could significantly alter Tribal access to treaty-reserved resources, sacred sites, and other culturally significant sites.” Stating that one of the purposes of this rule recission for fire management seems to be a scare tactic. Many fires are started by vehicles and people using roads in forested areas. An analysis of data from the U.S. Forest Service for the period of 1992 to 2024, shows that within 50 meters of a forest road there is a 4x greater chance of a fire starting than in roadless areas. These areas should remain roadless for the protection of these pristine lands to preserve the forest and waterway.

I have lived most of my life around the Umatilla National Forest where logging and grazing took place for about 100 years. Roads were built by Forest Service for logging by corporations and cattle and sheep access to the high meadows and streams. By the 1970s, clearcuts and subsequent regrowth of fire and disease prone species and overgrazing and subsequent invasive species and trampled stream banks put the forest in distress. As grazing and logging declined, hundreds of miles of roads were closed off to vehicular traffic with gates or berms. The forest service lacked the resources to maintain these roads in the service of recreational vehicles. I have been privileged to walk many of these roads over the last 20 years leading wildflower walks, backpacking and monitoring rare plants in the Blue Mountains. The roads now lead to ridges where the terrain has naturally been restored, marshes whose creeks and springs again flow and open slopes where mushrooms and huckleberries have returned. The decision to close off roads was made locally for reason of limited resources to maintain as well as safety concerns for those in vehicles having the ability to go much further than common sense would dictate. Rescinding the Roadless Act will not provide better access to fight fires. These old roads are already reopened as needed for fighting fires. Rescinding would increase the likelihood of fires started by humans, litter and damage to facilities. Nor would it allow for increased timber harvests as existing timber is on steep slopes in remote areas. Not cost effective for FS to build/open and maintain roads for logging companies. Surrounding communities have not been dependent on logging except for personal use (cabins and fences) since 1880s! Monitoring of expanded road use would not be possible as resources to maintain main roads is not available. 2001 Roadless Rule does not constrains responsible officials. It protects them from local radicals who oppose any kind of government restriction. Responding to this year's evolving national priorities under the guise of 'active management' is disingenuous of the USDA to say the least and not in the best interest of our public lands.

Dear Chief Schultz, Military service builds an understanding of what happens when the rules that govern an institution are treated as optional — the institution's capacity to function depends on those rules being taken seriously — and the Department's proposed rescission does not take the Roadless Area Conservation Rule seriously enough. I live near these areas and get the opportunity to enjoy them as they have stood for generations. Once road open these areas up to industrialization, those areas are gone or altered forever. Opening these areas up with additional roads will only make it easier to justify logging, mining or increased public access which will all permanently damage these protected areas. Regarding the Jumpoff Joe in the Umatilla National Forest, Oregon: New road construction, reconstruction, and associated development fragment habitat, introduce disturbance, and eliminate roadless character. Rescinding the Roadless Rule would open the Jumpoff Joe, Umatilla National Forest to road construction and associated ground disturbance. The direct and indirect effects of that activity are precisely what makes a specific comment about this area necessary. The proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule jeopardizes 44.5 million acres of undeveloped backcountry forestland managed by the U.S. Forest Service. These forests have only remained intact because of the Forest Service's nearly 25-year-old commitment not to build roads in these areas for harmful activities like major logging operations or oil-and-gas drilling. The Federal Register Notice initiating the rescission states the goal explicitly: to "facilitate domestic production" of "timber, energy and mineral production... to the maximum possible extent." The proposal is being advanced under Executive Orders 14192 (deregulation), 14225 (timber expansion), and 14154 (energy unleashing), and follows other administrative actions calling for a dramatic increase in logging and oil and gas drilling on federal lands. An increase in these industrial activities would worsen climate change, destroy recreation areas, put the lands at greater risk of wildfire, destroy wildlife habitat, and threaten drinking water sources. Building more roads in national forests would be a drain on taxpayers. Even with the Roadless Rule in place, the Forest Service already has a 380,000-mile road system—twice as long as the U.S. highway system—crisscrossing national forests. The agency cannot afford to maintain it: the deferred-maintenance road backlog was estimated at $8.4 billion in the 2001 Final Environmental Impact Statement and is roughly $15.6 billion in today's dollars. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly flagged Forest Service deferred maintenance as one of the largest in the federal government, and the backlog has never dropped below $5 billion. Adding new roads to inventoried roadless areas would only deepen that hole. The Roadless Rule is one of America's most popular conservation measures, and that support has not faded. Prior to its 2001 enactment, more than 600 public hearings were held nationwide and 1.6 million Americans weighed in to call for protection of these forestlands—more comments than any other federal rule had received at the time. When USDA announced its rescission proposal, the compressed 21-day public comment period in late 2025 drew approximately 600,000 additional comments. A detailed roadless.org analysis of the comment record found that more than 99.8% of submitters opposed the rescission. A February 2026 Pew Charitable Trusts national poll found that 76% of likely voters support the Roadless Rule compared to just 13% opposed, with bipartisan backing from 71% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, and 80% of independents. More than 100 members of Congress have co-sponsored the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2025 (S.2042 / H.R.3930) to codify the Rule so it could not be rolled back without an act of Congress. “Maps mature and old-growth (MOG) forests across the conterminous U.S. using LiDAR-derived structural metrics. Finds 76% of MOG on federal lands (storing 10.64 Gt CO2e) is vulnerable to logging. Recommends elevating the conservation status of Inventoried Roadless Areas as a key step toward Paris Agreement compliance and 30x30 targets. — DellaSala et al., 2022 (https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2022.979528)” Changing the rules on road access is not for the benefit of the protected areas, it is a benefit to the rich and greedy. Do your job and protect the lands you are tasked with protecting. Very truly yours, CommentID: RLC-20260913-N2L28I

I am a lifelong hiker and outdoorswoman who cares deeply about the protection of our national forests. I strongly support the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and Alternative 1 No Action in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which would continue management of our national forests under the existing Roadless Rule. I am adamantly opposed to Alternative 2 Proposed Rule, which would fully rescind these protections and leave some of our nations most intact forest lands more vulnerable to road construction, habitat fragmentation, degradation of watersheds and drinking-water sources, and commercial development. These protections matter to me not only as a matter of conservation policy, but from personal experience. In the spring and summer of 2026 alone, I was fortunate to spend months hiking through public lands across the West, including sections of the Pacific Crest Trail in California and Washington, Oregons Eagle Cap Wilderness, and the Umatilla National Forest. Traveling on foot through remote landscapes has given me a profound appreciation for what roadless areas preserve: intact ecosystems, wildlife habitat, clean water, solitude, and the increasingly rare opportunity to experience wild country largely undisturbed by roads and commercial activity. Those experiences would be fundamentally different if these landscapes were fragmented by new roads and logging operations. Roads do more than provide access; they permanently change the character of a landscape, disrupt wildlife habitat and migration corridors, introduce erosion and other threats to watersheds, and diminish the solitude and sense of wildness that draw millions of Americans to our national forests. I am also concerned by arguments that additional roads are necessary to reduce wildfire risk. While roads can provide firefighters with access after a fire begins, they also bring more people and more potential ignition sources into previously remote areas. Forest Service research found that nearly two-thirds of human-caused fires in the Southern California national forests studied occurred along roadsides. Expanding road access into currently roadless areas may therefore create new opportunities for human-caused fires even as proponents argue that those same roads are needed to fight them. There is also a basic question of fiscal responsibility. The Forest Service already manages approximately 380,000 miles of roads nationwidemore than the U.S. highway systemand Washington Trails Association reports that the agency has only about 15 percent of the funding necessary to maintain those roads adequately. Anyone who regularly hikes in our national forests has seen the consequences: potholes, washouts, deteriorating surfaces, and roads that eventually become impassable. Building additional roads without providing substantial new and sustained resources to maintain them is not responsible forest management. It simply adds more infrastructure to a system the Forest Service is already struggling to maintain. Rather than extending this maintenance burden into our remaining roadless areas, we should invest limited resources in maintaining and restoring the roads we already have. For me, time in wild places is not simply recreation. It provides an essential opportunity for reflection, renewal, personal growth, and connection with the natural world. I am one of countless Americans who value our national forests for these reasons, and these lands belong not only to those of us who enjoy them today but also to generations who have yet to experience them. Once an intact roadless landscape is fragmented, we cannot easily recreate what has been lost. I therefore urge you to protect the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, support Alternative 1 No Action, and oppose any effort to rescind these longstanding protections. Please preserve our remaining roadless national forest lands and the ecological, recreational, and deeply human values they provide.

The roads we have already provide adequate recreational access to Americans enjoying the outdoors. I have fond memories of camping in National Forests with my father (Umatilla NF) and with my sons (Gifford Pinchot). Wilderness areas within those forests such as Indian Heaven, Mount Adams, Goat Rocks, or even the Boundary Waters have been uniquely American refuges for me and other American outdoorsmen. To carve further scars across these areas reduces their enjoyability for generations, perhaps even forever. Cutting more roads through for recreation or mining/logging/development is not in there interest of Americans generally nor of the ones who use the forests already. First, there exists a maintenance backlog of billions USD. To add more roads is to increase costs for all Americans. Second, our forests and wilderness areas are not merely to be enjoyed, they also play an important role in preventing flooding and filtering water and preserving threatened animal species. Third, the evidence correlating wildfires to roadless areas is weak and to the contrary, roads are correlated with fire outbreaks. I strongly oppose expansion of road networks and of motorized vehicles into these federal lands. This rule is not in favor of the people.