Read the comments.

Yes, please open up all the public land so we can all enjoy it and firefighters can get to areas on fire easier.

I write in strong support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in its entirety. This one-size-fits-all national restriction has constrained local forest managers for 25 years, limiting timely access for active management, hazardous fuels reduction, and wildfire response across more than 44 million acres of National Forest System lands. Rescinding the rule restores decision-making authority to the local level through existing land management planning processes under the National Forest Management Act, without mandating any particular road construction or timber harvest. This change is especially important for communities like those in Skamania County, Washington, which border and depend on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The Gifford Pinchot contains substantial inventoried roadless areas (approximately 213,000 acres based on Forest Service inventory data). These lands sit amid a landscape that has faced elevated wildfire risk, including recent high and very high fire danger ratings, fire restrictions, and incidents such as the Backbone, and High Lava fires. Local officials in Skamania County have highlighted the heavy fuel loads on the forest and the need for strategic fuel breaks and treatments to protect communities, infrastructure, and residual old-growth and wildlife habitat from catastrophic fire. The Roadless Rule has restricted road construction and reconstruction needed for efficient access to conduct thinning, prescribed fire, and other fuels treatments in many of these areas. Forest Service data indicate that more than 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas nationwide carry high or very high wildfire hazard potential, yet only about 5 percent have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014. A significant portion of these lands already lie near existing roads. Removing the national prohibition gives Gifford Pinchot managers the flexibility to evaluate site-specific needs—improving firefighter access, reducing response times, creating defensible space near communities and critical infrastructure, and treating fuels before they accumulate into extreme fire behavior—while still operating under full NEPA review, forest plans, and other environmental laws. For Skamania County residents, the stakes are practical and immediate: safer communities, reduced risk of large, destructive fires that threaten homes, water supplies, recreation, and local economies, and the ability for the Forest Service to manage the land based on current conditions rather than a 25-year-old blanket restriction. Active management is essential to restoring forest health and resilience in the Cascades. I urge the Department to finalize the full rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule. Returning authority to local national forest managers will better enable the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and similar forests across the West to address wildfire risk, protect neighboring communities such as those in Skamania County, and sustain the multiple uses and values these public lands provide. Thank you for the opportunity to comment and for prioritizing practical, science-informed forest management. Sincerely, Asa Leckie asal00@msn.com

I support doing away with then roadless rule. The past 30 years of no management has led to more fires, less management, less access, and overall the declining of forest health. The hands off management practices are a failure and do not serve the public nor the environment. We need active management to restore forest and improve habitat for wildlife.

I support increased flexibility for wildfire mitigation, forest health treatments, and community protection, but I want strong safeguards to maintain important wildlife habitat, water quality, hunting opportunities, and the roadless character of high-value backcountry areas.

It is not only in the best interest for wildfire suppression efforts but also economically for the entire logging and lumber industries to Recind the roadless rule. Almost the entirety of the opponents of rescinding the roadless rule have opinions based on wildly false information such as fires starting near roads which the data includes major interstate highways, city and urban areas and is not exclusive to USFS or BLM road systems. Fires that start in roadless areas are statistically five times larger than those within accessible roaded systems, and these fires account for 59% of all acres burned annually. Many of the opponents have limited to zero experience in the management of landscapes nor are even part of the effected industries.

In our area countless previously utilized roads have been closed. Roads that we as a family utilized for hunting and outdoor adventures. About 17 yrs ago I went through a major hip joint reconstruction surgery. Being too young for a replacement the reshaping and resurfacing of everything in and around the hip joint was my only choice. It was an extreme surgery and healing did not come easily. Complications occurred as my body reacted very negatively to hardware that was to remain in the bone for a year. While only supposed to be on crutches for 6 weeks, it turned into 6 mos. I became disabled Which included our favorite family time, deer hunting season. Since I couldn't walk I was strictly limited to road hunting from the Jeep. Many of the roads we utilized to access areas for my hunting are now closed off. The areas I accessed while temporarily disabled are no longer available to those who also may experience some type of temporary or permanent disability preventing them from hiking. I am one hundred percent in favor of reopening the roads that have been closed. One hundred in favor of re-establishing access to firefighters.

Please remove the roadless rule. We need those roads open for fighting wild fires. The amount of money spent trying to fight wildfires would significantly be reduced if the forest was more easily accessed. Air pollution would be reduced. Animal lives would be spared. Fire fighters would be safer. Wood cutters would have more access which would help clean up our forests and help prevent wildfires. I live in a forested area and have had to prepare to evacuate because of close wildfires. I know people who have lost their homes due to wildfires. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Roadless Rule needs to be permanently rescinded. The actual accessible forest is small in scale to the total forested lands in Alaska and this ongoing debate and struggle needs to just go away to Alaska residents that want better access to our natural resources and recreation. Please do the right thing and eliminate this once and for all

Please find comments attached for Alex Metals support of Alternative 2 in the DEIS

we need to open every closed road and clean up our for forest it will help with fire prevention and improve game habitat.

Dear Director: I am submitting these comments as an individual who has worked in mineral exploration in Southeast Alaska since 2009, and has lived in Ketchikan, Prince of Wales Island and Juneau. I now work as an independent consultant to companies exploring in the region, and these comments are my own. My first work in Southeast was at the Niblack project on Prince of Wales Island, where I was Project Manager from 2009 to 2020. Niblack has tidewater access and roads on patented mining claims, which supported underground development and exploration drilling. The Tongass had been temporarily exempted from the Roadless Rule in 2003, and in 2009 the Forest Service approved exploration drilling at Niblack in a Decision Memo. When a federal court reinstated the 2001 rule on the Tongass in 2011, its judgment allowed the drilling approved in 2009 to continue. However, our drill sites had since been revised based on underground exploration results, so the Forest Service halted our helicopter-supported surface program on National Forest land mid-season. At significant cost to budget and schedule, we moved crews to another project and returned in the fall to drill only from patented claims. A separate 2012 authorization allowed surface drilling to resume, and that was the last field program I managed before the project went into care and maintenance. That is the practical effect of the rule on Tongass projects. Since 2009 I have watched the Tongass move in and out of the 2001 rule with court rulings and changes in administration. The status of the Tongass under the rule has been reversed four times, in 2003, 2011, 2020 and 2023. Approval of exceptions has also changed four times: the Secretary reserved it from 2009 to 2012, it was delegated to regional foresters in 2012 and 2018, and in 2021 pending decisions were elevated to the Department again (DEIS pp. 3 and 6). Each change resets the planning assumptions for projects on the forest. This unpredictability makes it difficult to raise investment for exploration in Southeast and even more difficult to execute programs when the money is raised. Companies and investors generally understand that exploration in Southeast works with helicopters and barges. Most of the programs I've managed in my career, in and outside of Alaska, have been helicopter-supported, because it isn't practical to build a road to a prospect without a proven resource. However, drill pads and landing zones require cutting trees, which in my experience can fall under the same scrutiny as road building in the Tongass. Access for developing and operating a mine comes later, when a project succeeds and needs a road to advance. The companies I work with in Southeast have projects on state, BLM and private land, where access is decided project by project. Southeast is a mineral district, and its mineral belts don't follow political or ownership boundaries. Inside a Tongass roadless area, a mining road also needs a discretionary exception, on top of the environmental review and plan approval it already requires. Whether a successful project can build a road depends on which side of that boundary it sits. I was the Director of the Center for Mine Training at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, which prepares people from the region for well-paying mining careers. In 2025 the average annual mining wage in Southeast was $134,545, more than twice the regional average of $66,796 (Southeast Conference, Southeast Alaska by the Numbers 2026). Jobs like these let people build a life without leaving Southeast. The operating mines, Greens Creek, Kensington and Dawson, provide most of them today. New ones depend on new discoveries advancing, and on the Tongass that relies on access. I support Alternative 2, rescission of the 2001 rule. Not once while working in the Tongass for over 15 years did I encounter someone wanting to build a network of roads throughout the forest. The residents of Southeast Alaska are among some of the most environmentally aware people I have met and care deeply about protecting what they enjoy about living here. Every road would still require site-specific environmental review, consultation with Tribes, the subsistence protections of ANILCA and approval under the Forest Service's minerals regulations. I would rather those decisions be made project by project, by people who know the ground, than set nationally and reversed every few years. Thank you for considering these comments.

Please accept my comment if favor of rescinding in its entirety the 2001 Roadless area rule. My full comment is attached via PDF

I am writing in support of rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. Responsible resource development, for the maximum benefit of the people (AK Constitution Article VIII), is of critical importance to our national security and economic viability. We must develop sustainable and self-reliant domestic supply of critical and rare earth minerals, independent from China.

Repealing the road rule, helps restore the ability of firefighters to get to a fire and contain. Also allowing fuel management to take place, overwhelming regulations have caused tremendous damage to the ecosystems that the Forest Service in charged to maintain for the public, please repeal the roadless rule.

How is this even a question??? Conservative it!

Attached please find comments from the American Exploration & Mining Association supporting the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule.

The roadless rule is incredibly important to Wyoming. As a lifelong republican, I can’t believe in this government over reach on our public lands! Keep your people in line. This is exactly why nobody wants to vote in the primaries, because you all keep going back on Wyoming principals. Our representatives are supposed to represent us, not big companies from other states. Keep wyoming in the hands of the people! I appreciate you reading these comments. Hopefully you'll get rid of this ridiculous idea.

I write today in support of the current recission of the 2001 Roadless Rule. I am a lifelong Alaskan who has spent my entire life being molded by the Tongass, and have come to realize just how lucky we are to grow up with something of this magnitude in our backyards. Its with this deep respect, that I believe those who know the land the best should be the shepherds of its future. The Roadless rule is something that works for lower 48 states, with minimal federal forestry land, but when you apply it to the southeast Alaska region, many important Alaskan decisions are made for us. The Tongass was not supposed to be included in the 2001 Roadless Rule in the first place. Congress had already set aside 5.7 million acres of Wilderness and 775,524 acres of Legislative LUD II Areas (Similar to Roadless Areas) in ANILCA and the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 (TTRA). The No More clause of ANILCA (1326(a) was supposed to prevent such additional land set asides that were over 5,000 acres without an Act of Congress. The Tongass was thus not added to the 2001 Roadless Rule until the Record of Decision was promulgated. Fed. Reg. Vol. 85, Oct. 29, 2020, at pages 68690-68691. So, there is every reason to remove it from Roadless designation. The Final EIS exempting the Tongass on October 29, 2020, pointed out that road construction would increase from 994 miles under the No Action Alternative to 1043 miles (49 miles) under Exemption over the next 100 years. Only 186,000 more acres of the 16.9-million-acre Forest would be available for timber harvest. Fed. Reg. Vol. 85, Oct. 29, 2020, at page 68691 (middle column). Additionally, a repeal of the Roadless rule would advance hydroelectric capabilities for a region that sees some of the highest rainfall on average. The 1947 Waterpower of Southeast Alaska Report, conducted in part with the Forest Service, identified over 200 potential hydropower sites in Southeast Alaska. There is thus no reason why all Southeast Alaska should not be on hydropower. Moreover, excess power from Southeast Alaska can be exported to the Lower 48. On November 13, 2000, Congress authorized construction of a Southeast Alaska-wide intertie, which included the Tongass National Forest. Pub. Law 106-511, 114 Stat. 2365 (Nov. 13, 2000). Future hydropower and support facilities, such as those envisioned by Report #97- 01, are subject to the prohibition on road construction. See 66 Fed. Reg. at 3256 (“The final rule retains all the provisions that recognize existing rights of access and use. Where access to these facilities is needed to ensure safe operation, a utility company may pursue necessary authorizations pursuant to the terms of the existing permit or contract.”) (Emphasis added). This exception is subjective and fails to provide clear direction. Future transmission projects do not fall within that exception. The Swan-Tyee Intertie (STI) is an example of a transmission project that, because of no road access, resulted in exceedingly high construction costs. If road access is unavailable for construction, the utility is limited to the use of helicopters. Helicopters are extremely expensive. This resulted in a construction cost for STI of about $2 million dollars/mile. The STI is 57 miles long and the total construction cost including permitting, design, etc., was about $110 million. To put that in perspective, the proposed Kake-Petersburg (KPI) line, which has roads in place, has an estimated cost of around $45 million. The length of the KPI is about the same as the STI. Of more significance is the cost to maintain a line that is constructed without road access. The rights-of way (ROW) for these lines have to be maintained and brushed continually. The structures must be inspected on a rotating annual basis. With roads, this work can be done by a crew in a truck. Without roads, this work must be helicopter supported, which is very expensive. Moreover, transmission lines that do not have road access must also have helicopter pads near the structures. These pads must be maintained and brushed every couple of years. This work must be done by helicopter. For these reasons above, I support repealing the roadless rule, and allowing for Alaskans to finally have the opportunity to make decisions on our forest as we see fit. Thank you for your time.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment, as a disabled veteran accessing roadless areas is impossible, I feel eliminating the roadless rule would provide greatly increased recreational opportunities for Americans with limited mobility and also those with small children. Thanks for listening.

Since the forest service has closed and have not built roads they have cutoff my access since I'm disabled. We're are my rights to access the land.