Read the comments.

Trump is destroying our nation! Please help to impeach him! The Forest Service should keep the Roadless Rule intact exactly as it is, utilizing Alternative 1 in the current DEIS. I am deeply concerned about the proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule. Roadless areas provide important benefits to communities across the country, including clean drinking water, wildlife habitat, opportunities for outdoor recreation, and protection from the impacts of development. These lands are also an important part of the character and identity of many communities and provide places for people to hike, hunt, fish, camp, ski and otherwise enjoy the outdoors. I am particularly concerned that rescinding the Roadless Rule could increase development, reduce recreation opportunities, affect wildlife habitat, increase wildfire risk, or harm local economies that depend on outdoor recreation. The Roadless Rule has provided consistent, nationwide protections for these special places for decades. The Forest Service should not weaken those protections or open currently protected roadless lands to new development. I urge the Forest Service to pursue Alternative 1 and retain the existing Roadless Rule protections. Please! And Thank you! Trump is destroying our nation! Please help to impeach him! Sincerely, Lori Gray 50 Brownstone Rd East Windsor, NJ 08520-3037 lgray@rei.com

Frankly, humans do not need easy access to every corner of the earth. Leave room for nature and adventure. Roadless areas keep our forests healthy. They serve as the ecological backbone of our national forest lands and: - Supply 50% of California’s drinking water - Support Tribal cultural practices - Enhance outdoor recreation including backcountry hiking, backpacking, horseback riding, mountain biking, camping, angling, and hunting - Shelter over 200 imperiled species like the Pacific fisher and Sierra Nevada red fox - Protect the military mission in part by serving as a crucial buffer against urbanization. And, more roads mean more wildfire risk. Most wildfires are caused by humans and most human-caused fires occur near roads. We don’t need more. Please move forward with the No Action Alternative 1: Keep the Roadless Rule intact. Sincerely, Miki Kwak Pennington, NJ 08534

Dear Special Areas: Roadless Area Conservation, se01nsnn se01nsnn , As someone who cares deeply about national parks and the public lands that sustain them, I urge you to choose the No Action alternative and keep the Roadless Rule in place. My "bucket list" includes visiting many of our national parks, including yosemite, yellowstone, the grand canyon, the everglades, and glacier national parks. i have already visited acadia national park, the smoky mountains, the hoh rain forest, the california redwoods, and the delaware water gap. One of the great things about this country is our national parks. other countries have art and buildings which are many hundreds of years old. for the most part, we do not have that. many native american contributions were either lost or decayed (since they did not have access to metal, marble, and tools to create permanent structures.) the reason why so many people from around the world visit our country is to experience our beautiful national parks. we have scenery and wildlife that cannot be viewed anywhere else in the whole world. what other country has a place such as glacier national park with its glaciers, the tongass wilderness area, with its old growth forests, the amazing grand canyon, which was formed after the colorado river carved it for thousands of years, or yosemite with its geysers? what other country has the beautiful grasslands full of wild horses and bison? what other country has an ecosystem such as the everglades? Please do everything you can to prevent any rollbacks of protections for these areas. Please do not give in to the pressure of corporate interests, or the current administration. Do what is morally and ethically right. Theodore Roosevelt protected and valued these areas for a reason! Please keep the Roadless Rule in place to protect the forests, wildlife, clean water, and the national parks. Thank you. Sharon Coughlin 26 Meadowbrook Rd Boonton Twp, NJ 07005 Sincerely, Ms. Sharon Coughlin

Please maintain protections for the 45 million acres of wild and roadless forests and don’t rescind or alter the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. These forests are full of mature and old-growth trees that provide important wildlife habitat. They’re our favorite places to hike, fish and camp. Wild forests should remain protected from road-building, commercial logging and mining. Millions of people’s drinking water starts in national forests – so keeping the land protected keeps water clean More roads mean more forest fires Keeping up remote roads and building new ones costs taxpayers Industrial activity would destroy the trees and trails we love. Keep our national forests wild. Sincerely, Margaret Redman 58 Penn Lyle Rd Princeton Junction, NJ 08550-1646 predman799@gmail.com

Dear Special Areas: Roadless Area Conservation, se01nsnn se01nsnn , As an environmental educator who has taught about protecting the earth for decades, as a person of faith who cares about all creation, as a parent who wants to ensure my descendants, as an American citizen who cares deeply about national parks and the public lands that sustain them, I urge you to choose the No Action alternative and keep the Roadless Rule in place. For more than two decades, the rule has protected roughly 44.7 million acres of ecologically intact national forest lands, including areas near Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. These wild places safeguard clean water, provide essential wildlife habitat, support outdoor recreation, and help keep park ecosystems connected and healthy. Rescinding the rule would expose these treasured landscapes to new roads and development, fragmenting habitat, degrading waterways, and putting our parks at risk. Many public lands are already available for timber and energy development. Roadless protections apply to only about 30% of National Forest lands, making these remaining intact areas especially important for future generations. Please do not move forward with this unnecessary rollback. Keep the Roadless Rule in place to protect the forests, wildlife, clean water, and the national parks. Anne Price 73 Forest Park Ter Monroe, NJ 08831-8595 Sincerely, Anne Price

Dear Forest Service Officials, I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed changes to the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I urge the agency to select the No Action Alternative, which maintains the vital protections currently shielding our roadless national forest lands.The 2001 Roadless Rule is one of our nation's most successful conservation policies. Weakening these protections to allow commercial logging and new road construction would deeply impact our shared public lands. I am particularly concerned about the following consequences: Destruction of Old-Growth Ecosystems: Roadless areas safeguard the last remaining blocks of pristine, intact old-growth forests. Opening these spaces to logging threatens irreplaceable habitats, vital wildlife corridors, and clean drinking water sources for millions of people. Increased Wildfire Risks: Constructing new roads introduces human activity deeper into the backcountry, heavily increasing the risk of human-caused wildfire ignitions. Fragmented, logged forests are often more vulnerable to severe fires than undisturbed, naturally resilient ecosystems. Loss of Wild Spaces: Once these wild areas are fragmented by industrial roads, they cannot easily be restored. On a personal level, these lands matter deeply to me because I love this planet and everything it offers. I plan to visit all the national parks during my retirement and it would be devastating if these were not sacredly preserved for generations to come. Please protect our remaining wild backcountry and reject any rollbacks to the Roadless Rule. Thank you for your time and for considering my comments. Sincerely, Jolene Weiss Annandale, NJ 08801

I strongly oppose the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, identified as RIN 0596-AD66 and docket FS-2025-0001. For more than two decades, the Roadless Rule has protected millions of acres of national forests from road construction, commercial logging and damaging development. These undeveloped forests protect drinking water, provide essential wildlife habitat, store carbon, support outdoor recreation and preserve irreplaceable natural places for future generations. Repealing the rule would remove nationwide protections from approximately 44.7 million acres of national-forest land. It could expose previously protected forests to logging roads, timber extraction, mining, energy development and habitat fragmentation. Once an intact forest is divided by roads and industrial activity, its wildlife habitat, clean water and natural character may never be fully restored. Individual forest-management plans cannot provide the consistency, certainty and nationwide protection offered by the Roadless Rule. Eliminating this safeguard would also shift the burden of opposing damaging projects onto local communities, conservation organizations and Tribal governments—forcing them to fight proposals one forest at a time. Our national forests belong to every American. Their long-term ecological and public value should not be sacrificed for short-term commercial gain. I urge the USDA and U.S. Forest Service to: 1. Withdraw the proposed repeal. 2. Retain the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. 3. Preserve strong nationwide restrictions on road construction, road reconstruction and commercial timber harvesting in inventoried roadless areas. 4. Protect clean water, wildlife habitat, Tribal cultural resources, climate resilience and outdoor recreation. Please select the “No Action” alternative and preserve the existing Roadless Rule. America’s remaining roadless forests deserve stronger protection—not a sweeping rollback that could permanently fragment these extraordinary public lands. Thank you for your time. Gloria Kim Edgewater, NJ 07020

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 I am writing in opposition to the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I raise the following issues for the record and ask that the agency respond to each of them: Issue 1: Fragmentation is quantified and not applied I go out to watch wildlife and birds, and what I look for lives in unbroken habitat. The agency measured what fragmentation costs and then set the finding aside. The DEIS cites the finding that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75 percent. The number appears; no projection across the 40.1 million affected acres follows. I ask that the agency apply the cited fragmentation range to the 40.1 million acres of potentially affected environment. Issue 2: Elk survival, in the agency’s own citation My husband and I love to hike and explore the unvarnished beauty of old growth Forrests in this incredible country. We love wildlife and the best way to see it is in areas unblemished by roads. The agency's own citation makes that point better than I can. The DEIS cites the finding that elk survival rates increased during a road closure and decreased when the gates were removed (Cole 1997), and that elk avoid roads and select unroaded habitat. No population-level effect on big game is projected anywhere in the document. I ask that the agency project the effects on big game populations and hunter opportunity. Issue 3: Carbon is stated and dropped The standing forests where I watch wildlife are doing quiet work the whole time, holding carbon. The agency states what these lands store and then drops the analysis. The DEIS cites the estimate that these inventoried roadless areas contain about 5 percent of the stored forest carbon in the coterminous United States, roughly 0.9 billion metric tons. The DEIS concludes these lands will continue to sequester and store carbon, with no analysis of harvest and roading. I ask that the agency quantify the change in carbon storage and sequestration under each alternative. Issue 4: The agency’s own assessments predict harm to 327 protected species I spend my time looking for wildlife in these forests, and the rarest of it is exactly what the agency's own assessments say this action is likely to harm. The agency’s 428-page draft biological assessment closes: “Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule will increase the likelihood of road construction and timber harvests occurring in locations previously considered inventoried roadless areas. In many cases the Forest Service anticipates this increased activity to adversely affect some ESA-listed species and their designated critical habitats.” The DEIS tallies the determinations: “may affect, likely to adversely affect” for 327 ESA-listed species and 71 designated critical habitats. Not may: will increase the likelihood, and the agency anticipates the harm. The phrase “likely to adversely affect” appears more than 150 times across the USFWS assessment alone, and the proposal identifies mitigation for none of it. I ask that the agency disclose, species by species, how the likely adverse effects its own biological assessments identify will be avoided or mitigated, and that ESA consultation be completed and published before any final rule. Issue 5: Every conservation alternative was eliminated by how the purpose was written I want this land managed responsibly, and responsible management starts with an honest comparison of the options. The agency wrote its purpose so that comparison could not happen. Alternatives with more protection were dismissed as not responsive to the deregulatory executive orders, and the keep-boundaries option was cut because it “would continue to restrict local decision-making discretion” and because analysing roadless values is “an administrative and legal burden for the agency.” A purpose written as deregulation forecloses the comparison NEPA requires. I ask that the agency restate the purpose and need in terms of forest conditions and analyse at least one protective alternative in full. 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. 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, Mariel Dryl Denville, NJ 07834