Read the comments.

We need to preserve these wild areas of our country so that the generations in the future have places to enjoy peace and solitude. These things are essential to life. We also need the forest to sustain wildlife and to help preserve the soil and water ecosystems. Balance is vital in nature and we must do our part. Roadless areas in our National Forests are essential. Kathy Whitten 100 Breezewood Terrace Bridgewater, VA 22812

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The George Washington National Forest offers some respite from the busy and fragmented Eastern United States, and that respite depends on what the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has protected. I oppose rescission of that rule and ask the agency to address the following. Much wildlife, including migrating birds, like warblers and vireos, draw me to these forests, and the agency's own research documents what roads do to them. The DEIS cites findings that bird richness declines with road presence in forested habitat, and that road-noise experiments in a roadless area cut bird abundance by over a quarter, with 31 percent of species avoiding the noise entirely. If the agency proceeds, it should explain what weight it gave these documented effects on bird communities in areas like the George Washington when it concluded that rescission would not cause significant harm. Clean drinking water is imperative. The agency's own analysis says roads and their facilities can produce up to 90 percent of the sediment from a timber sale, and the record reflects that more than 7,000 municipal water intakes sit in watersheds fed by roadless areas, with approximately 24 million Americans drinking water that originates there. Fewer than 12 percent of those watersheds have impaired streams today. Opening roadless lands to road construction risks that record. The agency should explain what analysis on water quality it conducted before concluding that ending the roadless rule is in the public interest. On wildfire, the agency's own record 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." The proposal nonetheless justifies rescission partly on fuels and wildfire management grounds. The DEIS reports human-caused ignition density of 22.4 fires per million acres per year on roaded National Forest System land against 3.0 inside the affected roadless areas, and states that "human-caused ignitions increase in abundance with proximity to roads." These figures are not reconciled with the claimed wildfire rationale. I ask that the agency quantify the expected increase in human-caused ignitions from new road access and weigh it against the claimed reduction in wildfire hazard, and separately explain why the proposal departs from its own prior findings as documented in DEIS Table 21. 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. That certification is reached by spreading loss across every small firm in the sector nationally rather than examining the outfitters and guides actually holding permits in the affected areas. The agency should withdraw the certification and assess the impact on the small entities actually operating in the potentially affected roadless areas, not the national average firm. Finally, the proposal 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. This comment is one such interest. Places to recreate, undisturbed space for wildlife and birds, and clean water sources have been protected party due to this rule. Under the legal standard governing agency reversals, those interests must be identified and weighed, not solicited and then omitted from analysis. The agency must identify and weigh the reliance interests described in the comments it receives, including this one. Sincerely, Amy Risko Harrisonburg, VA 22801

I oppose the proposed rescission and urge the Department to select the no-action alternative, keeping the 2001 Roadless Rule in full. The stated rationale is wildfire and active management, but the peer-reviewed evidence points the other way. A 19922024 analysis of all eight contiguous Forest Service regions found 7.99 ignitions per 1,000 hectares within 50 meters of roads, against 1.97 in inventoried roadless areas, and concluded that building roads into roadless areas is likely to produce more fires (Aplet et al. 2026). The existing rule already has exceptions that allow timber projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk, so rescission is not needed to treat fuels where it matters. Rescission would also put water supplies at risk. Roadless areas are the primary protection for more than 100,000 km of streams and rivers, and watersheds they influence supply drinking water to at least 25 million Americans (Olden et al. 2026). Road construction and logging raise sediment loads and treatment costs for downstream communities. The final EIS should address these findings directly and explain how more roads would reduce, not increase, fire starts. I am a lifetime beneficiary of the services derived from US roadless areas. I have hiked the Appalachian Trail through roadless areas in Virginia, North Carolina and New Hampshire and have benefitted from the wildlife habitat services of roadless areas in many other states. Roadless areas are a uniquely American invention. No other country in the world has had the foresight to protect wildlands such as these for future generations. It is inconceivable to me that we would forgo the benefits of these uniquely productive areas on such flimsy grounds as those proposed. Sincerely, Christopher J. Ruhm, Charlottesville, VA 22901 References: Aplet, G.H., Hartger, P., & Dietz, M.S. (2026). Three-decade record of contiguous-U.S. national forest wildfires indicates increased density of ignitions near roads. Fire Ecology 22:8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-026-00450-2 Olden, J.D., Postel, S.L., Dombeck, M.P., Kesting, H., Freeman, P., & Comte, L. (2026). Assessing the value of the U.S. Roadless Rule for people and nature. PLOS Water 5(7): e0000538. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000538

Subject: Public Comment Supporting the "No Action" Alternative – Opposing the Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Docket FS-2025-0001) Dear USDA Forest Service Planning Team, I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. As a resident of Herndon, VA and someone who regularly enjoys recreation and appreciates the beauty and necessity for clean water in Utah forests near Moab these lands are deeply important to me. I have visited often and have family residing in that area and the protection of these lands is a high priority for me. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) fails to demonstrate that rescinding the Roadless Rule will reduce wildfire risks, improve ecological health, or benefit local economies. Instead, opening over 45 million acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas to new road construction and commercial logging will fragment vital wildlife corridors, disrupt intact watersheds, and threaten clean drinking water supplies. Furthermore, the Forest Service already struggles with a massive maintenance backlog for its existing road network; building and maintaining new roads in remote backcountry is a poor use of public resources and runs counter to the public interest. For these reasons, I urge the Forest Service to reject the proposed rule and select Alternative 1 (the No Action Alternative) to keep the 2001 Roadless Rule fully intact. Sincerely, Barbar Welsh Herndon, VA 20170

Picture the blue ridge mountains with gaps in the forest. It's just not the same. Sincerely, Kris Oursler 2938 Forest Acre Ct Salem, VA 24153-8723 rushandrize@gmail.com

Dear Special Areas: Roadless Area Conservation, se01nsnn se01nsnn , As a U.S. citizen who cares deeply about national parks and the public lands that sustain them, I urge all legislators to choose the No Action alternative and uphold the existing Roadless Rule. Prior Congressmen and women put the rule in place more than 20 years ago to protect roughly 44.7 million acres of ecologically intact national forest lands, including areas near Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. Their wisdom has protected wild places, safeguarded clean water, provided essential wildlife habitat, supported outdoor recreation, and helped keep park ecosystems connected and healthy. We call on our current leaders to uphold their commitment. 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. Rebecca Ragan 15841 Fourmile Creek Ct Haymarket, VA 20169 Sincerely, Rebecca Ragan

Re: Docket FS-2025-0001, RIN 0596-AD66, proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule I oppose the proposed rescission and urge the Department to select the no-action alternative, keeping the 2001 Roadless Rule in full. The stated rationale is wildfire and active management, but the peer-reviewed evidence points the other way. A 19922024 analysis of all eight contiguous Forest Service regions found 7.99 ignitions per 1,000 hectares within 50 meters of roads, against 1.97 in inventoried roadless areas, and concluded that building roads into roadless areas is likely to produce more fires (Aplet et al. 2026). The existing rule already has exceptions that allow timber projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk, so rescission is not needed to treat fuels where it matters. Rescission would also put water supplies at risk. Roadless areas are the primary protection for more than 100,000 km of streams and rivers, and watersheds they influence supply drinking water to at least 25 million Americans (Olden et al. 2026). Road construction and logging raise sediment loads and treatment costs for downstream communities. The final EIS should address these findings directly and explain how more roads would reduce, not increase, fire starts. I am a lifetime beneficiary of the services derived from US roadless areas. The water supply in my hometown is partly derived from roadless areas in George Washington National Forest. I have hiked the Appalachian Trail through roadless areas in Virginia, North Carolina and New Hampshire. I have benefited from the wildlife habitat services of roadless areas in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Utah, Oregon, and California, and surely more that I can't even remember. Roadless areas are a uniquely American invention. No other country in the world has had the foresight to protect wildlands such as these for future generations. It is inconceivable to me that we would forgo the benefits of these uniquely productive areas on such flimsy grounds as those proposed. Sincerely, William M. Shobe, Charlottesville, VA 22901 References: Aplet, G.H., Hartger, P., & Dietz, M.S. (2026). Three-decade record of contiguous-U.S. national forest wildfires indicates increased density of ignitions near roads. Fire Ecology 22:8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-026-00450-2 Olden, J.D., Postel, S.L., Dombeck, M.P., Kesting, H., Freeman, P., & Comte, L. (2026). Assessing the value of the U.S. Roadless Rule for people and nature. PLOS Water 5(7): e0000538. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000538

Dear Special Areas: Roadless Area Conservation, Dear Honorable Administrators or Directors, I trust that above all things you value the life forms of Earth ( humans, wildlife, nature ). Businesses, corporations, logging and mining are not life forms. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's is proposing a complete rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule, I ask you to resist making this change. This is a move that harms life forms of Earth of which nature's rivers and federal lands deserve protections and wise and necessary use only. Since 2001, the Roadless Rule has protected millions of acres of national forest lands that form the headwaters of some of the nation's most critical drinking water sources. Roadless areas safeguard more than 80,000 miles of rivers and streams, protecting fish and wildlife habitat and helping ensure clean drinking water for more than 25 million Americans, including residents of Denver, Atlanta, and Bozeman. Please reconsider Your proposal and keep the Roadless Rule as it is: a significant protection for rivers, clean water, for the benefit of wildlife, humans and nature, across the country. Most Respectfully Steve Tingen Chantilly, VA 20151 Sincerely, , VA 20151 steven_tingen@hotmail.com Sincerely, Mr. Steve Tingen

Dear Special Areas: Roadless Area Conservation, Dear Honorable Administrators, The U.S. Department of Agriculture's is proposing a complete rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule, I ask you "do not" make this change. This is a move that harms all life forms of Earth, of which nature's rivers and federal lands deserve protections and wise and necessary use only. Since 2001, the Roadless Rule has protected millions of acres of national forest lands that form the headwaters of some of the nation's most critical drinking water sources. Roadless areas safeguard more than 80,000 miles of rivers and streams, protecting fish and wildlife habitat and helping ensure clean drinking water for more than 25 million Americans, including residents of Denver, Atlanta, and Bozeman. Please reconsider Your proposal and keep the Roadless Rule as it is: a significant protection for rivers, clean water, for the benefit of wildlife, humans and nature, across the country. Most Respectfully Nancy Tingen Chantilly, VA 20151 Sincerely, Nancy Tingen 14543 Braniff Circle Chantilly, VA 20151 nancy_tingen@hotmail.com Sincerely, Nancy Tingen

I strongly oppose the rollback of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Growing up on 5 acres of wetland in Illinois, I witnessed the benefits of flooding-resilience and wildlife conservation that active, well-protected wetlands can offer to an entire neighborhood. Illinois lost 90% of its wetlands to development that couldn’t see past quick profit to good longterm land management. We lost valuable, beautiful land that efficiently cleaned our air, filtered our water, kept soil quality high, and for the lucky few like me that grew up on them, offered an incredible connection to nature rarely found in our heavily, inefficiently developed country. The kind of beautiful natural world that first attracted indigenous people and pioneers to the Midwest. Instead, the flooded roads I navigated driving through suburbs built on poor drainage, too many impervious road surfaces, and eroding top soil to high school were a yearly reminder of our tendency towards poor foresight. Forests do similar good. Yet Illinois has already lost over 80% of its original forests. For more than two decades, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has protected much of the sliver of wildness that remains in our national forests. The protections have been particularly vital in the Midwest, where less than 200,000 acres of roadless, untrammeled forest lands survived the widespread logging of the past two centuries. From Wisconsin's Chequamegon-Nicolet to Michigan's Ottawa, Hiawatha, and Huron-Manistee, the Midwest’s national forests have important roadless areas that provide critical habitat for wildlife, clean our drinking water, store carbon, and offer refuge for people seeking quiet and beauty. These roadless areas are also an enormous resource for the recreation economy in the Midwest, a sector that added 26.37 billion dollars to Illinois’ economy and contributed nearly 180k jobs to Illinoisans in 2024 alone. I urge you to stop rolling back protections for our public lands and leave our last wild forests intact. These forests took millennia to develop the unique ecosystems on which countless lives, human and otherwise, rely. And once we disturb that without thoroughly considering how we want future generations to experience the natural world, as history has proven again and again, there is no easy way to fix our mistakes. Please keep the Roadless Rule in place. Sincerely, Ms Vicky Wen 2001 N Daniel St Arlington, VA 22201-4141 vickyjywen@gmail.com

The currently-held protections for 45 million acres of wild and roadless forests MUST be maintained! Please - do NOT rescind or alter the Roadless Area Conservation Rule! The mature and old-growth trees can NOT be replaced, and must be maintained to protect and preserve the irreplaceable and critical habitat that protects SO many species both plant and animal, that simply can NOT survive without them. Wild forests must remain protected from road-building, commercial logging and mining. Keep our national forests wild. Sincerely, Bonnie J. Smith 1922 Mud Pike Christiansbrg, VA 24073-7032 iaonte@yahoo.com

I strongly oppose the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule. Our national forests are public lands, our shared birthright, and they should be protected for the benefit of everyone, not opened to greater roadbuilding and commercial logging. In West Virginia, the Roadless Rule safeguards treasured places like Roaring Plains, Seneca Creek, Cheat Mountain, Canaan Mountain and Tea Creek, while protecting important buffers around Dolly Sods, Otter Creek and Cranberry. These wild, unfragmented landscapes provide clean water, wildlife habitat and irreplaceable opportunities for outdoor recreation. Once they are lost, we cannot easily restore them. Please preserve the Roadless Rule and protect our shared public lands for future generations. The whole purpose of protected natural lands is to enjoy them without the encroachments that will ensue if this is passed. I for one specifically visit these parts to enjoy being away from what the repeal would create. These are protected lands and should remain as such. Forests such as these are natural treasure that should be protected so all can enjoy them. Sincerely, Matt Kasprzak 1134 Colonial Ave Alexandria, VA 22314-1325 kasprzakmatt@gmail.com

Docket ID: FS-2025-0001 / RIN 0596-AD66 Subject: Please Preserve the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule Dear Secretary Rollins and U.S. Forest Service Leadership, I respectfully urge the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider its proposal to eliminate the protections established by the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. For more than two decades, the rule has helped safeguard millions of acres of undeveloped national forest land from activities such as commercial timber harvesting, mining, and extensive road construction. My concern is especially significant here in Virginia. Nearly 394,000 acres within the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests are designated as roadless, representing the largest amount of protected roadless acreage in the eastern United States. Rescinding the existing rule could leave more than 332,000 of those acres without their current protections. These lands provide benefits that extend far beyond simply preserving undeveloped forests. Water quality is one of those benefits. Healthy, intact forests help protect watersheds relied upon by communities downstream. Expanding roads and commercial activity into currently undeveloped areas creates unnecessary risks to those water resources. Outdoor recreation is another important consideration. Virginia's national forests support hiking, hunting, fishing, mountain biking, and portions of the Appalachian Trail. These recreational opportunities are important not only to residents and visitors but also to the rural communities and businesses that benefit from outdoor tourism. Once these resources are lost, there is no getting them back. Wildlife habitat would also face greater pressure. Road construction can divide otherwise connected habitats, increase interactions between vehicles and wildlife, and negatively affect the cold-water streams that native brook trout depend upon. There is also a practical financial concern. The Forest Service already faces substantial demands associated with maintaining its existing road network. Creating opportunities for additional road construction would add new long-term responsibilities at a time when agency staffing and maintenance resources are already strained. Our national forests should be managed with future generations in mind. Once intact landscapes are fragmented by roads and development, restoring them can be difficult and costly. The Roadless Rule offers a reasonable way to protect these places while preserving their ecological, recreational, and economic value. For these reasons, I respectfully ask the U.S. Forest Service to withdraw the proposed rescission and maintain the protections provided by the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. When we lose an untouched forest, we lose something no amount of money or time can truly replace. Please protect it. Thank you for considering my comments. Sincerely, Alan Eberle 705 McCormick Blvd Clifton Forge, VA 24422 540/968-3151

I strongly oppose the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule. Our national forests are public lands, our shared birthright, and they should be protected for the benefit of everyone, not opened to greater roadbuilding and commercial logging. In West Virginia, the Roadless Rule safeguards treasured places like Roaring Plains, Seneca Creek, Cheat Mountain, Canaan Mountain and Tea Creek, while protecting important buffers around Dolly Sods, Otter Creek and Cranberry. These wild, unfragmented landscapes provide clean water, wildlife habitat and irreplaceable opportunities for outdoor recreation. Once they are lost, we cannot easily restore them. Please preserve the Roadless Rule and protect our shared public lands for future generations. While we live in VA , our Family (husband,daughter, son, & myself) has spent countless vacations, all amazing regardless of the weather, hiking, backpacking, & tent camping (sometimes without a tent ) in the wilds of WV, including especially Roaring Plains, Dolly Sods, Cranberry Backcountry, Seneca Creek, Otter Creek, & Laurel Creek Wilderness (>50 yrs). It is our belief all those areas and more continue to need maximum protection from any incursions that in any way would contribute to their fragmentation and the resulting destruction of WV's natural beauty , its native flora & fauna habitats , and the sacred silence that is a vital part of one's experiences in the wild. Please - in the face of this country's burgeoning development - do not rescind or in any way alter the roadless rule , compromising the holy beauty of WV's mountains, forests, & wild lands. Do not destroy that which can never be restored or replaced. Please ! Keep West Virginia wild & wonderful. Sincerely, Mrs. Natalie DeBoer, Mr. Jon DeBoer, Sarah DeBoer, & William DeBoer Henrico VA 23229 natdebo53@gmail.com Sincerely, Natalie DeBoer 8823 Michaux Ln Richmond, VA 23229-6337 natdebo53@gmail.com

I strongly oppose the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule. I believe strongly in the value of this rule. It protects public lands against degradation. When it was issued, the roadless rule was a landmark moment in extending protections to areas outside congressionally designated wilderness areas. Moreover, it helped end decades of expensive overbuilding of the Forest Service road network, overbuilding that left the USFS with a backlog of infrastructure projects that it could not possibly catch up with. In other words, the rule makes good fiscal sense as well as good sense from an environmental protection standpoint. I can personally attest to its effects. Forest Service lands protected by the roadless rule have provided me and my family with countless recreational experience that would have been diminished without the rule's protections. Sincerely, Bryant Etheridge 607 Marshall St Lexington, VA 24450-1921 bryantetheridge@hotmail.com

I oppose the proposed rescinding of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (2001 Roadless Rule) I have listed some of the areas with in the National Forest System lands that I have visited. A road would eliminate some of the areas of all its natural feelings. Others would lose their natural landscaping. Just because the land is roadless does not keep visitors from a far. I have hiked the Falls of Hills Creek up stream to the falls (not the tourist path) Seneca Creek up stream till it was too steep and hiked Roaring Plains and camped on Cheat Mountain. Also hiked, camped and skied North Fork Mountain. Of course, I have stayed at many State Parks and other lodgings during the week and on weekends including a night when it was -24F as a tourist averaging 10-30 days a year in the WV Highlands etc. for 57 years till COVID came. Of course I didn't do all this alone having introduced about 30 first time visitors to WV. All this while living in Richmond, VA and other nearby areas. Yours, John Tichenor Sincerely, John Tichenor PO Box 71360 Henrico, VA 23255-1360 johnjohn5670@yahoo.com

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. 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. Zach Ragbourn 2905 18th Street S Arlington, VA 22204 Sincerely, Zach Ragbourn

I am writing in opposition to the proposal to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule [FS-2025-0001]. For nearly 25 years this rule has protected backcountry habitat, clean headwaters, and quiet recreation areas from industrial road-building and commercial extraction, and it should stay in place. I grew up in Skagit County, Washington, and my family still lives there. The Skagit River, its salmon and steelhead runs, and the farms and towns along it all depend on cold, clean water coming out of the Cascades. A lot of that water starts in roadless country. I now live in the DC area, but I go back often, and hiking and camping in the North Cascades are a big part of why that place still feels like home. These roadless landscapes matter for practical reasons, not just scenic ones. They provide unbroken habitat corridors that wide-ranging species like wolverine and lynx need to move and survive. They protect the headwaters that downstream communities and fisheries rely on. Washington alone has more than 2 million roadless acres across the Cascades, Kettles, Selkirks, Olympics, and Blue Mountains, and these areas also support hunting, fishing, and other backcountry traditions. Rolling back this rule would mean more roads cut into fragile terrain, more fragmented habitat, and worse water quality downstream. It would also raise fire risk rather than lower it: most wildfires are human-caused, and more roads mean more chances for fires to start in these lands. And the Forest Service already can't keep up with the roads it has. I camp off existing forest roads regularly, and I've seen how rough many of them already are. Adding thousands of new miles would only make that backlog worse. Undoing this rule would do lasting damage to places like the ones I grew up around, and to a conservation legacy that benefits all Americans. I urge you to keep the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in place. Sincerely, Anonymous Alexandria, VA 22314

We need our elected officials to stand up for our green spaces. It appears that some people do not want to lump humans and wildlife together as one group that desperately needs untouched green spaces. Roadless tracts of land are not “undeveloped;” they are a thriving ecosystem that benefit everyone. A managed forest is not an ecosystem. It is a tree plantation. When loggers go into an area to thin trees, they wreak havoc. Our nation continues to fragment habitats. Animals are hit by cars causing loss of life and property. Will we be like countries in Europe with no old growth forests left? Will consumerism be the cause of our eventual demise as we continue to kill the very ecosystems that support our continued survival? If our state representatives and local boards will not protect our land and our water, we need our federal representatives to stand up and save our wild places. Karen Hoffman 20683 Tally Ho Ct Ashburn, VA 20147

Marjorie M. Lewter DVM 876 Sinking Spring Hollow New Castle, VA 24127 Sept 17, 2026 Re: DEIS Roadless rule To whom it may concern, I live adjacent to Jefferson National Forest and it is a shawl of protection. It is a repository of protection, clean misty air, clear limestone water, and wildlife that together enhance the quality of life for everyone who visits my farm, lives in this valley, this county and this state. The national forest belongs to all Americans, not to the USDA, not to the Forest Service, and not to congressional leaders. These entities have been given the task to administer and protect the natural resources that our forest lands contain. Resources such as water and timber are renewable, thus the forest continues to supply generations with these essentials. Just as essential are the things not extracted by humans such as the amazing variety of Appalachian plants that feed the ecosystem with nectar, pollen, seeds, fruits and medicines. I write to ask that the roadless rules remain in place to protect our forests. Building more roads for the purpose of vehicular traffic serves the interests of business entities interested in resource extraction. People can access the forest lands by trails and current roads without building more roads. The roads we have in my county of Craig, Virginia are not maintained so how much more money will be required to maintain more than we have currently? Roads must be maintained or they become a ravine for soil erosion and flooding. Our steep mountain roads must have water bars or culverts to prevent wash-out. Most are undrivable , even with my 4WD truck. It has been stated that fire control might be enhanced by building of more roads. This is not supported by the evidence that over 90% of wildfires are human caused. Allowing more people and vehicles in the back country will invite more fires, not less. In addition, the current regulations allow for building of temporary roads for fire control. Wildfire is taking over 50% of the budget of the USFS, so we would not want to invite more people into the back country to start more fires! With the vehicles, will come invasive species of plants, invasive insects such as the Gypsy Moth, Emerald Ash Borer, and the Spotted Lanternfly which highly contribute to the danger of wildfires when trees are dying or dead from insect pests. The increased access to logging associated with new roads in roadless areas will take away some of the pristeen back country that America is known for. It will further cut up ecosystems and habitats for our game species such as bear and elk. Where logging is recommended, temporary roads are allowed for access currently. In an era of climate change and more severe weather events, I have witnessed flooding and timber damage that no road can control and even the clearing of current roads after these events has taken many months. (Example is Flat top trail system and Dismal Creek Road in Jefferson National Forest). It seems that the Forest Service has enough on its plate right now rather than adding more financial and labor needs to its budget. I am a trail volunteer with Back Country Horsemen of America and we try to help our local rangers with the work load, but we constantly hear their budget woes. He Appalachian Scenic Trail passes along the mountain behind my farm and numerous hikers are in the area near me. My Air BnB guests are mostly hikers. These recreation benefits to the community cannot be measured in dollars. In addition, I am Chair of Preserve Craig, Inc. a nonprofit organization which seeks to preserve our way of life here. We are an agricultural community in a sparsely populated region that depends on tourism as a large attraction. The vast majority of that tourism is directly related to the Jefferson National Forest for hunting, hiking, biking, and trail riding. He roadless rule was put into place to protect our forest lands and today, they need protection more than ever as a repository of resources, animal and plant diversity and a carbon capture system of healthy trees. The rule received extensive comments and support across the country. It was a good decision then and remains so. I ask you to do all you can to prevent rescinding the roadless rule. Sincerely, Dr. Marjorie Lewter