Read the comments.

With respect to the Special Areas Roadless Area Conservation, do not pass this bill. There is a reason that we had to pass a bill protecting our areas before. WHY would we want to reverse and let companies who are out for profit destroy our forested area. The land belongs to the people! Keep industry, corportations and individuals from using up our lands. If we can not learn from the past we will be doomed to repeat it. The benefit from protecting our forests out weighs ANY monitary benefits just to satify the stockholders. Our country lost our forests before and after protecting the land it is now beautiful and benefitial to everyone

I emphatically oppose the proposed rescinding of the Roadless Rule. None of the Trump Administration's justifications for rescinding the Roadless Rule are valid, and none of them are supported by science. Substantially more forest cover is lost to wildfire in roaded forests than roadless; the cost of building new or reopening decommissioned roads exceeds the value of merchantable timber available for harvest by orders of magnitude in the vast majority of cases; and we need more, not fewer, wild places preserved by limiting motorized access. I call on Congress and the President to preserve the Roadless Rule in its current form.

Please under no circumstances can this rule be rescinded. It would destroy the natural beauty of this nation and wreak havoc on ecosystems and local economies. Loss of natural habitat would lead to reduced crop yields as local climate and weather is often tied very closely to the vitality and diversity of local ecosystems. These forests also provide a significant carbon sink and whether you believe it or not climate change is going to keep getting worse (it’s settled scientific fact something this department should care about). Reducing forest land will accelerate it. All the profits developers are seeking by scrapping this rule mean nothing if the world they create is unlivable. Also, I take issue with the decision that this would not affect American families. Outdoor recreation represents a huge variety of family activities which support their health and happiness. Removing this rule would decimate the ability for families to enjoy these beautiful natural habitats all in the name of profits for a handful of greedy corporations. It’s unconscionably immoral what you are trying to do here and I hope the hundreds of thousands of comments you got make you realize that. I also guarantee that millions of comments would flood in if more people knew about this but it seems as though the government and media are uninterested in getting the word out about this rule change. Nobody likes this.

I oppose the proposal to fully and partially rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. As someone who lives in the Tongass National Forest rescinding the Roadless Rule will greatly negatively impact thousands and that’s just here in Alaska! Rescinding the Roadless Rule will not meaningfully reduce wildfire risk. In fact, it's likely to increase it. - "The proportion of human-caused fires in Roadless areas is less than half. on other NFS lands, which may be due in part to public access limitations. The incidence of human-caused fires generally increases with proximity to roads." (pg 86; see Aplet et al. 2026) USFS doesn't have the budget to maintain their existing road infrastructure, much less new ones. - Costs for maintaining roads = $5,000-$50,000 / mile. Costs for building new roads = $80,000 - $2 million / mile, depending on if the road is dirt, gravel, or asphault. (pg 42) - The Forest Service has a $7 billion deferred maintenance backlog, and an estimated $1.6 billion is needed annually to maintain existing roadways. In 2023, the USFS received <20% of this amount for road maintenance. (pg 42) - Less than 30% of NFS roads are in 'good condition' (pg 40) - The DEIS states "...revenue generated by timber sales or other resource extraction activities would be used for some road-related system management but not be sufficient to cover the costs of constructing and maintaining all new roads related to a project." (pg 45) These are just a couple examples of the many why rescinding the Roadless Rule is shortsighted and reckless. The decisions of what happens to our public lands are most often made by those who will never be impacted by their actions and the communities who rely on our public lands. Destroying our forests and public lands for short term gains will be irreversible. Please stop this madness. Concerned Juneau and Tongass National Forest resident.

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The humpback whales we watched around Baranof Island brought me to this fight. I want those waters protected, and I want to know exactly how logging the Port Alexander and North Baranof roadless areas, covering 120,681 acres and 314,089 acres respectively in the Tongass National Forest, will affect the humpback whales who frequent those waters. The Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest left on Earth, holding over 12,930 miles of salmon-producing streams. Executive Order 14153 directs the agency to expressly exclude the Tongass from the 2001 Roadless Rule, and the Federal Register rescission notice says so in writing. Under both action alternatives the Tongass keeps zero acres of roadless protection. I oppose that outcome completely. I also paddle parts of the Teanaway River, which flows through the Teanaway roadless area in Wenatchee National Forest. Washington holds 139 inventoried roadless areas totaling 2,014,832 acres, and across the Pacific Northwest region 1,522 municipal water intakes sit in watersheds containing affected roadless areas. Washington State is currently in the fourth consecutive year of drought and in a drought emergency. Our rivers have remained free flowing. How will rescission affect the volume of water and sediment load in the Naches, Tieton, and Yakima rivers and all their tributaries on the east side of the Cascades? Removing riparian vegetation can raise stream temperatures beyond what suits cold-water species, and warmer temperatures can reduce egg survival, rearing densities and growth of coho salmon, in habitat the DEIS identifies as Essential Fish Habitat and critical habitat managed by NMFS. I want to know what the effect on local salmon runs will be, and I ask the agency to answer that question squarely in the final record. We have visited Hyder, Alaska the last two summers and enjoyed watching the bears fishing at the USFS Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site. The DEIS quotes the federal grizzly recovery plan directly: 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. How will rescission affect the number of bears and salmon that come to that observation site? The agency must address this. The national forests of Washington state already show scars from previous National Forest roads that remain in place, many of those roads receiving no maintenance. The agency is already $6.9 billion behind on maintaining the roads it has, against a road budget of about $73 million a year. What will happen to the service level on current National Forest roads if the roadless rule is repealed and additional roads are built? How much will that cost taxpayers? 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." I ask that the agency reconcile the proposal with its own economic analysis, which projects $5.2 to $11.4 million a year in timber revenue to the Forest Service against recreation losses of at least $6.1 million a year and a net present value spanning -$92 million to +$199 million, and that it explain how an action whose own Cost Benefit Analysis cannot establish a net benefit justifies expanding a road system already carrying that backlog. The agency's own record also 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 justifies rescission partly on wildfire and fuels management grounds. Those two positions cannot both be right. I ask that the agency explain why the proposal departs from its own prior findings on fire occurrence and reconcile the rescission with the ignition data in DEIS Table 21, which reports far higher fire density on roaded land than inside the affected roadless areas. 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. The agency must identify and weigh the reliance interests described in the comments it receives, including this one, before it takes any final action. Sincerely, Margaret Van Cleve Selah, WA

America's National Parks, National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, and other related lands are the property of all United States citizens. They are preserved as wild spaces by and for the people of this country. The agencies that have been tasked with their care and oversight are not given the right to simply start using these assets for whatever they want. It would be like a bank manager going into the safety deposit boxes and simply taking what they wanted or melting down all the gold to make a super tacky sculpture for the lobby. I think most people can agree that this would never be allowed. That manager would be personally liable and almost certainly have some prison time coming. Similarly, just because you hold a position as an employee paid by the citizens of the United States, in no way way does that give you the right to start pilfering our assets and passing them to your golfing buddies. Millions of people are watching you try to steal what isn't yours. We can see the difference between good management and theft. And just like that tacky gold statue, destroying assets that bring in millions of dollars every year to the surrounding communities is not good management. It's wildly shortsighted and serves only to benefit a very select few. We see what you are doing. And so even if you can't personally understand the myriad benefits that millions of people flock to their parks for, understand that what you are proposing is simply a very visible means to theft.

Re: Docket FS-2025-0001 — Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule I urge USDA to keep the 2001 Roadless Rule and make targeted improvements to it, rather than rescinding it. I support fiscal discipline, active wildfire management, and responsible use of public resources. A full rescission works against all three. It would add costs for taxpayers and take something valuable from sportsmen and rural communities. 1. Fiscal responsibility: The Forest Service already has an estimated $6.9 billion backlog in road and bridge maintenance. Every new mile of backcountry road becomes a permanent liability on the federal balance sheet. Taxpayers should not be asked to pay for new roads when the agency cannot maintain the ones it has. The agency's own analysis finds only about 4.8 million acres where timber operations would be both allowed and physically feasible. That is a small share of the roughly 45 million acres affected, so the economic return does not justify the cost. 2. The rule is not what's stopping wildfire work. The agency's own management records show that fuel treatments in roadless areas have been carried out at a higher rate per square kilometer than elsewhere in the National Forest System. Research covering three decades of data found that wildfire ignitions are least dense in roadless and wilderness areas. Areas within about 160 feet of a road see up to four times as many ignitions, mostly from human causes. Mitigation dollars do the most good near homes and communities, not in remote backcountry. If you want to address wildfire risk, increase funding to the Forest Service. 3. Hunting and fishing heritage: Roadless areas hold some of the best big-game habitat left in the country. About 58% of them overlap elk habitat, and about 70% hold native trout or salmon. The hunters and anglers who use these areas bring steady revenue to gateway towns across the West, and that revenue depends on secure, undisturbed habitat. Sportsmen's groups such as Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and Trout Unlimited have urged USDA to keep the rule. As an Idaho resident, hunting and fishing access are important to me personally, but also to ours state's economy in the form of tourism. People come here to see pristine, undisturbed areas and hunt game that require undisturbed habitat. 4. Clean water for local communities. Roadless areas protect the headwaters of 354 municipal watersheds. For many small towns, intact forest is the cheapest water treatment available. If that protection is lost, local ratepayers will face treatment costs they cannot easily absorb. And it will be mostly rural, low-resource communities that feel this most. 5. National forests are owned by all Americans: the hunter in Idaho, the angler in Ohio, and the rancher in Montana alike. Decisions about their most intact backcountry should not depend on whoever has the most influence in a given planning cycle or statehouse. The 2001 rule was adopted after more than 600 public meetings and 1.6 million public comments. It has given land users, businesses, and communities 25 years of predictable rules. Rescinding it would replace that certainty with forest-by-forest decisions that can change with every plan revision, and with years of costly litigation. I respectfully ask USDA to withdraw the proposed rescission. Instead, the agency could clarify and streamline the rule's existing exceptions for fuels reduction and wildfire response, and increase funding to the Forest Service to better manage and protect these lands. That would deliver the management flexibility the agency is seeking while keeping America's best remaining backcountry intact for the public that owns it.

I strongly oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and urge USDA to select Alternative 1, No Action. I am a year-round South Lake Tahoe-area resident living in a community directly affected by wildfire risk and economically dependent on healthy public lands. My attached comment addresses wildfire management under the existing Rule, USDA's own characterization of expected near-term management opportunities as "modest and localized," recreation and tourism reliance interests, and the fiscal consequences of expanding an already underfunded Forest Service road network. Please consider the attached document as my full substantive comment.

Please keep the roadless rule. This economy is already in a terrible state and will get worse if this goes through. These beautiful sites bring in tourists that will boost our economy and in times like these we need every boost we can get. I have seen first hand the money this level of tariff can bring. And without the money at the end of the day we are human. I can say like majority of Americans would like to share these sites with our children one day. Stand with Christian values and protect God’s first gift to man, the earth.

Conservation is a relatively new practice which, I personally feel, is a great step forward for us as a species. We've been gifted a beautiful world to live on, we just have to make sure to keep it that way. Throughout history we expanded over the lands, building great empires. But in the process, we made permanent changes to the face of our home. There are many countries with a longer history than that of the current United States, who have already lost their chance to preserve the natural beauty and wonder of their homeland. And while we can replant forests, we can't replant the hundreds to thousands of years worth of time they spent growing, nor can we replant the many, many plants that have been permanently lost, due to the loss of their habitat. This is a Fleeting moment in time and history, just as each moment before now, where we can make a choice. We previously didn't know nor understand the consequences of our actions regarding nature, but as we have grown, we have Learned. There is precious little Old Growth forest left on Earth, let alone in the U.S., and we have the potential to lose it all, here and now. The great forests we explored as children, or even as adults, that filled us with wonder and beauty, could be forever lost. With full understanding of the costs, we could lose some of the last remaining natural beauty in the world. That our children, and our children's children, might never experience the beauty of their home, would be a great sin. And if that isn't enough to convince, then to briefly touch on the dry, economic aspects of this conversation, the meager pittance gained by the lumber companies and other developers, would far outweigh the cost that would be accrued due to the loss of this nature. Forests clean our air, purify our water, and protect the life on this earth in myriad ways. To rescind the Roadless rule would not benefit the People. It may temporarily benefit a few companies, but the cost would be paid by us all. Please, Don't Rescind this rule. If you still have some wonder, or love, in your hearts, then please protect Our nature, Our Home. See attached file(s)

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule should not be repealed. I live in Bishop, California within sight of several roadless areas and I frequently recreate in them. Wildfire prevention and suppression are not valid reasons for a repeal. The vast majority of wildland fires are actually started by humans near roads. Adding more roads will likely increase the frequency of fires in this important ecological and recreational reserves. The Forest Service already has the authority to access these areas and new road construction will cause more damage and add to a growing unfunded maintenance backlog. I live near the Pacific Crest Trail, through-hiked the trail in 1988 and use portions of it every year. About 288 miles of the PCT passes near or through lands that would be affected by a repeal. Aside from being a wonderful recreational experience for thousands if not millions per year, the PCT also brings visitors to rural America and powers a large outdoor recreation economy. I know that it is very important in my area of the Eastern Sierra of California and Nevada. There will be no major increase in logging employment as many mills and logging operations have ceased to exist in the rural West. This proposed repeal will damage an important environmental resource and source of recreational employment without commensurate economic gains. Do not repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The recision of this regulation would be ill-suited for the long term environmental and economical health of the United States. To do so will incite abuse in rural areas that cannot effectively make their voices, opinions, and concerns heard over far larger corporate slash outside interests. It all but incentivizes bad actors to push for deforestation in parklands and encourages horribly mismanaged exploitation of natural resources in the name of the nebulous idea of 'rural economic opportunity'. Too often is the case where the 'economic opportunity' is a way for resources to be siphoned off away from the local area into privatized interests, giving negligible economic growth to the area at best in the very short term, and a massive environmental bill that gathers interest every year as the norm. Rescinding this would actually encourage the transfer of potential wealth and opportunity away from those local areas, as they often lack the resources (be it monetary, equipment, or manpower-wise) to actually utilize it, leading to outside - often larger privatized entities - to come in and 'take over' so to speak. This means that the local area will not see any of the economic benefits of opening up these lands (or will receive a 'trickle-down' version, which does not work in actuality). Most of the time, these operations will use the local energy/utilities grids without building them up, leading to the locals having to 'share' the existing utilities on a now strained grid. Even if the utilities are built up, the local area will still be left with the bill more often than not in the name of 'investing into the area'. Deforestation and disruption of natural habitats by road building, along with exploitation of natural resources has proven to have far greater and longer lasting negative impacts than any benefits that are provided - such as nesting/den locations being destroyed of endangered/at-risk animals, water sources being reduced or polluted, and the ground becoming polluted and torn up by road building. Local communities are left with decreased environmental health which they will have to deal with themselves, and further leads to health problems and more economic strain (groundwater contamination from resource extraction, airborne pollution causing respiratory issues, soil degradation leading to crops/plants being less healthy and/or more susceptible to increasingly uncommon weather wreaking environmental damage - floods, fires, erosion, etc.) Lastly, under the Trump administration, deregulation has lead to more economic and health damage towards the people of the United States. The deregulation and recision of previous environmental laws has a proven track record of benefiting only private investors, some of whom are foreign, leading to the common citizen to foot the bill for damages caused. These pushes have been done to benefit these mega-corporations, such as the oil and coal businesses, which have a long and damning list of long-term environmental and health damages that far outlast any temporary profit gained from the exploitation of our resources. No one who isn't on the payroll or directly benefiting from these polluting corporations is pushing for this deregulation. Rescinding this will allow for disastrous results.

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 The quiet found in backcountry areas is not available anywhere near roads and human development. I have hiked and camped in many such places, and I know that feeling of time slowing down, that grounded, peaceful quality that simply does not exist where roads are found. Each backcountry location is incredibly unique in so many ways, and each one we have matters for that variety, for the ecosystems found there, and for ourselves and our children's children to be able to experience. The proposal before the agency would put all of that at risk, and the agency's own record makes a poor case for doing so. Start with fire. The agency's own findings state that "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 nevertheless justifies rescission partly on wildfire and fuels management grounds. The agency needs to explain, in plain terms, why this proposal departs from its own prior findings on fire occurrence, and how it reconciles the rescission with the ignition data in its own draft environmental impact statement, which reports far higher fire density on roaded land than inside the affected roadless areas. The economics do not hold up either. The record acknowledges that "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." Those are small numbers to set against significant permanent losses. The agency's own cost-benefit analysis projects $5.2 to $11.4 million a year in timber revenue to the Forest Service against recreation losses of at least $6.1 million a year, with a net present value ranging from -$92 million to +$199 million. That range does not establish a net benefit. Meanwhile, the road system the agency would expand already carries a $6.9 billion maintenance backlog. How does an action whose own analysis cannot demonstrate a net positive outcome justify enlarging that liability? The agency has also been down this road before. The record quotes the agency itself expressing dissatisfaction with the Roadless Rule and rejecting its "inflexible 'one-size-fits-all' nationwide rulemaking approach." 70 Fed.Reg. at 25,656. That dissatisfaction led to a state-by-state replacement, and the Ninth Circuit struck it down. The proposal moves in the same direction again. The agency must address its own prior finding that local decision-making can incrementally erode nationally significant roadless values, and it must explain how this proposal avoids the specific legal deficiencies identified the last time it tried to substitute state processes for one national rule. Finally, the existing rule already accommodates a range of management needs. It "generally banned road building subject to limited exceptions including: the preservation of 'reserved or outstanding rights' or discretionary Forest Service construction necessary for public health and safety. 36 C.F.R. Section 294.12(b)(1),(3)." The exceptions for public health and safety, existing mineral leases, and community wildfire protection are already in the text. The agency claims administrative burden justifies rescission, but it has not shown which specific burdens those exceptions fail to address. It should identify them, by category, and quantify them before going further. The places I am writing about are irreplaceable. That variety of ecosystems, that quiet, that slow-down feeling, once a road cuts through it, it does not come back. The agency has not made a factual, legal, or economic case sufficient to justify this rescission, and I urge it to withdraw it. Kristen Portland, Oregon

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.

Dear Joshua White, Hi my name is Greta Healy and I live in Southeast Alaska. My favorite places in Southeast are the old growth forests. Old, massive trees, mossy forest floors, quiet serene places. The 2001 Roadless Rule has safeguarded the world's largest intact temperate rainforest for nearly twenty-five years, and removing it would be a costly, shortsighted decision that fails the people, economy, and ecosystems of Southeast Alaska. I live in a town where logging roads have totally changed the forests. The woods that have been logged are dense and the undergrowth is impossible to walk through. Small trees that were undesirable for selling still were cut down but instead of being hauled out they were left in place. Walking through a second growth forest is not conducive to recreating and diminishes habitat for wild animals. I fear more roads and logging will further impact ecosystems that our wildlife depend on. Lets use roads we already have. This is what is at stake. The Tongass is the backbone of life and livelihood in Southeast Alaska. It produces the salmon that our subsistence, sport and commercial fisheries depend on. It provides recreation and tourism opportunities that anchor the regions largest private sector industry. It produces our hydropower from abundant rainfall. Roadless forests are critical for our subsistence foods, and subsistence harvesters have repeatedly testified through ANILCA 810 hearings that removing the Roadless Rule will result in reduced subsistence opportunity and productivity. The Tongass is a temperate rainforest that is not subject to the wildfires and the wildland-urban interface issues of national forests down South, and it should not be managed for these issues. Roadbuilding and timber harvest will not reduce insects and disease; it will exacerbate these issues by reducing climate resilience. Removing the 2001 Roadless Rule would also be fiscally irresponsible. In the proposed rule, the agency itself recognizes that there is a $6.9 billion backlog in road maintenance. Taxpayers have subsidized the Tongass timber program at a rate of over $25 million per year, with individual timber sales like Big Thorne losing roughly ten dollars for every dollar of revenue generated. Why should we pay to subsidize a failing timber industry, at the expense of our tourism and outdoor recreation industries? Flexibility and exceptions are important - and the 2001 Roadless Rule already includes them. Roads for hydroelectric projects, mining, telecommunications, and other community needs are allowed 13 of Southeast's 16 hydroelectric projects are located in Roadless areas. A strong future for Alaska would involve investing in ecotourism. Getting people into these wild places with the goal being to appreciate nature. Not extraction. Extraction is unsustainable and eventually will end. Once the trees are gone the logging *money* will go away- yet the roads and the people who love this wild place will still exist and will once again need to figure out how to survive. Why not figure that out now. Removing the 2001 Roadless Rule is a distraction from the work that needs to be done to support our communities. The USDA is wasting time, money, and staff capacity to remove a popular land management rule, while acknowledging themselves that market conditions, operability, and staff time to do actual work on the ground are limited. This is wasteful spending at its worst. The Forest Service should conduct a cost-benefit analysis for the economic impact of removing Roadless protections versus investing in restoration, road and trail maintenance, and recreation infrastructure. If the USDA is actually interested in prioritizing the needs and interests of local forest users, I urge them to listen to what Southeast Alaskans have been saying all along: abandon the proposed repeal and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place on the Tongass National Forest. I support Alternative 1. Greta Healy

The Roadless Rule cannot be repealed. Incredibly environmentally important resources, including old growth forests and sensitive ecosystems, would be destroyed in the process of industrial development. Many threatened species cannot survive with the intrusion of roads, creating a hazard for many small and large mammals and causing their habitat to fragment. As well, the presence of roads tampers with water, and sources of clean water are becoming increasingly difficult to find and to use as a drinkable water supply. Among many other issues, the final one I'll mention is that there are plenty of roads in the US that are on terrain that is ill-suited for construction- such as forests and swamps. This means these roads require more maintainance and more governmental investment overall. The roads that would be constructed if the roadless rule were removed fall under this description. They would be costly to maintain, especially when there are many roads that are in dire need of maintainance already. I make this comment on behalf of my organization, Students for a Democratic Society, which has opted to take a firm stance against the removal of the Roadless rule.

I object to the proposed rule rescinding the "roadless rule." As an American hiker and driver on existing roads, I have had personal experiences that are relevant to the decision. The current rule provides both access to recreational users of public forest lands as well as approved timber activity. The current intersection of these activities is working, and at times can be dangerous. For example, the intersection of timber trucks through a potion of the Redwood Forest pits hikes and sightseers against large, heavy timber trucks. An increase in timber roads will put more Americans in danger. Americans that pay taxes and use their public lands versus companies that take the public resources for private profit. Absolutely no private business would turn over it's property to other private interests to only the benefit of those other private businesses, especially considering such choice might cut into the profitability of other economic activities. Thus, the federal government should not turn over its land to private business when such action is not done at the market rate for such activities and when it reduces the economic development of competing activities, such as hiking, hunting, fishing, and other profitable recreational activities. Additionally the economic benefits of maintaining public land must be considered and not discounted in the analysis of the rule. Any consideration of rescission of the rule must calculate the loss, both direct and indirectly to local areas, of economic value that new roads or loss of certainty in use of the public lands causes. Additionally, any consideration of changing the current rule should take into account the desires of the taxpayers. Without this data, repeal of the rule is made without considering the entirety of the data and situation and is a transgression against the citizens of the United States of America.

It is unnecessary and not in our nation’s interest to rescind these rules. This would only serve to add profit to already bloated corporations. There is no need to strip further resources and destroy large areas of wilderness.

I live in the small rural community of Williams, Oregon, in the Applegate Valley. Grayback Mountain, Big Sugarloaf Peak, the East Applegate Ridge Trail, the Siskiyou Crest: these are places where I hike, mountain bike, and enjoy photography, birdwatching, and relaxing in nature. We live surrounded by public lands managed by the Forest Service and BLM, including several Inventoried Roadless Areas: the Kangaroo Roadless Area, Condrey Mountain, McDonald Peak, Little Grayback and Collings-Kinney, all threatened by the proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule. There is already widespread industrial logging taking place in our watershed, and it disrupts my enjoyment of natural forests, clean water, and the recreational opportunities I depend on. I oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and ask the agency to respond to each of the points below before this rule is finalized. The agency's stated rationale for rescission centers on forest health, but that rationale is not supported by the agency's own document. The notice asserts that "The 2001 Roadless Rule limited the Forest Service's ability to conduct vegetation management within inventoried roadless areas and has contributed to the lack of active management of the national forests, which has contributed to challenges in addressing forest health concerns," as stated in the Rationale for the Proposed Rule. Yet the document also cites research finding that the rule did not meaningfully constrain fuel treatments as a share of forested land, and it acknowledges that insect and disease risk in western roadless areas is similar to or lower than on managed forest land. When I hike through intact old-growth forests on the East Applegate Ridge Trail or watch raptors and migratory songbirds over those stands, I am moving through forests the agency's own data suggest are not in crisis relative to managed lands. The agency must reconcile the forest health rationale with those specific findings, and it must do so with analysis, not assertion. The agency also minimizes recreation losses in a way that obscures their true scale. The notice states that "Assuming an upper limit of a 1 percent annual loss of economic benefit within the likely operable and likely operable but complex areas translates into potential annual losses for trail and dispersed area recreation of $4.8 million and $1.3 million for wildlife-related recreation, nationally," as set out in the Economic Benefits from Recreation in Roadless Area Forests section. That single-year estimate is anchored to a 1 percent harvest cap and set against roadless recreation benefits of upwards of $1.5 billion, while the same section concedes that the magnitude of losses is actually unknown. Roads, once built, are permanent. Recreation settings, once degraded, do not recover on a human timescale. HIking, birdwatching, and landscape photography of old-growth forests and intact native ecosystems, the kind I pursue in these areas, depends entirely on settings that cannot be restored after industrial entry. The agency must estimate cumulative recreation losses over a 20-year horizon as roads compound and settings shift, and compare those figures against projected timber revenue, before this analysis can be considered adequate. Perhaps the most serious gap concerns old-growth forests. The document discloses at the Implications for Forest Vegetation, Health, and Carbon section that in the operable areas most likely to be harvested under the proposed action, "approximately 11-16 percent is old-growth forest, 54-63 percent is mature forest, and 26-31 percent is young forest." Old and mature stands together make up the overwhelming majority of the land the rule would open to logging, yet the document identifies no old-growth-specific protective standard beyond general land management plan compliance. Roadless areas provide clean water for my community of Williams, Oregon, and healthy forests are critical water sources for recreation, wildlife populations, and agricultural irrigation throughout our watershed. Old-growth forests anchor those hydrological functions in ways young plantations cannot replicate. The Forest Service must separately analyze and publicly disclose what old-growth-specific safeguards, if any, would apply before timber harvest could reach those irreplaceable stands. I am tired of seeing taxpayer dollars subsidizing below-cost timber sales, and then further money spent to mitigate the destructive impacts that follow. Roadless areas should be managed for conservation values and the long-term ecological sustainability of the systems we depend on. The American public has expressed strong support for protecting roadless public lands. These areas and the old-growth forests within them should be protected from logging, mining, and industrial development. Protect our public lands for the people of the United States and for future generations.

Dear Joshua White, I am a person of faith who cares about protecting the Pacific Northwest fishery, clean water and old-growth and legacy forests. The 2001 Roadless Rule has safeguarded the world's largest intact temperate rainforest for nearly twenty-five years, and removing it would be a costly, shortsighted decision that fails the people, economy, and ecosystems of Southeast Alaska. Increased road building may increase human incursion into areas prone to wildfire. Mining will pollute pristine waters that support the Alaskan fishery. This is what is at stake. The Tongass is the backbone of life and livelihood in Southeast Alaska. It produces the salmon that our subsistence, sport and commercial fisheries depend on. It provides recreation and tourism opportunities that anchor the regions largest private sector industry. It produces our hydropower from abundant rainfall. Roadless forests are critical for our subsistence foods, and subsistence harvesters have repeatedly testified through ANILCA 810 hearings that removing the Roadless Rule will result in reduced subsistence opportunity and productivity. The Tongass is a temperate rainforest that is not subject to the wildfires and the wildland-urban interface issues of national forests down South, and it should not be managed for these issues. Roadbuilding and timber harvest will not reduce insects and disease; it will exacerbate these issues by reducing climate resilience. Removing the 2001 Roadless Rule would also be fiscally irresponsible. In the proposed rule, the agency itself recognizes that there is a $6.9 billion backlog in road maintenance. Taxpayers have subsidized the Tongass timber program at a rate of over $25 million per year, with individual timber sales like Big Thorne losing roughly ten dollars for every dollar of revenue generated. Why should we pay to subsidize a failing timber industry, at the expense of our tourism and outdoor recreation industries? Flexibility and exceptions are important - and the 2001 Roadless Rule already includes them. Roads for hydroelectric projects, mining, telecommunications, and other community needs are allowed 13 of Southeast's 16 hydroelectric projects are located in Roadless areas. I would like the Forest Service to protect watershed integrity and intact ecosystems in the vast and beautiful northern forest. Removing the 2001 Roadless Rule is a distraction from the work that needs to be done to support our communities. The USDA is wasting time, money, and staff capacity to remove a popular land management rule, while acknowledging themselves that market conditions, operability, and staff time to do actual work on the ground are limited. This is wasteful spending at its worst. The Forest Service should conduct a cost-benefit analysis for the economic impact of removing Roadless protections versus investing in restoration, road and trail maintenance, and recreation infrastructure. If the USDA is actually interested in prioritizing the needs and interests of local forest users, I urge them to listen to what Southeast Alaskans have been saying all along: abandon the proposed repeal and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place on the Tongass National Forest. I support Alternative 1. Kathleen D Delbecq