“Re: Proposed rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Docket FS-2025-0001) I am writing to oppose…”

Re: Proposed rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Docket FS-2025-0001) I am writing to oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. For 25 years, this rule has protected 45 million acres of National Forest System land from new road construction and large-scale logging, while still allowing recreation and responsible forest management, including wildfire prevention. It was created through one of the most extensive public processes in federal rulemaking history, and the public has supported it overwhelmingly ever since. In Minnesota, 62,000 acres of the Superior National Forest are protected under this rule. These roadless areas border the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and safeguard the clean water, intact forests, and critical wildlife habitat — including habitat for the threatened Canada lynx — that define this landscape. Building roads into these areas would fragment habitat, threaten water quality in one of America’s most treasured wilderness watersheds, and add costly new road maintenance obligations to a Forest Service road system that is already underfunded. The Roadless Rule works. Rescinding it would undo a quarter century of protection that the American public asked for and continues to support. I urge the Forest Service to withdraw this proposal and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule fully in place.