“To the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Agriculture, I am writing to you in order to oppose the repealing…”

To the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Agriculture, I am writing to you in order to oppose the repealing of the roadless rule, established in 2001. For more than 25 years, this rule has helped protect some of our country's most intact national forests from unnecessary road construction, commercial logging, and industrial development. Repealing it would make it much easier to open millions of acres of public land to new roads, timber harvests, and future oil, gas, mineral, and coal development. New roads do much more than change the landscape. They fragment wildlife habitat, increase erosion, threaten clean water, create pathways for invasive species, and make previously remote areas more vulnerable to development and other damaging extraction processes. We should not weaken protections for our threatened intact forests at a time when they are increasingly important for wildlife, recreation, clean water, and carbon storage. Wildfire mitigation and forest health work can be done without dismantling protections across tens of millions of acres. Public lands belong to all of us, and once these forests are logged, drilled, or developed, we cannot simply restore what was lost. Therefore, I urge the USDA and U.S. Forest Service to withdraw this proposal and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place. Thank you for considering my comment and for protecting our public lands from development. Hands off our lands.