“I write in furious and unqualified opposition to this proposal, and I do so as a matter of patriotic duty…”

I write in furious and unqualified opposition to this proposal, and I do so as a matter of patriotic duty. There is a species of vandalism that hides behind the language of "flexibility" and "local decision-making," and this is it. Let us be clear about what is actually on the table. This rule would strip protection from roughly 45 million acres, close to one-third of the entire National Forest System, and hand the last unfragmented wild country in America over to the chainsaw and the bulldozer. The USDA's own proposal would strip protections from nearly 45 million acres of national forest, roughly one-third of the National Forest System. These are not abstractions on a map. They are the Tongass, the backcountry of the Rockies, the last quiet places a citizen of this country can still walk into and find unspoiled. The stated justification is a lie dressed as stewardship. We are told this is about wildfire. It is the opposite. Science finds that fires are four times more likely to start near a road than in roadless forests, because more roads mean more people, more discarded cigarettes, more abandoned campfires, and more hot vehicle undercarriages igniting dry grass. You do not protect a forest from fire by carving roads into its heart. You put the match in reach of every careless hand in America. Anyone advancing this proposal in the name of fire prevention is either uninformed or counting on the public to be. And it is a fiscal disgrace on top of an ecological one. The Forest Service already carries a backlog of deferred maintenance for existing roads and bridges that totaled roughly $7 billion last year. The agency cannot maintain the 380,000 miles of road it already owns, yet it proposes to gouge new ones into pristine ground so that private interests can extract a quick profit and leave the public holding the repair bill and the ruined watershed. Do not pretend this is what the country wants. During last fall's comment period, 99% of more than 625,000 comments opposed rescinding this rule, and a Pew survey found that 76% of likely voters nationally supported keeping it. This is not a policy the people are demanding. It is a giveaway being forced over their objection, on a comment window deliberately shortened to muffle them. We do not inherit these forests from our ancestors. We hold them in trust for every American not yet born, and once a road is cut and a roadless area is gone, it is gone for good. No future generation gets to vote to have it back. The grandeur of this country, its wild and unbought spaces, is not a warehouse of raw material to be liquidated for one quarter's profit. It is part of what the word "American" is supposed to mean. To sell it off is a betrayal of the people who set this land aside and of everyone who will come after us. Withdraw this proposal in its entirety. Keep the Roadless Rule intact. Anything less is a dereliction of the public trust.