Opposes rescissionA0 noneSubstance 6/24Posted August 24, 2026 On Regulations.gov
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Brooke L. Rollins and Tom Schultz,
As a resident of a watershed-dependent community, I respectfully direct the Department's attention to the hydrological literature documenting the relationship between road density and sediment load in forest streams — literature the proposed rescission's record does not adequately engage.
I am against the rescission of the Roadless Act. It would cause an increase in the number of fires in the National Forests. Also remember that for every two mature trees cut down you deplete the oxygen that a family of four would use. It would take at lease 25 years to restore those trees. Do not destroy our National Forest !
The considerations above inform the position set out in the remainder of this comment.
Regarding the Tusquitee Bald in the Nantahala National Forest, North Carolina:
New road construction, reconstruction, and associated development fragment habitat, introduce disturbance, and eliminate roadless character.
A large share of the U.S. is already road-affected. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of the contiguous United States is ecologically affected by roads, accounting for edge effects, runoff patterns, and downstream disturbance — not just the area of road surface itself. Roughly 80 percent of Earth's terrestrial surface remains roadless, but most of that area is fragmented into patches smaller than 1 square kilometer (Forman & Alexander 1998; Ibisch et al. 2016). — Richard T. T. Forman | Lauren E. Alexander, 1998 · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.29.1.207)
Rescinding the Roadless Rule would open the Tusquitee Bald, Nantahala National Forest to road construction and associated ground disturbance. The direct and indirect effects of that activity are precisely what makes a specific comment about this area necessary.
Putting more roads in roadless areas will cause more fires, a loss of oxygen from the trees and more CO2 in the air that would have been absorbed by the trees. Also, the enormous loss of pure water for people everywhere.
Although proponents of rolling back the Roadless Rule claim it is needed for wildfire management, the peer-reviewed science shows the opposite. A 2026 study in Fire Ecology by Aplet, Hartger & Dietz analyzed 32 years of wildfire data across all eight contiguous-U.S. Forest Service regions and found wildfire-ignition density was 7.99 fires per 1,000 hectares within 50 meters of roads, compared to just 1.97 fires per 1,000 hectares in inventoried roadless areas—a fourfold difference. A separate national analysis (Balch et al., PNAS 2017) found that 84% of all U.S. wildfires are human-caused. Roads are the primary vector for human ignitions, so building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires, not fewer.
The U.S. National Forests are the headwaters of our great rivers and the largest source of municipal water supply in the nation. According to DellaSala (2011), national forests supply drinking water to at least 124 million people in more than 3,400 communities across 33 states—roughly a third of all national-forest runoff originates in inventoried roadless areas. Roads are a major cause of water pollution: erosion rates from logging roads have been documented as much as 850% higher than from undisturbed forest. Because the 2001 Roadless Rule protects these headwaters, it is vital for maintaining clean drinking water for communities across the country. Major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, and Atlanta receive a significant portion of their water supply from national forests.
The Department's obligation under the APA is to provide reasoned explanation commensurate with the significance of the policy change; that obligation has not been met, and rescission should be denied.
Best regards,
CommentID: RLC-20260824-6L33WX