“rivers my community depends on for... recreation”
“Linville Gorge Addition”
What it names
Roadless areas
Harper CreekLinville Gorge AdditionWilson Creek
The comment
I live in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, and the Catawba-Wateree River Basin is my local watershed. Roughly 50,000 acres in this basin, including Wilson Creek, Harper Creek, and the Linville Gorge Addition, would be opened to logging and road construction if this rule is rescinded. These lands protect the headwaters that feed the rivers my community depends on for drinking water and recreation.
The science on this is not close. Forest Service research shows roadless watersheds function properly at nearly twice the rate of roaded ones. Road construction introduces sediment, spreads invasive species, and fragments habitat in ways that directly harm water quality and native aquatic species downstream. The rule already permits wildfire mitigation, grazing, and other active forest management, so rescinding it does nothing to solve the problems it's being framed as solving. It only removes a 25-year-old, broadly supported protection for land we cannot get back once it's roaded and logged.
I ask that the Roadless Rule be left in place, without modification.