To the U.S. Forest Service:
Watching federal rules come and go for a quarter century, I'd say the 2001 Rule is one of the few I'd want my kids to see still on the books in twenty years. As a guide, that's a long-horizon judgment.
Truly natural, wild, untouched spaces are extremely valuable to me. I work and recreate in them and operate my life around healthy wilderness. It is imperative that these conditions exist for future generations.
The area protected by the rule is substantial and provides extensive habitat to millions of organisms. The human hand should be left out of these areas. Biodiversity is essential to the health of these ecosystems and the planet. We need to do everything in our power to promote biodiversity in wild areas.
Regarding the Red Table in the White River NF, Colorado:
The threat mechanism classified as 7.2 - Dams & water management/use (IUCN-CMP 7.2) is actively degrading habitat for Bonytail (Gila elegans, G1) in the Red Table Inventoried Roadless Area, White River NF, at Extreme or 71-100% pop. decline severity across Pervasive (71-100%) scope.
For Bonytail in Red Table, the connection between road construction and 7.2 - Dams & water management/use is direct: roads deliver the disturbance vectors — sediment, access, fragmentation — that NatureServe identifies as driving Extreme or 71-100% pop. decline severity impacts on this population.
The DEIS must provide site-specific analysis of 7.2 - Dams & water management/use impacts to Bonytail (Gila elegans) in the Red Table IRA — not a programmatic discussion of roadless areas generally but a particularized assessment of this species in this place.
"The highest wildfire-ignition density was in lands within 50 m of roads (7.99 fires/1000 ha), and the second highest wildfire-ignition density was in other national forest lands outside of the 50-m road buffers but not in wilderness or roadless areas (3.50 fires/1000 ha). Wildfire-ignition density was lowest in designated wilderness areas (1.75 fires/1000 hectares), followed closely by Inventoried Roadless Areas (1.97 fires/1000 ha). For human-caused, natural, and undetermined fires, wildfire-ignition density decreased as distance to road increased: in lands between 0 and 250 m from roads, 6 fires ignited per 1000 ha, whereas fewer than 2 fires ignited per 1000 ha at a distance class of over 2000 m from roads."
— Fire Ecology (Springer Nature), 2026
The Forest Service is urged to allow the 2001 Rule's protections to continue without interruption.
Respectfully submitted,
CommentID: RLC-20260921-WARR1O