I oppose rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and strongly support maintaining its protections for inventoried roadless areas on our National Forest System lands.
The importance of the Roadless Rule goes far beyond simply keeping roads out of otherwise undeveloped areas. Its greatest value is protecting large, connected blocks of habitat from the fragmentation and cumulative impacts that accompany road construction and development.
A road does not affect only the relatively narrow strip of land it occupies. Roads divide continuous habitat into smaller patches, increase edge effects, disrupt wildlife movement and dispersal, introduce additional human disturbance, and can facilitate invasive species and disease. Road networks can also alter hydrology, sediment movement, and water quality. The Forest Service's own analyses have identified these types of effects, including habitat fragmentation, barriers to wildlife movement, increased edge effects, and degradation of aquatic resources.
This is particularly important in a landscape where habitat outside public lands is increasingly fragmented by development. As intact habitat becomes scarcer, the remaining large and relatively undisturbed areas on our National Forests become increasingly important for maintaining ecological connectivity, wildlife populations, and functioning ecosystems. The value of these areas cannot be adequately measured by the number of acres directly cleared for a road or timber operation.
Fragmentation is also difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. Once a road network has divided an intact landscape and development has followed that access, removing the road later does not necessarily restore the original ecological function or reconnect the habitat in the same way.
The Roadless Rule provides a national framework for retaining these relatively intact landscapes while still allowing the Forest Service to manage National Forest lands for multiple uses. Rescinding the rule would remove those nationwide protections and place greater responsibility for decisions about road construction and timber harvest in inventoried roadless areas at the individual forest and planning level.
As someone who lives near the Croatan National Forest, I see the value of these remaining connected landscapes firsthand. But this issue is much larger than the Croatan. Across the country, roadless areas represent some of our remaining opportunities to maintain large, connected ecosystems before they become fragmented.
Please retain the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and its protections for our nation's remaining inventoried roadless areas.