I am a resident of Hyrum, Utah, and I oppose rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
I live next to the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest and I'm in its roadless areas at least once or twice a week, fly fishing, hunting, backpacking, and hiking. Blacksmith Fork Canyon, Logan Canyon, and the country between them are my backyard, and the High Uintas are among my favorite places anywhere. These places are valuable because they have stayed largely undeveloped.
As a fly fisherman, I depend on the cold, clean headwater streams that roadless areas protect. Roads are one of the main sources of sediment in mountain streams, and that sediment smothers trout spawning gravel and warms and muddies the water. As a hunter, I know that elk and deer use unroaded country as security habitat, especially during hunting season. New roads push animals out, make them more vulnerable, and lower the quality of the hunt for everyone. As a backpacker and hiker, I go to these areas for the kind of quiet, remote experience that becomes harder to find every year.
Nearly half of Utah's national forest land, about 4 million acres, is inventoried roadless area. In northern Utah these lands are the headwaters for the streams and aquifers our communities and farms rely on. New roads and logging in these areas increase erosion, disturb wildlife, and are very hard to reverse. A road that costs little to build can cost the public for decades in maintenance, washouts, and damage to water quality, at a time when the Forest Service already can't keep up with the roads it has.
The proposal cites wildfire risk, but the 2001 Rule already allows thinning of small-diameter timber to reduce hazardous fuels and allows roads needed to protect public health and safety. Most fuels work that actually protects homes happens near communities, not deep in remote roadless country. Removing national protections isn't necessary to manage fire.
Returning these decisions to individual forest plans would also replace one stable national standard with protections that can shift from forest to forest and administration to administration. The 2001 Rule was adopted after one of the largest public comment processes in agency history, and it has given people like me certainty that these lands will still be here for the next generation.
I urge the Department to withdraw the proposed rescission and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place.
Sarah Williamson
Hyrum, Utah