I am a citizen who absolutely admires and visits roadless areas within America's national forests and national parks and I support the No Action alternative in the current DEIS. I strongly oppose removing the 2001 roadless area conservation rule. Please consider a FULL environmental review with experts in this field as this is a large proposal affecting over 44.7million acres.
The idea of rescinding the Roadless Rule concerns me as it holds importance to the existing wildlife, outdoor recreation community and the outdoor recreation economy. These lands contain many animals and amphibians, some of which are considered critical species and need these lands to survive a world in which land continues to get developed with no space for wildlife (https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss2/art5/ ,https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989421004935?via%3Dihub ). The rescission would remove vital protections for approximately 45 million acres of backcountry national forests, including more than 25,000 miles of trails and 10,000 climbing routes. There are also miles of white water and mountain biking that add such a wonderful element to outdoor activities. Nature inspires me, different activities allow me to grow and I know it has a similar effect on so many people.
These areas protect several sources of water for about 25 million Americans and the trees matter to our carbon footprint; we recently heard about earth’s temperature, it seems reasonable to believe that we need to help save the natural existing elements of this world. ( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2489/jswc.66.3.78A ; https://www.sci-tech-today.com/stats/global-warming-statistics/ ). We also know of several American towns without clean water, let us not add more to the list.
Our existing road infrastructure could benefit from the money mentioned in the discussion of bring roads to these areas. Some may say building roads would give jobs but it comes with long-term cost to the world, those at power should consider pivoting that talking point to better develop what already exists or to spend money on the companies that can clean up existing roads and stop fires in general.
Regarding wildfires, we have data that for the last 32 years wildfire ignition is significantly lower in roadless areas, specifically stating “The highest wildfire-ignition density was in lands within 50 m of roads (7.99 fires/1000 ha)”(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42408-026-00450-2 Gregory H Aplet). Research also says humans are the cause of a large percentage of wildfires ( https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1617394114 ). Therefore, these roadless areas should not be the one to blame. We must ask the question “who profits from this” every time we want to strip conservation rules. All the factors mentioned in the proposal would ultimately worsen an already negative trajectory for climate change, space for wildlife and humans, and affect water sources.
As a citizen of the United States, I implore you to please do a full environmental review and to find resources with no connections or fundings from these companies that want to use this space.