I am writing to express my support of roadless areas on our national forests and other public land throughout the United States of America. In my home state of Oregon, I find that I prefer to recreate and spend time in areas where motorized activity is limited and human development is at a minimum. I don’t need to visit the forest to find a road. Roadless areas offer I do not think it is in our best interests to build roads and develop untouched land. On the Malheur National Forest which is adjacent to our community, there are some of the highest road densities in the country on Forest Service (USFS) land. These roads were built to facilitate timber harvest and most of the logging roads remain open and serve no real purpose long after logging operations have finished. In these areas with high road densities and no travel management, hunting is poor because invasive plants thrive and wildlife are pressured by intense motorized use. During hunting seasons, wildlife such as elk often move out of areas with heavy motorized traffic on to adjacent private land where they damage crops. These roads are often built in areas that would be some of the most productive land for grazing, wildlife, and fisheries because the follow stream corridors. Each gravel road, is around 30 feet in width and renders that land that is now a road useless to livestock, wildlife, and timber. According to the USFS, there are 9,670 miles of road on the Malheur National Forest and we need more? If each road disturbs an average of 30 feet of land, these roads equate to 35,163 acres of land that no longer produces forage for livestock or timber to support logging operations on the Malheur Forest alone. Roads often block fish passage at culverts and alter stream hydrology through sedimentation, confining channels, and narrowing riparian areas all of which damage fisheries.
Roadless areas are roadless for a reason. They often lack valuable timber to warrant the effort to build a road, or the topography is too rough to efficiently harvest the few good trees that are there. Roads and road building are expensive; I do not want my tax dollars spent destroying the miniscule amount of untouched land that remains. Logging is great and I wish there was more going on in our local forests but building more roads is not the issue. Timber harvest on the MNF was huge in the past century but for the most part the high quality timber has been harvested the remaining old growth is mostly adacent to a road anyway. It will take time to regrow the majority of the large trees on the MNF. Building roads will not revive the timber industry. The roads are there, most of the trees are small and for now, not sufficiently valuable for profitable harvest.
In most cases, roads, logging, and grazing do not prevent wildfires or aid in wildfire fighting. We have had several very large fires in wilderness, heavily grazed areas, and roaded areas in our county, some human caused, some by lightning. When conditions are right there is simply no way to prevent these fires.
I do not believe that roadless areas prevent us from accessing our public lands in fact I believe the opposite to be true. The maze of winding, endless, and purposeless roads on the MNF is astounding and easy to get lost in. A few roads are great and allow us to access areas that would be impossible to reach without a huge amount of effort but we need to be smart about how we build and use roads on our public land. The roadless rule was drafted with extensive public input and used science and reason to come to a conclusion. Rescinding this rule would be a huge misstep and would ignore the will of Americans that use and recreate on public land. There are plenty of roads out there. If you can’t find one you like just drive a little further.