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To Whom It May Concern at the U.S. Forest Service:
As an avid outdoor enthusiast, who spends a good deal of time on public land, the question of what gets protected permanently versus what gets decided administration by administration matters a great deal and impacts generations before and after me.
I am an Oregon resident of 45 years and have spent a large majority of my outdoor time in the Mt Hood National Forest including the Salmon - Huckleberry wilderness. From camping on the Salmon river, hiking along the Salmon River trail to having my wedding ceremony on Mt Hood, this public land is my backyard and my sanctuary.
Just a few months ago my husband, dog and I camped in the Salmon - Huckleberry wilderness. Going to a remote area to get away from the busyness of the city, for us is a required recharge. While we were there, just 20 minutes away a wildfire was burning toward Mt. Hood (Grasshopper fire). As we hiked through beautiful old growth forests we reminded each other that these areas are becoming scarce and to spend as much time there while we can.
The Salmon River trail exists only because of the protection from erosion and wildfires by the trees and vegetation. This vegetation would be decimated and the trail would be gone if roads and logging were allowed.
Regarding the Salmon - Huckleberry in the Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon:
The proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule jeopardizes 44.5 million acres of undeveloped backcountry forestland managed by the U.S. Forest Service. These forests have only remained intact because of the Forest Service's nearly 25-year-old commitment not to build roads in these areas for harmful activities like major logging operations or oil-and-gas drilling.
Although proponents of rolling back the Roadless Rule claim it is needed for wildfire management, the peer-reviewed science shows the opposite. A 2026 study in Fire Ecology by Aplet, Hartger & Dietz analyzed 32 years of wildfire data across all eight contiguous-U.S. Forest Service regions and found wildfire-ignition density was 7.99 fires per 1,000 hectares within 50 meters of roads, compared to just 1.97 fires per 1,000 hectares in inventoried roadless areas—a fourfold difference. A separate national analysis (Balch et al., PNAS 2017) found that 84% of all U.S. wildfires are human-caused. Roads are the primary vector for human ignitions, so building roads into roadless areas is likely to result in more fires, not fewer.
“On steep terrain, 21% of trees were damaged by excavators and 33% of trees were damaged by bulldozers during forest road construction, and on very steep terrain, 27% of trees were damaged by excavators and 44% of trees were damaged by bulldozers during forest road construction. Inadequately constructed forest roads can cause severe environmental impacts including road surface erosion and sediment yield, pollution of off-site waters, slope failures and mass movement, direct loss of habitat (by the conversion of the original land cover into an artificial surface) and indirect loss of habitat (by the fragmentation of an ecosystem into smaller and more isolated patches). — Iranian Journal of Environmental Health Science & Engineering (PMC), 2013 (https://doi.org/10.1186/1735-2746-10-23)”
Introducing roads and development into this backcountry will cause more logging and loss of vegetation. That in turn will make it more susceptible to wildfire and loss of land. In Oregon we have lost so many of our recreation lands to fire and the spaces we can be in nature are disappearing. The Salmon Huckleberry wilderness is a precious sanctuary that cannot be replaced once it's gone. Please keep this land safe for today and future generations.
This land is sacred and belongs to the public. Don't sign it away.
All the best,
CommentID: RLC-20260930-AE1TZD