Public Comment on the Proposed Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule
RIN 0596-AD66 / Docket FS-2025-0001
Dear Chief of the Forest Service and Forest Service Decision-Makers:
We are writing to express our strong opposition to the proposed rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
Our family has property in Tennessee, as that is where we were raised, and for generations our family has spent time recreating at Watauga Lake and throughout the Cherokee National Forest. These forests, mountains, streams, and lakes are not simply places on a map to us. They are places where our family has gathered, explored, created memories, and developed a lasting appreciation for the natural world. Nestled in the Cherokee National forest, Watauga Lake is widely recognized as one of the cleanest in clearest lakes in the United States. Our children fish, water ski, tube and swim year and year in the lake. Our family hikes in the surrounding forests and trails. We cannot imagine what would happen if the Roadless Rule were to be repealed.
We want our children and grandchildren to inherit these same places—not merely the memory of what they once were.
The Roadless Rule provides an important layer of protection for some of the country’s remaining undeveloped National Forest lands. Maintaining these areas in their natural condition helps protect the character of the forests and watersheds that people rely upon for recreation, wildlife habitat, clean water, scenic beauty, and the opportunity to experience nature without extensive development.
For families like ours who have returned to these places for generations, preservation is not an abstract concept. We have seen firsthand the value of having forests and shorelines that remain clean, natural, and accessible for recreation. We also understand that once undeveloped forest landscapes are fragmented by roads and development, their character can be difficult or impossible to restore.
I am particularly concerned about what the loss of these protections could mean for places connected to the Cherokee National Forest and the Watauga Lake region. These public lands belong not only to people who visit them today, but also to future generations who have no voice in today’s decision.
The Forest Service’s responsibility should include protecting the long-term public value of these lands—not simply considering what can be extracted or developed from them in the short term. National Forests provide benefits that cannot be adequately measured in timber receipts or immediate economic activity. They provide clean water, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, solitude, scenic landscapes, and places where families can form lifelong connections with the outdoors.
For our family, that last point is especially important.
We have generations of memories at Watauga Lake and in the surrounding forests. We hope our children and grandchildren will be able to make their own memories there decades from now. Preserving roadless areas is one way to ensure that future generations inherit forests that are still recognizable as the wild and beautiful places their parents and grandparents knew.
I respectfully urge the Forest Service to withdraw the proposed rescission and retain the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
Please consider not only the immediate consequences of this decision, but the cumulative and irreversible consequences of changing the character of America’s remaining roadless forests. Once these places are substantially altered, future generations cannot simply vote to restore the landscape we choose to change today.
The public lands of the Cherokee National Forest and the natural resources surrounding Watauga Lake are part of our family’s history. We ask that they also remain part of our family’s future.
Thank you for considering our comments and for protecting these places for the generations who will come after us.
Respectfully,
M and J Arnold