I am writing from Siskiyou County, California, to ask the Forest Service to withdraw its proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
My husband and I have driven through California, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado to be in our public lands, and nothing has shaped how we see this country more. We live a few miles from the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Heart Lake, where we take our daughter, is safe inside the Castle Crags Wilderness. The forest around it is not, and that is the forest this rule protects.
I am raising a daughter and expecting a son. I want them to walk into a living forest and learn how it works: the water, the animals, the old trees, the whole system running on its own. That is an education no classroom can give, and it cannot be put back once the roads and the clearcuts or partialcuts arrive.
The Department says this is about wildfire. But the rule already permits fuel reduction near communities, roads are a leading cause of human-caused ignitions, and the agency has lost roughly a fifth of its staff. Opening 58.5 million acres to roads and logging does not make my family safer. It makes the forests we love easier to take apart.
This rule came out of a long public process and still has the public behind it. Please leave it standing, for my children and for everyone's.