I strongly oppose the proposal to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
I base this comment both on my experience as a citizen concerned about our public lands and on 32 years with the National Park Service, including serving as superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and as a regional manager overseeing parks across California and Nevada.
Roadless areas are among the last relatively intact landscapes in our national forests. They protect watersheds, wildlife habitat, scenic resources, opportunities for solitude, and recreation. Once roads penetrate these landscapes, their impacts extend far beyond the road itself. Roads fragment habitat, facilitate invasive species, increase human disturbance, and can increase the risk of human-caused wildfire. These impacts are often difficult or impossible to reverse.
The stakes are particularly high in California. More than 650,000 acres of roadless lands in the Los Padres National Forest could be affected by changes that make road development and increased motorized access easier. These lands protect watersheds important to communities and agriculture, including those associated with Lake Lopez, the Santa Maria River and the Salinas River. They also provide habitat for imperiled species including California condors, San Joaquin kit foxes and Southern California steelhead.
I support responsible public access and necessary forest management. But there is a fundamental difference between managing existing roads and opening protected roadless landscapes to new roads and motorized use. Doing so would permanently diminish the ecological and wild character that makes these lands valuable.
The Roadless Rule reflects a public-trust responsibility to protect these lands not only for today’s users, but for future generations. Previous generations chose to preserve portions of our national forests in an undeveloped condition. We are beneficiaries of that decision—and stewards of that inheritance.
I urge the Forest Service to withdraw the proposal and retain the Roadless Rule. Our remaining roadless lands are a finite resource. Once their undeveloped character is lost, it cannot simply be recreated.
Woody Smeck