I strongly oppose the rollback of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
Growing up on 5 acres of wetland in Illinois, I witnessed the benefits of flooding-resilience and wildlife conservation that active, well-protected wetlands can offer to an entire neighborhood. Illinois lost 90% of its wetlands to development that couldn’t see past quick profit to good longterm land management. We lost valuable, beautiful land that efficiently cleaned our air, filtered our water, kept soil quality high, and for the lucky few like me that grew up on them, offered an incredible connection to nature rarely found in our heavily, inefficiently developed country. The kind of beautiful natural world that first attracted indigenous people and pioneers to the Midwest. Instead, the flooded roads I navigated driving through suburbs built on poor drainage, too many impervious road surfaces, and eroding top soil to high school were a yearly reminder of our tendency towards poor foresight.
Forests do similar good. Yet Illinois has already lost over 80% of its original forests. For more than two decades, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has protected much of the sliver of wildness that remains in our national forests. The protections have been particularly vital in the Midwest, where less than 200,000 acres of roadless, untrammeled forest lands survived the widespread logging of the past two centuries.
From Wisconsin's Chequamegon-Nicolet to Michigan's Ottawa, Hiawatha, and Huron-Manistee, the Midwest’s national forests have important roadless areas that provide critical habitat for wildlife, clean our drinking water, store carbon, and offer refuge for people seeking quiet and beauty.
These roadless areas are also an enormous resource for the recreation economy in the Midwest, a sector that added 26.37 billion dollars to Illinois’ economy and contributed nearly 180k jobs to Illinoisans in 2024 alone.
I urge you to stop rolling back protections for our public lands and leave our last wild forests intact. These forests took millennia to develop the unique ecosystems on which countless lives, human and otherwise, rely. And once we disturb that without thoroughly considering how we want future generations to experience the natural world, as history has proven again and again, there is no easy way to fix our mistakes. Please keep the Roadless Rule in place.
Sincerely,
Ms Vicky Wen
2001 N Daniel St Arlington, VA 22201-4141
vickyjywen@gmail.com