Dear Secretary Rollins,
I am writing to oppose the USDA’s proposal to fully or partially rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I have lived in western Oregon since 1962, when my parents moved our family of six from Michigan to Portland, Oregon. We spent our summer vacations camping in our coastal public forests, in the Oregon Dunes, the Siuslaw National Forest, and the Willamette National Forest, all buffered and protected by adjacent roadless areas.
The roadless areas and wilderness areas of Oregon are our crown jewels of protection for wildlife habitat, for clean drinking water, for a healthy water table, for nutrient-rich soils, for cooler air temperatures, for Tribal sacred and archaeological site protection, and for the recreation economy worth millions of dollars a year.
The rapid warming of our planet now dramatically affects Oregon’s weather, where summers are hotter and dryer than in previous decades. Adding roads and increasing logging will only ruin the climate advantages our roadless lands give us. Every mile of additional roads and every acre of mature forests that are logged will increase temperatures and drought conditions even more, creating a spiral of climate destabilization.
We can’t afford to turn over the guardianship of our public lands to those whose only motive is to make profits on the extraction of trees, minerals, or even water– most of the money going to the timber and mining companies, not the communities who will suffer from water quality degradation, increased fire danger, and where complex forest ecosystems used to stand, the view of clearcuts instead.
For the many reasons I have listed above, fully or partially rescinding the Roadless Area Conservation Rule would be a grave mistake, not just in Oregon, but across the country in all of the remaining 45 million acres of roadless public lands. We need to preserve our irreplaceable roadless public lands for a stable climate future and for the benefit and pleasure of generations to come.
Sincerely,
Sid Baum
Eugene, OR 97405-9710
sid.baum@gmail.com