Re: Opposition to the Proposed Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (91 FR 53827; RIN 0596-AD66; Docket FS-2025-0001)
To the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture:
I am writing as a lifelong Californian, an Eagle Scout, a father and grandfather, and a photographer to ask that you keep the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in place.
I learned to backpack in the San Bernardino National Forest as a Scout, and those trips taught me more than how to carry a pack and read a map. They taught me to travel lightly, to leave a place as I found it, and to be quiet enough to notice what was around me. Those habits became my Eagle Scout award, and they have stayed with me for a lifetime.
Later, I took my own children into the Sierra Nevada year after year. As a family we have walked nearly 600 miles there, through the Stanislaus, Humboldt-Toiyabe, Sierra, Inyo, and Sequoia National Forests. We carried everything we needed on our backs, slept under the stars, and walked through country no road had ever reached. My children learned what I had learned as a boy: that wild places teach patience, humility, and gratitude, and that no purchase can replace that kind of experience.
I also spent five years as a Staff Photographer for The Ansel Adams Gallery, living and working in Yosemite National Park. Ansel Adams used his camera to show people why wild places deserve protection, and I tried to carry that purpose into my own work. I cannot honestly name a single place that has touched me most deeply. It is the whole of these wild lands, taken together, that has shaped my life.
These places are quiet, intact, and open to anyone willing to walk. Once a road is cut into undeveloped country, its wild character is gone, and no later decision can bring it back.
I respectfully ask the Department to explain what specific problem the 2001 Rule has caused that its existing exceptions could not address, and to identify the particular projects it has actually prevented. Removing a nationwide protection should require a clear answer to that question.
I was fortunate to inherit these places, and I want my grandchildren and their children to have the same chance. Please do not rescind the Roadless Rule.
Please keep these lands wild for everyone who comes after us.
Respectfully,
Edmond R McCormick
Highland, California 92346