Preserve the Roadless Rule
I am writing to advocate for preservation of the Roadless Rule for our National Forest lands. In the Gila National Forest alone, there are 3,337 miles of designated roads, not including county, state and U.S. roads and highways. In contrast, there are 1,600 miles of designated hiking trails. This alone makes it hard to argue the need for yet more roads. The ecological impact of roads greatly exceeds that of trails. The disturbance caused by construction, maintenance, and use of roads facilitates expansion of harmful exotic plants and animals while at the same time reducing habitat for conservative native plants and sensitive animals. Watersheds are degraded by roads and fish habitat suffers due to sedimentation and interrupted water flow.
According to a Forest Service report, Forest Roads: A Synthesis of Scientific Information, “In general, greater short- and long-term watershed and ecological risks are associated with building roads into unroaded areas than with upgrading, maintaining, closing, or obliterating existing roads.”
Considering the proposed weakening of the Endangered Species Act to exclude habitat of listed species, further reducing habitat by constructing roads in currently roadless areas will increase stressors and impact the viability of endangered and threatened species in our national forests. As of a 2003 report (Loucks, C., N. Brown, A. Loucks, and K. Cesareo. 2003. USDA Forest Service roadless areas: potential biodiversity conservation reserves. Conservation Ecology 7(2): 5. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss2/art5/) 77% of inventoried roadless areas in the U.S. have the potential to provide critical habitat for threatened, endangered and imperiled species. Habitat loss is the leading cause of species endangerment and it is not a linear process (Hanski I. Habitat loss, the dynamics of biodiversity, and a perspective on conservation. Ambio. 2011 May;40(3):248-55. doi: 10.1007/s13280-011-0147-3). Having lost so much already, we are on the brink of a biodiversity crisis. There is no compelling reason to repeal the Roadless Rule, given the profusion of forest roads that currently exist. In contrast, the very existence of many imperiled species depends on preservation of existing roadless areas.