Dear U.S. Forest Service Officials,
I am writing to express my firm opposition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. As an avid hiker and backpacker who frequently travels through California’s public lands, I urge the agency to protect our backcountry heritage and select the No Action Alternative.
My recreation footprint is anchored in several of California's most critical public land units: the San Bernardino, Cleveland, Angeles, and Inyo National Forests. From the high-altitude alpine terrain and pristine lakes of the Eastern Sierra in the Inyo to the rugged, steep backcountry slopes of the Angeles, San Bernardino, and Cleveland forests in Southern California, these intact spaces provide unmatched opportunities for primitive recreation, solitude, and self-reliance.
Allowing road construction and expanded logging in these specific Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) will cause immediate, irreversible harm to these environments:
1. Destruction of Primitive Recreation Vibe and Solitude: Backpackers visit areas like the Inyo National Forest specifically to experience unfragmented landscapes and true escape from urban noise. Introducing heavy industrial machinery, logging traffic, and new road corridors directly into these viewsheds ruins the quiet recreation values that define the backcountry experience.
2. Severe Risks to Critical Watersheds: The roadless areas within the San Bernardino, Angeles, and Cleveland National Forests encompass vital, sensitive headwaters that protect municipal drinking water supplies for millions of Southern Californians. Constructing roads on these highly erosive slopes causes severe sedimentation and slope failures, degrading water quality at the source and threatening the fragile riparian systems hikers depend on for trailside water.
3. Exacerbating Human-Caused Wildfire Risks: Southern California forests are already on the front lines of climate and wildfire stress. Data clearly demonstrates that wildfires are significantly more likely to ignite near roads due to increased human access. Bringing new roads into the remaining roadless pockets of the Angeles and San Bernardino forests introduces unnecessary ignition risks into pristine fuel beds.
4. Worsening a Strained Maintenance Backlog: The Forest Service is already struggling to manage a massive deferred maintenance backlog on its existing sprawling road system. Diverting limited agency funding and personnel to cut new roads or clear timber in the rugged backcountry of the Inyo or Cleveland National Forests will inevitably strip vital resources away from maintaining high-use recreational trails, trailheads, and visitor safety facilities.
The existing 2001 Roadless Rule provides flexible, balanced management while successfully shielding 4 million acres of California’s wildest forests from fragmented degradation for a quarter of a century. Please abandon this rescission proposal and maintain the 2001 Roadless Rule exactly as written.
Sincerely,
Terrence Bobryk-Ozaki
Running Springs,CA 92382