Subject: Opposition to the Proposed Rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule – Docket No. FS-2025-0001
To the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
I strongly oppose the proposal to fully or partially rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Docket FS-2025-0001).
As a resident of Portland, Oregon and an advocate for our nation’s public lands, roadless areas matter deeply to me. I frequently visit and recreate in Mt. Hood National Forest, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Mt. St. Helens National Monument, Mark o. Hatfield Wilderness, Suislaw National Forest and other areas throughout the Pacific Northwest. I feel a special kinship with these areas, where I hike, forage (where permitted) and enjoy deep solitude. In fact, I moved to Oregon nearly 25 years ago when meeting friends on a camping trip in the Columbia Gorge. I fell in love on that trip; not with another person, but with the incredible natural beauty of Oregon and Washington. It's literally the reason I moved to Portland.
These incredible natural landscapes are worth protecting, for several critical reasons:
• Clean Water and Watersheds: Roadless areas safeguard essential headwaters and drinking water sources for downstream communities. This is especially true for the Portland metro area; the Bull Run Watershed supplies drinking water to nearly one million residents.
• Wildlife Habitat: Roads fragment ecosystems, disrupting sensitive wildlife corridors. More roads are a threat to preserving or restoring biodiversity and protecting endangered species.
• Climate and Resilience: Intact forests act as natural carbon sinks and are more resilient to severe disturbances than fragmented, heavily managed timber lands.
Shifting management decisions to local forest plans without a national safeguard risks opening millions of acres of pristine backcountry to industrial/commercial logging and road construction. We have seen what happens when national protections are disregarded; wanton destruction of huge swaths of land with major downstream impacts to fish, wildlife, and even human habitation (when near poorly managed forests).
I urge the Forest Service to select Alternative 1 (No Action) and maintain a continuation of full, nationwide protections for all designated inventoried roadless areas. This action would maintain current prohibitions against road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting across roughly 44.7 million acres of inventoried roadless areas on national forest lands.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this critical rule.
Sincerely,
Ü. Kleppinger
Portland, Oregon, 97211