I grew up with access to nature, Point Reyes National Seashore was in my backyard and Tahoe National Forest and Inyo National Forest only a few hours away. Backpacking, hiking, and camping in these public lands grew my admiration for the outdoors. Once you fall in love with nature, it is difficult to not be inspired to protect it. This brought me to career in environmental conservation and education, creating outdoor recreation opportunities for youth and young adults. The peace and quiet you experience while walking through the forest, moss coating the trees and fog rolling through a valley. The ridge lines you work hard to hike to and crest, with an expansive view of forest and ocean on the opposing side. These views and landscapes are at risk with the recision of the Roadless Rule.
In 2018, while walking through the streets of San Francisco, a soft ash fell from the sky like snow. Fires converged to cause a darkening of the sky and air quality to plummet. Only a few years later I would awake to a dark red sky, thinking it was the middle of the night, until peering at my clock to see 8:30am lit up on the screen. The robin’s egg morning sky was gone, replaced by the dark swell of blackened clouds, like those circling Mount Doom in Mordor. Air quality was so severe that people were encouraged to stay indoors periodically throughout the summer. However, as a frontline worker working on defensible space to protect homes from fires and maintaining local, state and national parks –that wasn’t an option. My crew and I worked outside throughout these periods of poor air quality, because the nature of our work didn’t allow for indoor alternatives.
Fire season has extended later into the year and made me fearful to continue to live in California, so I moved. The intensity and consistency of these fires is exacerbated by human error, such as electric companies neglecting their poles in rural areas. Research shows that wildfire ignition is lowest in designated wilderness areas, including National Forests, away from roads, because the leading cause of fires is human ignition/error (Aplet, G.H., Hartger, P. & Dietz, M.S. Three-decade record of contiguous-U.S. national forest wildfires indicates increased density of ignitions near roads. fire ecol 22, 8 (2026)).
Beyond fire safety, there is a magic to the wilderness and public lands that are for the people of this country. These are our backyards, our natural spaces that help people fall in love with nature and recognize the importance of protecting it. Beyond the importance of access, these lands are a refugee for wildlife and maintain clean drinking water for over 124 million people across multiple states in cities and towns alike; that statistic is over 15 years old, so with taking into account population growth, that number has surely increased (DellaSala, D. A. (2011). Roadless areas and clean water. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 66(3), 78A–79A).
I hope that the representatives that we elected, who stand by the people and wild-lands of this country will stand up for the Roadless Rule and the protection of our forests.