I oppose the repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
I live in the Santa Ana River watershed of southern California, the largest in Southern California, within sight of much of the 53,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas of the San Bernardino National Forest. The roadless conservation rule is meant to protect areas like it, now and into the future.
Roadless areas provide clean drinking water to 60 million Americans.
These undeveloped lands are critical to our nation’s ecological health.
These areas store 20% of all carbon in U.S. national forests. Growing up in Southern California, in the ’60 and ‘70s, we had smudge pots, Kaiser steel, oil drippy automobiles burning leaded gasoline - all adding to multiple smog alerts. The smog was palpable. It tasted acrid, it smelled foul. It constricted my breathing and hurt my chest. I’m guessing it was the same back east and frequently caused acid rain. And guessing it was the same during the industrial revolution and London’s infamous black fog. We need to increase our forested areas, not decrease them. We need to have what little is left of our natural carbon scrubbers, especially our old growth forests.
Roadless areas offer abundant outdoor recreation opportunities such as hiking hunting, fishing, camping and other activities. Every year, millions of people take advantage of the free (or extremely affordable) access to these public lands.
The outdoor recreation economy generates $730 billion annually, far more than timber sales. I’m not sure what Edward Abby would think about the roadless rule. He enjoyed roads into wilderness maybe as much as walking through them. I think he believed we already have enough roads and support the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Here’s what he had to say about uninhabited areas, not necessarily about congressionally designated Wilderness, more inclusively wilderness within including all areas that are roadless:
But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why the surly hatred of progress and develop-ment, the churlish resistance to all popular improvements?
Very well, a fair question, but it's been asked and answered a thousand times already; enough books to drive a man stark naked mad have dealt in detail with the question. There are many an-swers, all good, each sufficient. Peace is often mentioned; beauty; spiritual refreshment, whatever that means; re-creation for the soul, whatever that is; escape; novelty, the delight of something different; truth and understanding and wisdom-commendable virtues in any man, anytime; ecology and all that, meaning the salvation of variety, diversity, possibility and potentiality, the preservation of the genetic reservoir, the answers to questions that we have not yet even learned to ask, a connection to the origin of things, an opening into the future, a source of sanity for the pres-ent—all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead degrading question as "Why wilderness?"
To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer any-way: because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.
Roadless areas are crucial habitat for 1,600+ threatened species. From roads invasive species hitch rides on vehicles
We already have 370,000 miles of forest roads with a multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog.
Studies show wildfire ignitions are 4x more likely near roads than in roadless areas. Many of our local wildfires are caused by careless humans adjacent to easy access roads from camp fires, fireworks, recreational shooting, and arsonists.
Roads are hazardous to all creatures great and small. There is not a day I drive on roads for work and don’t see death- from honey bees and butterflies, though chipmunks and song birds though cats and dogs fox raccoon and dear. And those are just some of the macro fauna. There is micro fauna I don’t see I am pretty sure my passage on the road is responsible, if not in whole in part, for more death than I know of- further unbalancing life.
Please do not repeal the roadless rule
Thank you.
David Bratt
Mentone, California