I am writing about the Pine Creek Roadless Area in Cleveland National Forest, California. I urge the Forest Service to keep the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in place. In a region as developed as Southern California, the roadless areas that remain are among the last places where wildlife, quiet, and intact habitat still exist, and they cannot be replaced once roads are built.
I am an avid mountain biker and hiker who rides and hikes public lands in Southern California throughout the year, especially the Cuyamaca and Mount Laguna area. I go to the mountains east of San Diego for quiet, for distance from development, and for the chance to see wildlife living undisturbed. In that area I see deer and a wide variety of birds on nearly every trip. In a county of more than three million people, those encounters are only possible because large areas of habitat remain connected and quiet.
Roads bring traffic, noise, and permanent human access into habitat that wildlife now uses undisturbed. The deer and birds I see regularly would be pushed out. Mountain lions are at even greater risk. Southern California's lion populations are already hemmed in by freeways and development, and every new road further fragments the territory they need to hunt, breed, and keep their populations genetically healthy.
Roads also mean more wildfire. The large majority of these devastating fires are started by people, and every new road gives more people access to country that is hard to reach and hard to defend. San Diego County's mountains have already burned catastrophically, and adding ignition sources there makes no sense. In addition, land that belongs to everyone would be opened to extraction for private financial gain, while the public absorbs the loss. Once these areas are roaded, logged, or burned, they do not recover in my lifetime.
I ask the Forest Service to fully weigh the long-term costs of rescission: increased human-caused wildfire risk, the loss of wildlife habitat and connectivity for species like mountain lions, and the maintenance backlog the agency already cannot fund on its existing road network. The rule should be retained as written.