I urge you to keep the Roadless Rule in place exactly as it is, and to select Alternative 1, No Action.
Like millions of Americans who have spoken out since 2001, I value our public lands and waters, including the 44.7 million acres of undeveloped national forest this rule protects. I am not writing in the abstract. I live in Alpine Meadows, at Lake Tahoe, and I use these forests year-round: backpacking multi-day Sierra routes, running ultra-distance trail events, and backcountry skiing and snowboarding through the winter. My eight-year-old daughter has backpacked with me in Desolation Wilderness, Yosemite, and the eastern Sierra out of Mammoth Lakes. More than 80,000 acres in the Tahoe National Forest and Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit are inventoried roadless areas, close to a quarter of Forest Service land in the Basin.
The Roadless Rule safeguards clean drinking water for millions of Americans. In the Sierra that means the headwaters of the Truckee, San Joaquin, Kings, and Owens rivers, and it means fine sediment control in the Lake Tahoe Basin, where two decades and hundreds of millions of dollars in public investment have gone toward restoring lake clarity. Roads are a principal source of the sediment that investment is fighting. Building more of them in the same watershed works against the public's own money.
It provides habitat for threatened and sensitive species, including the Sierra Nevada red fox near Luther Pass, and it sustains old-growth and mature forests that function as carbon sinks. Just as importantly, it keeps these areas connected. The roadless lands between designated wilderness and park units are what allow wide-ranging species to move across the landscape instead of being stranded in islands of protection.
It also protects access to climbing, fishing, hiking, backcountry skiing, mountain biking, and paddling, across more than 25,000 miles of trails. The communities around me run on that access. Truckee, Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes, and Bishop have recreation economies, not timber economies.
The stated reason for rescission is wildfire risk, and the evidence points the other way. Ignitions are several times denser near roads than in roadless areas, and the Forest Service attributes nine in ten wildfires to human causes. Set against a projected $4.6 to $10.6 million a year in additional timber revenue nationwide, this is not a serious trade.
Please keep the Roadless Rule intact and follow Alternative 1, No Action.
Thank you,
Theresa Smith
Olympic Valley, CA