I am one of many who oppose the Roadless Rule Rollback. The Roadless Rule protects our environment and continues to shape how humans live . As someone for whom roadless national forest is not a policy category but a physical place — a specific and irreplaceable landscape that I have accessed, observed, and relied upon — I am submitting these comments to oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Rule and to request that the Department's final record reflect the full weight of the public interest the Rule was established to protect.
I’ve spent time near Miller Creek. To have construction of roads near Miller Creek would not only raise the risk of human started fires, it would also be endangering a long list of animal and plant species. It would destroy historical sites of indigenous peoples. The CCC conducted reforestation projects throughout the Chattahoochee National Forest to repair damage from previous industrial-era clear-cutting and mining. We do not need any more destruction for our future generations to fix.
Among many days in these forests, one has stayed with me.
Traveling into nature is an escape for my husband and I. After meeting in New York, every vacation we've shared has been to escape into nature. Hiking and visiting Miller Creek was one of our many trips into nature. My husband was born and raised in Georgia. He is a hiker, an explorer and a lover of nature. He has shown me the true value of nature. Exploring forests, camping and experiencing wildlife is a gift. Protected lands need to stay protected. Not only to preserve wildlife existing for our future generations, but to protect these indescribable experiences. Nature is an escape for any of us, but for many people, nature is a way of life. An actual means of existence. For indigenous individuals, nature is their ancestry, their life purpose to protect, and apart of their beliefs that plant species like the Grandmother trees are a part of their family lineage. The Grandmother trees being stripped from Arizona is causing irreversible damage to the desert landscape of Arizona. It is also destroying indigenous legacies.
The Department should understand that the Rule's rescission would produce real and lasting consequences — not only for the lands themselves, but for the people whose lives have been shaped by access to them.
Regarding the Miller Creek in the Chattahoochee National Forest, Georgia:
Roadless areas are disproportionately important habitat for federally listed threatened and endangered plants and animals.
Roadless areas hold habitat for over half of America's wildlife species of conservation concern. A study of 537 imperiled wildlife species in the contiguous U.S. found that 308 — 57 percent — have suitable habitat in one or more Inventoried Roadless Areas. The median roadless area provides habitat for 10 such species, with a maximum of 62 (Dietz et al. 2021). — Matthew S. Dietz, Kevin Barnett, R. Travis Belote, Gregory H. Aplet, 2021 · Global Ecology and Conservation (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01943)
Rescinding the Roadless Rule would open the Miller Creek, Chattahoochee National Forest to road construction and associated ground disturbance. The direct and indirect effects of that activity are precisely what makes a specific comment about this area necessary.
Construction runoff will lead to a large amount of sediment in the water, which will disturb aquatic life. Construction noise and air pollution will disturb animals on land and disturb their natural trails. Water moves through this landscape as both streams and subsurface flow, emerging in spring-fed seeps that support specialized, threatened plant and tree communities. Including Table Mountain pine and Flame Azalea. The understory in these moist forests is thick with great rhododendron and mountain laurel. The streams and seepage zones support aquatic and semi-aquatic wildlife. Including salamanders, eastern newts, and rainbow trout. In the forest, the federally endangered Northern Long-Eared Bat and federally endangered Gray bat hunt insects above the streams and in forest gaps. Here at Miller Creek, you’ll find everything from wild turkeys to monarch butterflies. There is a vast ecosystem and intricate workings of connectivity throughout and surrounding the areas of Miller Creek that cannot sustain construction of any kind. The Miller Creek roadless area, comprising 701 acres in Lumpkin County within the Blue Ridge Ranger District, is protected under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and managed as part of the larger Chattahoochee National Forest established in 1936.
The Rule should not fall; the Department should act to keep it in place.