I strongly oppose rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and urge the Forest Service to adopt the no-action alternative.
I hike and paddle in the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota. The Superior National Forest is one of the most heavily used and ecologically important forests in the Midwest. Its remaining roadless areas protect clean headwaters, intact boreal forest, and habitat for wolves, moose, lynx, and other species that depend on large unfragmented tracts. Many of these areas border or sit within the same watershed as the Boundary Waters, where water flows between lakes and protection of one part of the landscape affects the rest.
Removing roadless protections would make new road construction, logging, and mineral-related development easier in the Superior, and roads are what open up fragile country to damage. Roads fragment habitat, bring in invasive species, add sediment to streams, and create maintenance costs the Forest Service already can’t cover for its existing network. The rule already allows thinning and fuel reduction near communities, so it isn’t the barrier to wildfire management that the proposal claims.
Northern Minnesota’s outdoor economy, from outfitters to resorts to hunting and fishing, depends on wild, quiet, intact places. Once roads are built, that character can’t be restored.