I strongly oppose rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. I urge the Forest Service to adopt the No Action alternative and keep national protections in place.
I work in conservation finance and ecological intelligence, and I am cofounder of a conservation property in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula. That work has taught me that intact forests are among the highest-value assets a nation holds. They deliver clean drinking water, flood and drought buffering, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, and recreation economies, year after year. Building roads to log or extract from these lands turns that permanent value into a short-term gain, and the change cannot be undone. A road is the first and most lasting step toward fragmentation. Once it is built, the ecological value it destroys cannot be bought back at any price.
This is personal for me as a Californian. I have spent time hiking in the Mendocino National Forest, where I teach others about rare mushrooms and plants. Its remote, unroaded backcountry, including roadless land within the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, is exactly what makes it irreplaceable. Wild places like this are rare within a few hours of the Bay Area, and they should stay that way for the next generation of hikers.
National forests make up 20% of California and supply 50% of its runoff for drinking water. Roadless areas like those in the Los Padres, Inyo, and Mendocino National Forests protect that water and must stay protected.
The Department justifies this action as reducing regulatory burden. The real burden falls on the public. Rescission would:
•Increase costs to taxpayers. The agency already has a large backlog of road maintenance it cannot fund, and new roads add to that liability.
•Increase wildfire risk. Roads bring more people and more human-caused ignitions into remote backcountry.
•Degrade water supplies. Roadless areas protect headwaters that millions of downstream users depend on.
•Fragment habitat. Unroaded forests are the last strongholds and climate refuges for many at-risk species.
•Replace stable national protection with a patchwork. Forest-by-forest plans can be weakened one at a time.
The public has spoken clearly. The August 2025 scoping period drew more than 220,000 comments, about 99% of them opposed to rescission. I also object to the process for this round. Before the rule was adopted, the agency held more than 400 public meetings after issuing the proposed rule. A brief comment period without comparable public meetings does not match the scale of this decision.
These forests belong to all Americans, including future generations. Please keep the Roadless Rule intact.