Dear Forest Service,
I am writing to you in support of retaining the Roadless Rule as is, and in opposition to
eliminating the Rule. My reasons are mostly all the ones that you have heard before,
and all are perfectly legitimate and true:
Roadless areas (RA’s) constitute vital wildlife habitat
They are sources of pure rain and snowmelt water for wildlife, humans, fisheries
They are valuable for human recreation, such as hiking, berry picking,
birdwatching
Considering that most fires are started in the vicinity of roads, retaining RA’s
actually prevents fires
Keeping RA’s roadless eliminates many of the other problems caused by roads,
such as erosion, habitat fragmentation, weed invasion
But I have specific reasons, based on where I live, in the Yaak Valley in far northwest
Montana, for championing our RA’s. One of those reasons is that they are a favorite
hangout for the local population of threatened grizzly bears, and the place where they
are safest. Just as most fires start in proximity to roads, most bears that are shot by
humans, whether accidentally or on purpose, are shot close to roads.
And bears are not the only ones seeking safety in RA’s. Here in the Yaak, in the
Kootenai National Forest, an RA is the only safe place for a tree. By that I mean that
virtually all the rest of the forest either has been logged or can and will be logged.
Since our national forests are supposedly public forests and owned by you and me, and
since they are supposedly managed for “multiple use,” how is it fair or right that one use
is predominant over all the others and nearly universal throughout? That use, of
course, is logging. Except for the roadless lands and scattered tracts of old
growth—about 10% of the Forest-- the rest has been relentlessly roaded and logged for
most of the last 70 years. Maps of past harvest activities on the Kootenai, including the
Yaak area, reveal a landscape fragmented into thousands of patches representing
timber cutting units accessed by thousands of miles of logging roads. To find natural,
intact forest land in the Yaak, one has to visit one of our roadless areas. Eliminating the
Roadless Rule, as the Forest Service apparently is poised to do, would open even
those lands to logging.
For all these reasons, our IRA’s are not only ecologically significant, they are also, to me
and many others, precious and irreplaceable parts of our landscape.
Sincerely,
Pamela Fuqua