Opposes rescissionA0 noneSubstance 5/24Posted October 6, 2026 On Regulations.gov
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IN RE: FS-2025-0001; RIN-0596-AD66
I am against repealing 36-CFR-294 SUBPART B. The area I live in specifically concerns roadless areas in the Black Hills Region including Inyan Kara, Sand Creek, and Beaver Park on the Black Hills National Forest, and Indian Creek, Redshirt and Chalk Hills Roadless Areas on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. I was born and raised in the foothills of the Black Hills over 70 years ago; and for the past 30 years have lived in a residential strip in the Black Hills National Forest where all houses along each side of the road back to National Forest land. I have witnessed the changes to land use in terms of the regulations; and of the attitudes of people in how to use the land.
Overwhelmingly, for business purposes there is a desire to profit financially without regard for sustainability of resources - referencing primarily lumber, mining and recreational-driven businesses. I belong to the Norbeck Society which closely monitors the predominant lumber company in the area - which company routinely ignores the limits of trees to be taken by contract, and takes more than allotted. Over the decades I have been aware of the results of mining or exploratory companies who come initially to explore for minerals and then to mine or to flip the land to a mining company. I know that the Town of Keystone at fairly recently gave permission for exploring for gold and within a very few months had to shut down the exploration due to toxins seeping into the aquifer that provides town residents with water. I know of a spring-fed fountain built into a wall along a road by the CCC which had to be shut down in the 1980's due to poisoning by giardia due to grazing by cattle on National Forest land. This is both ground water and aquifers. Poisoned. I personally suffer almost year round the screaming noise of ATV's that roar down my residential road on their way to the back roads - to continue with their loud intrusive noise and sheer presence through the homes, the living rooms, the bedrooms, the grocery stores of the other flora and fauna for which the National Forests lands were set aside to live protected from our own species depredations. These ATV's drive the roads when wet, creating deep ruts and searching for the streams and bogs to splash through. Our tax dollars are spent yearly re-grading to re-level the roads and make them again drivable. The animals, fish and water plants all are trampled by parades of these ATV's which nearly always travel in large groups piling Pelion on Ossa.. I watch the parades return to the rental business down the road at the end of the day where ground water is then used by the hundreds of gallons to hose them clean. We all live on well and septic and, given global warming and droughts, we worry about our own well water drained dry to serve this one business - that's just our neighborhood out of many in proximity to this type business. I know how relatively few tourists visited the Hills in my childhood versus the enormous numbers who now travel today. The burden of learning more about our planet is outstripping the planet's ability to sustain this education and waste by people who never really learn about our species place here.
Yes, I think it could be better if local National Forest offices had more control over their own areas to address the individual issues and characteristics. However, over the decades of my witnessing and following these decisions, I see that the local offices here bow all to easily to the almighty dollar and the desire of the businessmen who do not give a hang about the environment which they destroy with their business endeavors. They are in denial or choose to ignore this knowledge; much less take responsibility. Already more roads were built specifically for ATV's to plunder the land. I continually hear reports of other Hills area residents who witness the off-roading that extends beyond these roads. Lumbering roads decimate the land and assist with stripping the land of trees. Mining requires more access roads. All of these activities require staging areas that increase the acreage that gets scraped down to house equipment, working space, and open undesignated camping sites. I bear witness to the huge daily proliferation of our species out there over-running the fragile ecosystem. Therefore, I sadly insist that there by a central control over local regulation to help those who, in fact wish to curb this desecration of what sustains all, including our own lives. We need: clean oxygen, clean water, food to survive.