I oppose rescission and urge the agency to select Draft EIS Alternative 1 (No Action), retaining the 2001 Roadless Rule.
I am a resident of Bend, Oregon. I've lived her for 5 years and grew up nearby in Eugene, Oregon.
About 137,000 acres of the Deschutes National Forest (roughly 9%) are inventoried roadless areas, including Tumalo Mountain, forests along the Cascade Lakes, trails near Tumalo Falls, and lands around Newberry National Volcanic Monument. These are where Bend residents hike, ski, run, fish, and find quiet. The proposal itself concedes that new roads and logging could bring noise, visible infrastructure and closures, tradeoffs with "quiet, remote and self-reliant recreation," and more user conflicts (91 FR 53829-30). A road, once built, is rarely undone, so these losses would be effectively permanent.
Visitors and residents spent more than $380 million in Bend in 2023, supporting 3,470 full- and part-time jobs (Dean Runyan Associates, Economic Impact of Travel in Bend, 2023, as cited by the Bend Chamber). The Bend Chamber, representing about 1,750 members and 8,500 Central Oregon businesses, has told the Oregon Legislature that recreation is a critical sector here, anchored by outdoor-product firms like Hydro Flask and OSU-Cascades programs in outdoor product development. Not all of this activity occurs in roadless areas, but the landscape that draws visitors, residents and employers depends on large intact tracts like these.
The agency estimates that if every operable acre were harvested (which it calls unlikely), timber revenue to the Treasury and Forest Service would rise $5.2-11.4 million per year nationally, while recreation could lose an estimated $6.1 million per year and additional impacts "could exceed $100 million" (91 FR 53829-30). These measures differ, but the scale matters: the possible national timber gain is small next to the value one community like Bend already draws from its public lands. The agency asked for data on baselines and industry effects (91 FR 53830). I ask that it analyze recreation, tourism and outdoor-industry effects for Central Oregon using local data before any final decision.
Recommendations:
(a) Select Alternative 1 and retain 36 CFR 294 Subpart B.
(b) If the agency pursues fuels reduction, develop narrowly tailored provisions for municipal watersheds and the wildland-urban interface (such as Tumalo Creek) with the City of Bend, Deschutes County and tribes, using the petition process noted at 91 FR 53829 (5 U.S.C. 553(e)), while keeping the rule.
(c) At minimum, exclude municipal watersheds and heavily used recreation areas near communities from any rescission.
(d) Publish a Central Oregon recreation, tourism and drinking-water impact analysis for public review.