To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing as a Florida resident to register my strong opposition to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Stripping these protections threatens to open roughly 50,000 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) across Florida’s three national forests—Apalachicola, Osceola, and Ocala—to destructive road construction and commercial timber harvesting.
Florida’s landscape is experiencing unprecedented population growth and rapid private land development. In this environment, our national forests serve as irreplaceable ecological refuges. Carving new roadways through these contiguous forest blocks causes irreversible habitat fragmentation, alters delicate hydrology, and introduces invasive species.
Rescinding the Roadless Rule poses direct threats to Florida’s public lands:
Apalachicola National Forest: Harboring approximately 25,000 acres of roadless forest, this land supports Florida's largest population of the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. These birds depend on undisturbed old-growth longleaf pine savannas that commercial timber sales and heavy equipment traffic severely compromise.
Ocala National Forest: Road construction through roadless scrub disrupts the federally threatened Florida scrub-jay, a species entirely endemic to Florida that requires unfragmented scrub oak habitat. Roads also bring high-speed vehicle traffic, causing direct wildlife mortality.
Osceola National Forest: Industrial timber cutting and road runoff degrade water quality in wetlands, streams, and ponds essential to vulnerable aquatic species, including the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle.
Flora and Biodiversity: Statewide, Florida’s national forests shelter more than 130 threatened or endangered plant species and nearly 40 protected animal species that cannot withstand industrial forest disruption.
The Forest Service's claim that roadless protections prevent effective fire and forest management does not hold in Florida. Federal and state agencies routinely conduct successful prescribed burns and ecological restoration in these ecosystems without needing new commercial logging roads.
Roadless areas protect our drinking water recharge zones, safeguard biodiversity, and provide open spaces that cannot be replaced once paved or cleared. I urge the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service to withdraw this proposed rollback entirely and maintain the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule in full.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Henderson