I am a mountain biker and hiker who utilizes roadless areas frequently, and I am also an engineer and economist who views the natural environment as both a functional system and as a financial resource. I urge you to preserve existing roadless areas by keeping the roadless rules in place.
I am intimately familiar with the roadless areas along the western edge of the Lincoln National Forest, roughly between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft New Mexico.
I have experienced several times when a road is built through a formerly wild region. Road construction destroys the natural essence of natural areas and can never be undone. In addition to the initial destruction, the existence of a road permanently alters the character of an area, moving it from a pristine wilderness towards an industrial wasteland.
Road construction in wild areas destroys a wide swath of our natural environment, both in horizontal and vertical dimensions. The most obvious impact is horizontally, as a path significantly wider than the road is blazed through whatever existed before. But roads built in hilly or mountainous require much heavier bulldozing to avoid side-slopes and excessive grades. Even in flat areas, construction includes scraping down below the ground surface and rebuilding to create a solid foundation for the road.
Once the road is created, it changes its surroundings forever. It creates a barrier to wildlife, carving natural environments into smaller portions. This shrinkage of wild areas decreases the biodiversity as the shrinking habitats provide fewer places for living and breeding, especially for larger species. The impact on smaller species is even more severe, as the road surface itself presents a large barrier to movement.
From a financial perspective, preservation of the existing natural resources is crucial to local economies, especially the tourism that is often the lifeblood of rural counties near these roadless areas. Promoting mining and logging at the expense of natural areas that draw enormous amounts of on-going tourism is short-sighted. These extractive industries may provide short-term jobs but unfortunately damage the long-term economic potential for recreation and tourism.
One argument used by proponents of rescinding the roadless rule is that new roads will enable forest management and access for firefighters. However, the best available fire ecology research shows that fires start far more often near roads, and fire-fighting agencies explicitly warn that adding roads will increase wildfire frequency.
Posing the elimination of the roadless rule as a tool for promoting economic development is a false representation. I fervently support keeping the roadless rule, to preserve the natural environment and the economic benefits that it promotes.
Philip B. Simpson