Comments on DEIS for the proposed rule rescinding the roadless rule:
NO ACTION ALTERNATIVE
The idea of repealing the roadless rule is so silly that Im disappointed that I even have to explain why roadless areas matter to people who live in DC. But here I am.
Roadless areas matter for wildlife, they matter for millions of Americans that rely on them for water, they matter to hunters and anglers, and they matter to the millions of people whose quality of life is defined by the public land access in their backyard.
It worries me that politicians in DC might think that “roadless areas” are actually roadless and maybe even prohibit cars or motorized access. To call many of our designated inventoried roadless areas “roadless” presents a misnomer. In fact, many of our inventoried roadless areas have existing two track roads that provide the best frontcounty recreation available on our public lands. While designated wilderness areas can restrict access of motorized vehicles and limit access to able bodied adults, the frontcountry Inventoried Roadless Areas that border those Wilderness Areas provide some of the most accessible fishing, hunting and recreation opportunities on our public lands. Keeping roadless areas under the roadless rule simply prevents new roads the USFS and BLM can’t afford, and keeps the same roads and same access without taking anything away.
In my backyard on the Shoshone National Forest, for example, frontcountry roadless areas allow people to drive to willderness trailheads, ride their ATVs, dirtbikes, and snowmobiles, and successfully hunt for elk that they can load into their truck, without being physically required to haul one out on foot or horseback. On that same note, frontcountry areas provide some of our wildlife’s most critical winter and migration habitat. America has succeeded in protecting many rock and ice wilderness areas, but our wildlife - especially deer and elk - can not survive in in the high country without access to lower elevation frontcountry “roadless” areas that are not overrun with development or a certain threshold of roads.
And real quick - the public is beyond tired of our land agencies deferring critical maintenance on important access roads that are necessary to enjoy public lands. Agencies’ budget and energy should be focused on making sure our roads are drivable in a passenger vehicle.
Two-some decades ago multiple groups from all sides of the aisles worked together to develop the roadless rule and define inventoried roadless areas across the country. They helped protect these important places from big development, without changing any kind of access for the communities that live next to them. They simply prevented a whole lot of new roads and new development in these designated, inventoried, extra-wild public lands. Keeping those very places The Same - which is most of us want most of the time! To undo that work now, with all the threats facing our public lands, does not make any kind of sense.
The impact of roads is so well studied and documented that it now has its own study: “road ecology”. So I will not go into those here. This is a plea that politicians in DC put down their biases, grudges, and politics, and look at what these places actually are: easily accessible, high quality habitat, wild frontcountry areas that millions of us enjoy and benefit from just the way they are now. Please, don’t try and fix what ain’t broke.