FS-2025-0001-600081

The Wonalancet Out Door Club was founded in 1898 with the mission to make the natural beauty of the Sandwich Range accessible to a broad public through the maintenance of hiking trails. We now maintain more than fifty miles of trails and provide a variety of other year-round services to thousands of visitors and hikers annually. The Club has a long history of advocacy in protecting our national forests, from supporting the Weeks Act of 1911 to promoting the establishment of the Sandwich Range Wilderness in 1984 and its expansion under the New England Wilderness Act of 2006. The Club also advocated for approval of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in 2001. The Roadless Rule, established with the input of an amazing 1.6 million letters from citizens, has acted as a safeguard for our pristine National Forests for two and a half decades. In terms of natural resources, the rule protects intact ecosystems that are the habitat for large numbers of endangered species, that serve as vital migration corridors, and that encompass the headwaters of rivers which are crucial to preserving pure drinking water for tens of millions of Americans. The function of these uninterrupted forests to sequester carbon is increasingly appreciated as new scientific studies are published. And as the rule safeguards these forests it ensures that they remain available for recreation and appreciation of natural beauty that is untouched by human interference. These values survive because these large tracts are uninterrupted ecosystems. All these benefits come from protected areas that cover only 2% of the land in the United States. It is therefore hard to fathom that short-term commercial interests that are behind efforts to rescind the Roadless Rule should be given preference over the protection of such a unique and valuable resource. Once the commercial value is taken out of our forests their value as uninterrupted ecosystems is lost forever. The building of new roads and potential increase in commercial logging not only disrupt them irrevocably; they would likely also increase the risk of wildfires, since most forest fires have been shown to be caused by human activity. Respect for our wild lands has been part of our national character for many decades. We honor that tradition and, on behalf of all our members and our partner organizations around the country strongly advocate that the U..S. Forest Service retain the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Respectfully submitted, Frumie Selchen and Genevieve Christy Co-Presidents Wonalancet Out Door Club