The Forest Service has been able to take a vital leadership role in balancing the multiple dimensions of its mission through the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule which enables it to manage public lands for conservation as well as for other uses needed and desired by the public.
New roads through areas with relatively intact ecological value will provide accelerated access for development, over-harvesting of timber, and speed the movement of invasive species through the landscape, all of which accelerate the collapse of biodiversity that threatens the health of ecosystems necessary to sustain life for all of us.
The loss of the 2001 roadless rule and its replacement with a jigsaw puzzle of local regulations will inevitably increase the pace of this unravelling. Small local governments can’t possibly have the resources and the depth of knowledge that the Forest Service is able to bring to vital decisions about land management, and the result will be that rather than coherent ecoregion-level management, one jurisdiction will create harms that negatively impact other jurisdictions nearby.
I urge you NOT to change the 2001 Roadless Conservation Rule.