FS-2025-0001-600491

As a hunter, career conservation professional, and parent of a young child who loves nature and wildlife, I implore the USDA to keep the roadless rule intact to help preserve Americas natural resources for future generations. Road ecology shows habitat fragmentation caused by roads is highly detrimental to already declining wildlife populations, like elk and deer herds. Greater and easier ingress to the wildland urban interface via new roads will also lead to an increase in human causes wildfires putting human lives, private property, and habitat at risk in a period of drying climate and rising fire danger. The USDA Forest Service is already one of the largest stewards of roadways, by miles, in the federal government. We do not need additional roads, especially considering the agencys inability to effectively and sustainably maintain the roads it already manages. Arguments in favor of repealing the policy are flawed - current roads allow sufficient access for recreation and logging. The Forest Service should keep the Roadless Rule intact exactly as it is. Do not weaken or repeal this critical policy. National forests are the heart of our public lands. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects some of the wildest forests we have left, forests that protect critical wildlife habitat and drinking water for millions. Revoking the Roadless Rule puts landscapes, wildlife, and communities at risk. Not only is the Roadless Rule good policy, it's also wildly popular across the country, with over 600,000 people submitting comments to the US Forest Service last year in support of keeping the rule in place. And more than 20 years ago, the American people overwhelmingly called for our national forests to be protected for future generations. Revoking the Roadless Rule would destroy the natural inheritance we leave for our children.