I have worked in and recreated in our national forests most of my life. I spent summers hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains, lived and worked in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest collecting water quality data and the Tahoe National Forest surveying wildlife. Some of that put me in the backcountry for days at a time, hiking into headwater streams and camping miles from any road. I’ve packed in, fished, and photographed wildlife and the night skies. I've talked to other people on the trails that love and treasure these places. That experience is why I’m asking you to oppose any rescission or weakening of the Roadless Rule.
The peace and quiet in a roadless area is something you can’t manufacture. Many of us need that at times in our lives. The smell of the trees, the clear, clean air and water and the peace of it all that restores our souls is true recreation. Everybody deserves to experience that. It is our birthright as Americans. Roadless areas are our heritage. Once you road them, you don’t get them back.
Now, the cleanest, coldest water I've ever seen came from roadless basins in the Tahoe, California area. But I've also waded streams in the Shasta-Trinity that were so clear I could count the fish at the bottom of plunge pools. I’ve also seen what a road does after a storm, ditches cut, culverts plug, and sediment slugs downstream. That mud smothers spawning gravel and costs downstream communities money to treat. Roadless areas aren’t just scenery. They are the headwaters that fill our rivers and reservoirs. Building roads in these watersheds will impact water quality and fishing which will cost citizens and businesses in treatments and reduced recreation dollars.
My survey work showed me, of course, that these areas are source habitat for wildlife. They’re where species that need space and quiet still hold on - native trout, steelhead, salmon, elk, ringtails, mountain lions etc. Roads fragment all that. They bring noise, poaching access, and edge effects that dry out the land, increase temperatures and fire exposure, stress vegetation and animals, fragment habitat and wildlife, and create conditions for invasive species and predators. I’ve seen numerous survey sites where the difference between a roaded and unroaded drainage was like night and day. You can’t replace that with a mitigation plan. Rescinding the Roadless Rule will harm fish and wildlife that need room without roads.
And I have lived and worked in fire country. The roadless old growth and unroaded backcountry often burn cooler and patchier. It's pretty obvious that most of the fires, and the worse fires, have been in the roaded areas. More roads don’t suppress fire, they give us more ignition sources and create conditions on the ground ideal for fire via vehicle access and edge effects. If we want to protect communities, we should focus on defensible space and home hardening, not carving new roads into the last quiet places.
Finally, I've spent money in nearby communities. The outfitters, guides, fly shops, motels, and cafés in towns drawn and depend on the people who come for the backcountry. Roadless areas are an economic asset. They bring hunters, anglers, hikers, and wildlife watchers. That’s real revenue and real jobs. I've seen what happened in towns like Hayfork, California that depended on logging. The sustainable future for those communities is in continuing to foster recreation opportunities, not more boom-to-bust activity. Rescinding the Roadless Rule is going to harm existing small businesses and leave local populations worse off down the road.
So when you consider rescinding the Roadless Rule, please don’t think of it as a map line. Think of the millions of visitors that seek these places out. Think of the clean water they generate for everyone downstream. Think of the fish and wildlife that depend on them. Think of the small towns that rely on people like me. Think of the quiet that took a century to grow. I urge you to oppose any effort to rescind or weaken the Roadless Rule.