“Building more roads in national forests would be a drain on taxpayers”
“deferred-maintenance road backlog was estimated at $8.4 billion”
“Adding new roads to inventoried roadless areas would only deepen that hole”
What it names
Roadless areas
Middle Prong Addition
Works cited
10.1186/1735-2746-10-23
The comment
Dear USDA,
I believe the roadless rule is a great environmental conservation tool that benefits every American. It protects our nation's abundance of undisturbed natural areas from being destroyed. And the roadless rule gives our future generations clean water, clean air, and land for pleasure everyone can share. I support the roadless rule and do not want to see it go away.
I enjoy the solitude I find in the Middle Prong Addition, which is protected by the roadless rule. I find the forest beautiful and have a strong personal connection to it. I am worried logging could drastically change the natural areas protected under the roadless rule.
Forest road construction damages adjacent trees. Road construction on steep mountain terrain damages 21 to 33 percent of trees in the construction zone, depending on equipment used; on very steep terrain, damage rises to 27 to 44 percent. Direct habitat conversion and indirect fragmentation extend well beyond the road's physical footprint (Caliskan 2013). — Caliskan, 2013 (https://doi.org/10.1186/1735-2746-10-23)
Building more roads in national forests would be a drain on taxpayers. Even with the Roadless Rule in place, the Forest Service already has a 380,000-mile road system—twice as long as the U.S. highway system—crisscrossing national forests. The agency cannot afford to maintain it: the deferred-maintenance road backlog was estimated at $8.4 billion in the 2001 Final Environmental Impact Statement and is roughly $15.6 billion in today's dollars. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly flagged Forest Service deferred maintenance as one of the largest in the federal government, and the backlog has never dropped below $5 billion. Adding new roads to inventoried roadless areas would only deepen that hole.
Our country needs to focus on sustainable logging. A lot of the mountainous areas protected by the roadless rule are so steep that it is highly damaging to the land to harvest timber, and the trees from these steep slopes will be awkward and not tall strait trees.
I am Not in favor of rescinding the roadless rule.
Thank you for your consideration,
Andrew Dial