Subject: Oppose rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule – Docket FS-2025-0001
As registered Republicans and 32 year-long residents of rural El Dorado County, my husband and I oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. We have spent a great deal of high-quality time hiking, birding, and enjoying wildflowers in the Caples Creek Roadless Area, which is about 2 hours from our home. Visiting there and other Inventoried Roadless Areas in the northern Sierra Nevada has been one of our greatest joys over the years.
Our local forest, the Eldorado National Forest, is only about 50 miles east of the state capitol of Sacramento. It’s crisscrossed with old forest roads that are in very poor repair, in many instances degrading to a point where high-clearance 4-wheel drive vehicles are required to navigate these massively eroded former logging roads. The Eldorado National Forest has a huge backlog of these roads needing stabilization and treatment to arrest the head-cutting gullies. The Roadless Rule has been an effective bulwark that has protected high-value backcountry recreation in the Caples Creek Roadless Area from a similar fate. It has protected the wildlife habitat, water quality, and carbon storage in a watershed readily accessible to millions of people living in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, and the Lake Tahoe Basin. If the Roadless Rule is repealed and decisions are made only at the local level, protections will become fragmented and uneven. That weakens the overall conservation framework, without any credible evidence that the national rule itself is what limits our ability to address forest health or wildfire risks.
The NOI cites changing conditions, wildfire, insects, disease, and WUI growth. Those realities deserve targeted, site-specific tools. They do not require removing the national safeguards that prevent road building and timber extraction in places where intact landscapes are the very asset we are trying to conserve. Existing authorities already allow necessary exceptions and fuels work with environmental review. Before rescinding the rule, the EIS should rigorously analyze: (1) alternatives that retain the Roadless baseline while enabling time-bounded, decommission-on-completion access for hazard reduction near communities; (2) lifecycle costs and maintenance liabilities of any new roads; (3) impacts to municipal watersheds, fisheries, and backcountry economies; and (4) cumulative effects from increased access on invasive weed spread, already a significant problem on the Eldorado National Forest; and (5) wildlife habitat fragmentation.
Finally, a 21-day scoping window is not sufficient for meaningful participation on an action of this magnitude. Please extend the comment period to at least 60–90 days, hold regional public meetings, and ensure the draft EIS includes a robust No Action and Modified Roadless alternative.
Thank you for considering these comments.
Rosemary Carey and Carl Mesick
Eldorado County hikers, boaters, birders, botanists, trout lovers, and nature photographers