FS-2025-0001-605494

Re: Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Docket FS-2025-0001 As an avid hiker, biker, camper and nature photographer, I am deeply concerned about the proposal to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The forested areas protected by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule are safehavens for species of plants and animals that cannot survive without protection. Additionally, they provide clean water, fresh air, and quiet, peaceful places for people like me to get away from the chaos of daily life. None of those things can be replaced once ruined. Gutting the few truly natural places we have left will rob us and our children of the biodiversity and ecological stability these places provide. Worse yet, opening up these protected areas to roads will increase the likelihood of human-caused wildfires by nearly five times. "Building a road into a forest at high risk from uncharacteristic wildfire effects could increase the incidence of human-caused fires. A human-caused wildland fire is nearly five times more likely to occur on essentially roaded lands than on essentially unroaded lands." Furthermore, a 2020 study from the Rocky Mountain Research Station shows that "roads are strongly associated with the spread of invasive plant species in national forests. Non-native plants are twice as common within 152 meters (500 feet) of a road as farther away. Speculation that eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly twenty years of monitoring data." We must prevent this from happening! These forests, once opened and roaded, will not return to what they are now. The biodiversity and ecological stability they carry cannot be reconstructed after the fact. The agency has data in its own record showing that road access drives ignitions upward! None of the above issues have been reconciled with the rescission proposal. I ask that the agency address each of these points, in writing, in the final record. Sincerely, Krista Espinoza Newburgh, NY