FS-2025-0001-606339

Dear Forest Service Leadership: As someone who has lived in a rural community adjacent to roadless national forest for most of my life, I want to offer the Department a simple observation: the rule has done what it was supposed to do, and the case for undoing it is thin. It affects the community in which I live. National Forests and wild places are the lifeblood of our community. Often I spend time in roadless areas. It’s the only time my heart and brain line up to offer any solitude. I once spent a whole day in the backcountry with a very good friend. We had deeper conversation without the distractions. I’d relive it everyday if I could. If this rule is rescinded, I lose drinking water and a public space to exist in nature harmoniously Regarding the Comanche Peak Adjacent Area in the Arapaho & Roosevelt NFs, Colorado: Headwater Protection for the Cache la Poudre River System — This roadless area contains the headwaters of the South Fork Cache la Poudre River and multiple tributary streams (Fall Creek, Fish Creek, Beaver Creek, Buckhorn Creek, Joe Wright Creek) that feed into the Cache la Poudre River—a major water source for downstream communities and ecosystems. The subalpine and montane riparian shrubland ecosystems in Crown Point Gulch, Dadd Gulch, and Black Hollow maintain the cold-water conditions and riparian vegetation structure that regulate stream temperature and sediment load. Removing the forest canopy and riparian buffer through road construction would expose these headwater channels to direct solar radiation and erosion, degrading water quality for federally threatened Greenback Cutthroat Trout populations that depend on cold, clear spawning habitat in these streams. Road construction in Comanche Peak Adjacent Area introduces sediment, alters hydrology, and delivers chemical contaminants to adjacent habitats — the direct physical drivers of 7.2 - Dams & water management/use. The absence of site-specific analysis for Pallid Sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) in the Comanche Peak Adjacent Area Inventoried Roadless Area, Arapaho & Roosevelt NFs, constitutes a gap in the administrative record that exposes the final decision to legal challenge. The DEIS must evaluate 7.2 - Dams & water management/use at the documented severity and scope. "In 2001, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule prohibited road construction and timber harvest in 240,000 km² of inventoried roadless areas (IRAs) located on United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service lands. Many IRAs are among the most wild, undeveloped areas both in the nation and within their respective states. IRAs increase the size of—and reduce isolation between—protected areas, likely buffering them from external stressors. In some places, IRAs protect watersheds that deliver drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people." — Conservation Science and Practice (Wiley), 2020 Keep the Rule. That's the whole comment. With gratitude, Morgan Wetzel