FS-2025-0001-609165

Public Comment on the Proposed Rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule Docket No. FS-2025-0001 | RIN 0596-AD66 I am writing today to oppose the proposed rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001 (Roadless Rule). This landmark Rule is commonsense, protects key ecological, community, and cultural values, and is integral to my and my family’s health and wellbeing. I am submitting these comments to express my personal views and to request that the United States Department of Agriculture keep the Roadless Rule intact. My home is in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, where our national forests are renowned for their globally significant biodiversity and for their recreational opportunities. I take my young sons hiking, foraging, camping, and swimming in our favorite roadless areas. We study plants, mushrooms, animal tracks, birds, salamanders, and geology in these roadless areas. They love to explore the forest’s waterways and we plan to teach them how to fish in these roadless areas. We delight in waterfalls and they learn self-confidence and self-reliance. They are learning to love to be outside and to understand the importance of being disconnected to technology, a critical element in today’s technology-laden existence. In particular, the inventoried roadless areas on the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest where we visit the most that do not have additional layers of designated protection are Cheoah Bald, Tusquitee Bald, Mackey Mountain, the Black Mountains, and South Mills River. We are intimately connected to these places and my family depends on them to explore and connect to nature with no worries of roads and the commercial enterprises that they bring into our public lands. I understand that there are places where those do occur, but I appreciate that the Roadless Rule has created certainty for over 25 years around where that can and cannot occur, and that as a parent I can access these precious places to build precious memories as my children grow and learn. They are physical, emotional, and spiritual places for my renewal, respite, and inspiration. As a citizen and taxpayer of the United States, I value Roadless Areas for saving my tax dollars. As Taxpayers for Common Sense reports, “[r]epealing the Roadless Rule would cost taxpayers billions in subsidized road construction and maintenance, exacerbate taxpayer losses from money-losing timber sales, increase wildfire risks and the associated costs borne by taxpayers, and weaken the health of roadless areas that provide important commercial and recreational benefits to the American public.” I appreciate that Roadless Areas provide water filtering service for over 25 million people across the country, and that clean drinking water is an irreplaceable resource. Roadless Areas of the Chattahoochee National Forest provide a significant portion of the Chattahoochee River, the source of drinking water for the City of Atlanta, where I have over a dozen family members who rely on that water. Above all, I believe that the Roadless Rule should be maintained as it is for the inherent values these areas provide for themselves, the flora and fauna and the unfragmented wild nature therein. Nearly 450 threatened, endangered, and ESA proposed wildlife species depend on national forest roadless areas for their survival, and over 1,500 sensitive plant and animal species recognized by the Forest Service find habitat in Roadless Areas. The unfragmented nature of Roadless Areas provide connectivity and more resilient habitat. Roadless Areas are less likely experience invasive species infestation or human-caused wildfire. I am requesting that the U.S. Forest Service fully analyze the following elements in the Final Environmental Impact Statement: •the effects of rescinding the Roadless Rule on wildlife habitat connectivity and landscape fragmentation •cumulative effects at the landscape scale, rather than limiting analysis to the direct footprint of potential future road construction or timber-management activities •watershed, erosion, sedimentation, and aquatic-connectivity impacts associated with potential changes in road construction and management •meaningful government-to-government Tribal consultation and consideration of Tribal interests and knowledge throughout the decision-making process Thank you for the opportunity to provide my comments on the proposed rescission of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001. I am requesting that the U.S. Forest Service select the No-Action Alternative laid out in the DEIS and keep the Roadless Rule intact.