Dear Chief Tom Schultz:
As an outdoor enthusiast, I respectfully urge the Department to consider that the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule represents a policy conclusion reached after one of the most extensive administrative processes in Forest Service history — and that overturning such a conclusion requires a comparably rigorous administrative basis, which the proposed rescission has not yet provided.
I live in and love this area, and I want to be able to continue to visit and bring my children in the future!
Trails and bodies of water, like Castle Lake, are precious venues for the public to connect with and appreciate nature. Threatened species, such as the California condor, Monarch Butterfly, Northern spotted owl, and Rufous Hummingbird rely on these lands for habitat.
Regarding the Castle Crags A in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, California:
Roadless forests provide undisturbed nesting, stopover, and wintering habitat for migratory birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Roads concentrate nest predators near edges. Predation by edge-following predators — Blue Jays, raccoons, snakes — is concentrated near roads, clearings, and forest edges. Distance to unpaved road was the strongest predictor of nest survival in a study of 463 nests across 17 songbird species. Nest predation, not parasitism, accounts for 75 to 100 percent of nest failures in most studies (DeGregorio et al. 2014; Akresh et al. 2024). — DeGregorio et al., 2014 (https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1049); Akresh et al., 2024 (https://doi.org/10.5751/JFO-00481-950212)
Rescinding the Roadless Rule would open the Castle Crags A, Shasta-Trinity National Forest to road construction and associated ground disturbance. The direct and indirect effects of that activity are precisely what makes a specific comment about this area necessary.
Losing federal protection for roadless areas threatens the very future of those areas. Please act to protect them for future generations.