Secretary Rollins,
I am writing as a first year college student majoring in Environmental Science, and I’m an avid member of my university’s outdoors club. This summer, my best friends and I travelled to Flathead National Forest in Montana and spent a week there under the stars, in the deep woods, surrounded by the most abundantly growing nature I have ever seen in my life. Those memories are irreplaceable, and I have never felt so connected to the people I love most and the Earth I live on. The decision to rescind the Roadless Rule of 2001 would remove protections from almost half a million acres of Flathead National Forest and 45 million nationwide. This cannot happen. The allowing for roads and logging in these protected areas would serve no benefit to the lands and do nothing but cause further irreparable damage to the environment. It is, quite frankly, disgusting that this proposal has been justified as ‘protecting our forests.’ This will not decrease wildfire risk. In actuality, a 2026 study found that wildfires are four times more likely to start nearby large roads than in roadless areas because most wildfires are caused by humans. Roads will not lead to the better management and protection of wildlife and will instead disrupt, harm, and displace the 250 species of animals in the Flathead forest alone— not to mention how logging would also impact these delicate ecosystems. Roads divide up natural areas, creating barriers that most species won’t cross. The ones that do may join the million of vertebras that are made roadkill each day in the US. There will be devastating ecological consequences, and it is deplorable for this rescinding to occur under the guise of conservation. Imagine this destruction on a larger scale, and it is a large, large scale. Imagine these diverse landscapes that make our country beautiful, imagine these precious memories I carry, and imagine them all over the country. That is what the land represents. Our national forests hold memories and truth. They hold 3000 animal species, 400 of them endangered, tens of thousands of kinds of insects and fungi, and 60 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere. These are places to be protected, not to be left vulnerable. This is for the sake of our great national forests and for the sake of our own humanity. Do not rescind the Roadless Rule.
Reference
Aplet, G.H., Hartger, P. & Dietz, M.S. Three-decade record of contiguous-U.S. national forest wildfires indicates increased density of ignitions near roads. fire ecol 22, 8 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-026-00450-2