The Honorable Brooke Rollins
Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20250
Dear Secretary Rollins,
I am writing to urge you to select the No Action Alternative and keep the national Roadless Rule fully intact. The rule protects some of the last unfragmented backcountry in our national forests, and repealing it would put more than 40 million acres at risk of new road construction and industrial development.
I live in Ojai, California, at the edge of the Los Padres National Forest. For over a decade I have hiked the Nordhoff Inventoried Roadless Area, which rises just above my home. I have watched it through drought, fire, and recovery, and it remains one of the quiet, wild places that make this community what it is. My family and I also hike and camp in the Sespe-Frazier Inventoried Roadless Area, where my kids have learned what it means to spend time in country that is still wild. Places like these cannot be replaced once roads cut through them. Across the Los Padres, more than 600,000 acres of roadless land are at stake.
These lands matter for several reasons.
Wildlife and biodiversity - Roadless forests give mountain lions, black bears, California condors, and many other species the large, connected habitat they need. Roads fragment that habitat, and they put the native plant communities these animals depend on at risk too.
Clean drinking water - Roadless areas protect headwaters and watersheds that supply drinking water to communities downstream. More roads mean more erosion and sedimentation, and poorer water quality.
Wildfire - I speak about this issue from experience. I worked as a seasonal wildland firefighter for eight years across the Mountain West with the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Joshua Tree National Park and I know how fires start and spread. You argue that repealing the Roadless Rule would improve fire management, but research shows that wildfires are more likely to start near roads, because roads bring people and ignition sources deeper into the forest. The rule already allows many forest management and fire mitigation activities. In my experience, what makes communities safer is investing in defensible space, home hardening, and prescribed fire near communities, not building new roads into remote backcountry.
The Roadless Rule has protected our national forests for more than two decades with broad public support. Please keep it in place, choose the No Action Alternative, and protect America's remaining intact forests for the next generation.
Thank you for your consideration.