FS-2025-0001-610535

I am writing to oppose the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Docket FS-2025-0001). I help organize the Bay Delta Bioregional Regeneration Unconference, which brings people together to think and act at the scale of our watershed rather than our political boundaries. That work has taught me how completely California depends on one connected system. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain roughly 40 percent of the state, from the Sierra crest and the southern Cascades down through the Central Valley to the Delta and San Francisco Bay. Water from this system reaches about two-thirds of Californians and irrigates much of the nation's food supply. What happens in the headwaters does not stay in the headwaters. It shows up in every reservoir, farm, salmon run, and tap downstream. Many of those headwaters lie in national forests, and many of the most intact are protected because they are roadless. Unroaded watersheds deliver cleaner, steadier water at no cost to taxpayers. Roads do the opposite, sending sediment into streams and reservoirs for as long as they exist. Rescinding this rule would put the source waters of most Californians at risk to serve narrow, short-term interests. Regenerative stewardship means thinking in the timescales land actually operates on: decades and generations, not budget cycles or administrations. From that vantage point, roadless areas are among the most valuable things we hold in common. They are the last large, connected habitat for wildlife that needs room to move, and that room matters more as the climate shifts. They hold enormous stores of carbon in standing forests and soils, carbon that stays put only if the forests stay intact. And once a road goes in, none of this can be restored on any human timescale. I also want to respond directly to the claim that the rule is a barrier to wildfire risk reduction. The 2001 rule already allows fuel reduction and other necessary management where it is needed. Meanwhile, research has repeatedly found that human-caused ignitions concentrate along roads. Building more roads into remote backcountry adds new places for fires to start, along with miles of new infrastructure the Forest Service cannot afford to maintain. Fire risk is greatest where communities meet the forest, and that is where resources belong. These lands also belong to many people in ways that don't show up in timber volumes. They hold some of the best hunting, fishing, and backcountry recreation left in the country. For many Tribal nations, they hold cultural sites, gathering places, and traditional foods that have been cared for since long before the national forests existed. Those relationships deserve far more consultation and time than this process has offered. The public has said clearly and repeatedly that it wants these places kept whole. Stewardship means passing land on in better condition than we found it. I urge the Forest Service to withdraw this proposal and keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place for all national forest lands. Kaliya Young Co-organizer, Bay Delta Bioregional Regeneration Unconference Oakland, California