I oppose the proposal to fully or partially rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
My name is Bill Van Bang and I am a GIS analyst from Portland, Oregon. I chose to raise my family here in the Pacific Northwest because of access to the outdoors to hike, hunt, fish, camp, and enjoy the wilderness fart outside the city. I have spent the past twenty years exploring and enjoying the Opal Creek, Bull of the Woods, Mount Jefferson, Salmon-Huckleberry, Mount Hood, Three Sisters, and Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness areas. Allowing road construction, development and commercial logging in currently protected Inventoried Roadless Areas will increase fire risk in areas that contain our remaining diverse and fire resilient forests. Allowing increased logging and roads will threaten clean drinking water sources and endanger the entire ecosystem of the watershed including 2.2 million Oregonians. It will also increase taxpayer burden as the existing National Forest road system has nearly $7 billion in deferred maintenance.
For the reasons listed above, fully or partially rescinding the Roadless Rule would be a tremendous mistake that will cause irreversible damage to the health of Oregonians and the planet. I oppose the proposal to rescind or alter the Roadless Rule and support the Alternative 1, the No Action Alternative.
--Bill Van Bang