To the editor:
Our national forests provide clean drinking water, habitat for fish and wildlife, beautiful places to hike and camp, and some of our nation’s last stands of old growth forest. Our community knows this firsthand because we’re lucky enough to live near Green Mountain National Forest.
Right now, the U.S. Forest Service is trying to roll back protections for some of our best and last remaining forested areas by getting rid of the “roadless rule”. This rule, created in 2001, restricted expensive road-building in these last refuges for water and wildlife.
Is this what we need now: fewer protected forest areas? The forest service already manages a road system that is over seven times larger than the Interstate Highway System. Should taxpayers be on the hook to build more expensive roads that damage our water, wildlife, and outdoors?
The forest service and our elected officials need to hear that building more roads is the wrong direction. Furthermore, we must let them know that trying to sneak this massive rule change through without public meetings is cowardly and wrong.
We have until September 19 to tell the Forest Service what we think about this wrong-way plan. Our water, wildlife, and health depend on it. Send comments to regulations.gov/commenton/FS-2025-0001-0001.
Jane Hoffman
Greensboro
