Comment from Caron, Catherine
Catherine CaronOpposeIndividual
Summary: The commenter opposes any revisions to FWS Part 610 that would weaken protections for wilderness areas. They argue that current policies are necessary to preserve fragile ecosystems and that opening these lands to industry would cause irreversible environmental destruction.
I am strongly and absolutely opposed to any revision to FWS Part 610: “Part 610 of the Fish and Wildlife Service Manual, Wilderness Stewardship” that will weaken protection for wilderness areas, areas with wilderness characteristics, or land that has been recommended, proposed, or eligible for wilderness designation.
I have seen what the current administration and its agencies, Fish and Wildlife included, are doing with our public lands and protected wilderness areas - opening them up to industry for mining and drilling. Our human lives do not depend on our consumption of oil and gas and precious minerals. Our human lives depend on the fragile ecosystems of our planet, the trees, plants, and species that give us clean air, clean water and virgin land undisturbed by human invasion and destruction. The destruction of our last wild spaces is suicide for human life.
Current policies fulfill the agencies’ duty to manage wild and roadless areas as wilderness. But if roads and logging are admitted into our wilderness areas the entire ecosystem deteriorates as the destruction moves down the eco system. Trees and plants are destroyed along with the tiny insects and microbes that inhabit the soil. Animals and birds are frightened out of their natural, traditional habitat. Streams are polluted thus adversely affecting fish populations. It is this natural world of trees, plants, and creature species that has created the fragile ecosystems that have sustained human life on this planet human life for millennia.
It is our human responsibility to protect the species not to destroy them.
No. Do not destroy our last wild places.
The Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t offered a satisfactory justification for reversing decades of established protections. Making such substantial changes without a documented basis and against the clear weight of public objection is unacceptable.
Please preserve the existing standards in full. Continue to keep these wilderness areas wild, for the benefit of the species which inhabit them and for the continued sustenance of humans on this planet.