On the final day of the public comment period on the Bush administration's proposal to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the state PIRGs are releasing seventeen state-by-state reports documenting the clean drinking water, recreation, and wildlife habitat benefits of roadless areas in America's National Forests. The reports, "Our Natural Legacy: The Value of America's Roadless National Forests," are available at www.uspirg.org/reports. Among the findings:

- Sixty million Americans rely on clean drinking water from national forests. Roadless areas provide the purest source of that water due to their pristine and road-free condition. Drinking water from national forests is worth $3.7 billion annually.

- Outdoor recreation has become more and more popular over time as Americans participate in everything from mountain-biking to hunting in roadless areas. Approximately 82 million U.S. residents took part in wildlife-related recreation in 2001, spending $108 billion.

- A majority of the unspoiled habitat for hundreds of threatened, endangered, and declining species is found in roadless areas. Almost 500 at-risk species are found in national forests and could be harmed by destruction of roadless areas.

It's clear that the American people treasure their national forests for these important values, as evidenced by the 1.7 million comments the Forest Service has received in opposition to the Bush administration's proposal to repeal the Roadless Rule and replace it with a meaningless process that allows governors to seek protections—or logging, mining, and drilling—for roadless areas in their states. This brings the total number of comments in support of the 2001 Roadless Rule to more than four million nationally over the last several years.

We urge the Bush administration to heed the overwhelming public mandate to protect our last wild forests, and we hope that Secretary Veneman's successor will take the Forest Service in a new direction. He or she should start by keeping the Roadless Rule intact in the Lower 48 and in Alaska's Chugach and reinstating the rule in Alaska's Tongass Rainforest.

U.S. PIRG is the national advocacy office for the state PIRGs. State PIRGs are state-based non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organizations.