The Table Mountain Roadless Area inside New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest would be logged — and in some locations clear-cut — under the U.S. Forest Service’s proposed “Northeast Swift” timber project.

Last year, The Wilderness Society and 55 other conservation organizations delivered a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, outlining the damage that off-road vehicle use can cause if not prohibited in potential Wilderness areas.

This week, The Wilderness Society President Bill Meadows sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, reiterating that the Forest Service maintain policies to protect land that has been recommended for Wilderness designation. The letter urges the Forest Service to prohibit off-road motorized vehicle use that can damage currently untouched wild areas.

An overlooked opportunity to sequester carbon on National Forests rests with its massive road system.

Preliminary analysis by TWS has indicated that returning unneeded Forest Service roads back to a natural state would be equivalent to revegetating an area larger than Rhode Island. We estimate that carbon storage from decommissioning and revegetating unneeded roads on our national forests is 39.5 — 48.5 million metric tons.