Comment on FR Doc # N/A

Hello - I am deeply concerned about the Department of the Interior's sweeping review of wilderness policies across the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. My comments pertain to the Management of Wilderness Study Areas (BLM-2026-0069), Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (BLM-2026-0068), Management of Designated Wilderness Areas (BLM-2026-0067), Wilderness Stewardship (NPS-2026-0100), and Wilderness Administration and Resource Stewardship (FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-2575). Acrross America and specifically the Western United States, this review affects policies guiding management of cherished lands that I use on a regular basis for hiking, fishing and camping. Managing designated Wilderness areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Recommended Wilderness, and Lands with Wilderness Characteristics to protect their wilderness character is consistent with protecting recreation in fact, providing outstanding opportunities for primitive recreation is an integral part of wilderness under the law. These places also protect and sustain clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, and Indigenous cultural and spiritual connections. Local communities rely on wild public lands for economic benefits from tourism and recreation, and their quality of life. I write as a regular user of wilderness and public lands, and I want to be direct about what that experience actually looks like on the ground: I do not have an access problem. The current framework already gives me the ability to hike, camp, hunt, fish, and simply be in these places. Nothing about the existing policy has kept me out or limited my ability to enjoy these lands. The premise that current management is somehow restricting access does not match my lived experience, and I don't believe I'm unusual in that. What would degrade my access and experience is the opposite of the status quo: opening these areas to more motorized use, road construction, logging, and mining. Primitive and unconfined recreation the quiet, self-reliant experience that defines wilderness cannot coexist with industrial extraction and motorized traffic in the same places. Roads fragment habitat and erode the very character that makes these lands worth visiting. Once that character is degraded, it is not something that comes back on a human timescale. I am not asking the Department to solve an access problem I don't have; I am asking it not to create one. I'm also concerned that this review functions as a subsidy for private profit at public expense. Reclassifying wilderness-quality lands to open them to logging, mining, and drilling primarily benefits private companies that extract public resources for private gain, often at below-market royalty and lease rates, while the public bears the cost in degraded landscapes, lost recreation value, and diminished ecological function. That is corporate welfare, not public land management. These are public lands, held in trust for all of us and for future generations they should not be converted into a discount input stream for private industry. I urge the Department to leave its current policies for wilderness-quality lands in place at this time. These policies provide a proven framework for protecting important public land values, supporting recreation and Tribal interests, ensuring management consistency, and maintaining the ecological, cultural, and scenic resources that make these lands unique. Thank you for considering my comments. Sincerely, Emily Brudenell