Comment from Bruce Pentz

I am writing to oppose any revision to NPS: "the National Park Service's wilderness stewardship policy under Director's Order 41" that would weaken protection for wildernss study ares, lands with wilderness study areas, lands with wilderness characteristics, or recommended, proposed, and eligible wilderness. These policies aren't as simple as the phrase :non-binding guidence" makes them sound. They carry out the agencies duty, rooted in the wilderness act and the statutes governing these lands, to keep wild and roadless country managed so as not to impair it's suitability for wilderness designation until Congress decides its fate. They hold finite inheritance of wild land so that a future congress can retain the option to protect it permanently. Once roads, motorized use, or logging are admitted into these places, the wilderness character that make them eligible is destroyed, and no future Congress can vote it back. The loss is permanent in a way that almost nothing in public lands policy ever is. T he agency has offered no reasoned justification for reversing decades of settled protection. A change of this magnitude, made without a document basis and against the clear weight of public objection, would be arbitrary and capricious. I ask that the existing standards be preserved in full, that no revision lower the standard of care for these lands, and our wild lands continue to be protected as they have been. Thanks