2009 Annual Report

It was a pretty wild ride for Wildlands CPR in 2009 – extraordinary successes in our program work combined with some significant funding challenges as a result of the recession.  But we came out at the end of year in very good financial and programmatic shape for 2010.  We couldn’t have done it without the steady support from our members and foundations, and we hope you are as pleased as we are with the results.

Restoration Program

When 2009 began, the US Congress was still operating under a series of continuing budget resolutions.  Finally, in March, Congress adopted a final budget for the fiscal year (FY09 was Oct 1, 2008 – Sep 30, 2009) including a $10 million increase in Legacy Roads and Trails funding to $50 million.  The Forest Service projected the following national accomplishments with this funding:

• Fix 820 culverts restoring at least 1147 miles of stream habitat;

• Improve 2215 miles of road;

• Maintain 3089 miles of road;

• Decommission 2194 miles of system and unauthorized roads;

• Fix 166 bridges;

• Maintain or improve 3170 miles of trail; and

• Improve a minimum of 126,008 acres of habitat.

At the start of the year, we also pushed hard for road reclamation to be included in the stimulus bill, and it was.  The Forest Service received $650 million for capital improvement and maintenance over a two year period, of which approximately $228 million was dedicated to road management.  According to the agency, they allocated about 10% of that, or $25 million to road reclamation projects on Forest Service lands!

In August, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack gave a speech in Seattle outlining a 21st century vision for the Forest Service.  Vilsack’s vision was all about protecting and restoring clean drinking water for Americans.  Recognizing the outsized impact that the decaying, under-maintained, and overly-extensive Forest Service road system has on water, Vilsack directly discussed the importance of road decommissioning as part of the agency’s future work.  Our advocacy is clearly paying off!  

At the end of October, Congress adopted budgets for the Departments of Interior, Agriculture and several other agencies.  Imagine our exuberance when we learned that Legacy Roads and Trails had been nearly doubled, to $90 million for FY10!  The bill also reiterated and strengthened some FY09 language directing the agency to undertake a long-overdue process to identify and implement an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system.  We have continued meeting with the Forest Service to discuss the best methods for such a process and we are now anxiously awaiting a nearly three-months overdue report to Congress about their plans for complying with this direction.  

Wildlands CPR and our partners in this campaign are aggressively advocating for real dollars to fix the crumbling road system, and to thus restore clean drinking water in addition to fisheries and wildlife habitat.  We reached out to the Western Governors Association and to the National Council of Mayors, both of whom submitted letters to Secretary Vilsack endorsing our proposal for the agency to undertake a national right-sizing initiative.  Members of the Senate and the House both submitted letters to the President encouraging him to continue funding watershed restoration through road reclamation.  And perhaps most importantly, Forest Service staff like the program.

It’s been a long time since conservationists have sat at the table with the agency promoting a positive program, as opposed to fighting against funding for programs we oppose.  The agency is leaning farther and farther towards a restoration approach, but we will have to be vigilant to ensure that any new restoration agenda truly addresses water and watersheds, not just timber.

Transportation Program

Wildlands CPR has been co-leading (with the Wilderness Society) a national Forest Service travel management campaign since the agency adopted a new travel planning rule in 2005.  The results have been stupendous.  The rule required all forests to end the extremely damaging practice of off-road vehicle cross-country travel (though small play areas are still allowed).  All travel plans were supposed to be completed by December 2009, but many deadlines have now been extended for one year.  

This national campaign has resulted in the following changes to date: over 18,000 miles of user created routes have not been added to the Forest Service road or trail system as part of this process, and over 6,000 miles of agency roads have been removed from the formal system as part of final travel planning decisions.  Another 2,000 miles of Forest Service roads are slated for removal (at least on paper) as part of already released draft plans, plus an additional 14,000 miles of user-created routes.  Many other forests have not even released their drafts yet, so we will continue to track this and keep you posted.

As part of the campaign, our Montana and Utah ORV coordinators (Adam Rissien – MT, Laural Hagan – UT) focused their attention on protecting roadless areas from off-road vehicle designations.  Each chose 2-3 forests to focus on in their states, and they were successful.  Laural and her local partners were able to protect important roadless areas on the Dixie National Forest from any off-road vehicle designations.  She also helped build a rural coalition of local citizens working to stop off-road vehicle abuse in southern UT.  Adam was able to protect 9 of 11 roadless areas on the Bitterroot National Forest from designations as well, at least through the draft phase of planning, and he’s still working on the other two areas while we await the final analysis and decision.  Adam also worked with Western Environmental Law Center to file a lawsuit challenging illegal snowmobile grooming in the West Pioneers Wilderness Study Area on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.  The result: the Forest Service agreed to stop grooming 95 miles of snowmobile trails in this important roadless area.  Our Legal Liaison, Sarah Peters worked with Adam and Laurel on their legal strategies, as well as assisting ORV staff in other states with their travel planning advocacy.   

Clearly the national travel planning campaign that we co-lead with The Wilderness Society is resulting in significant improvements on the ground when it comes to both off-road vehicle and road management – both at the individual roadless area level and the broader level.  

New Projects

In the spring, we released an updated version (electronic only) of our landmark, “Six Strategies for Success” report about effective off-road vehicle enforcement.  And in the fall, Josh Hurd, our Restoration Research Associate, completed a six-part series on the political economy of watershed restoration.  The series included six reports, which constitute a huge step forward in understanding some of the funding mechanisms, public perceptions, economic implications, etc. of the developing restoration sector of the economy.

This summer we entered into our first formal cost-share agreement with the Forest Service – specifically the Lolo National Forest (MT).  The four-month project included inventorying hundreds of miles of roads to document road condition, weeds, water impacts, and other damage.  In one area, for example, our field crew found an extensive network of user-created, illegal off-road vehicle routes.  The project was a great success, and the data is now being used in a proposed restoration project.  

At the Office

In part due to the recession, and since the UT forests were largely done with travel planning, we closed our UT office this fall.  Our communications coordinator, Franklin Seal, was also based in our UT office, but due to projected funding shortfalls we had to drop that position in January ’09.  We experienced some other downsizing as well, but it was thankfully due to attrition.  

With these cuts, numerous other cost-saving measures, and a few new grants, we were actually able to end the year well in the black and ready to tackle our 2010 objectives, including implementing a new strategic plan that we adopted in June ‘09.

Conclusion

Though Wildlands CPR is smaller than we were a year ago, our workload has not shrunk accordingly (much to the staff’s chagrin).  As detailed above, we’re continuing to move our campaigns forward very aggressively.  We’ve had a terrific year with both of our major campaigns and we’re looking forward to even more success in 2010!