Program Updates, Spring 2010

Restoration Program

Our Restoration Campaign Director, Sue Gunn, has been busy leading our national campaign to right-size the Forest Service road system and promote increased funding for their Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (Legacy Roads).  Sue and Executive Director Bethanie Walder joined other members of the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative (WWRI) in DC in December to accept our “Rise to the Future” award from the Forest Service.  As part of the award, Sue (who directs the WWRI as part of her work for Wildlands CPR) gave a presentation to the national watershed staff about Legacy Roads.  In addition, we met with Under Secretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman, Congressman Norm Dicks, and numerous other Forest Service and Hill staff about the importance of Legacy Roads and opportunities to expand the program.  

Our Legacy Roads efforts went into overdrive when the President released his proposed FY11 budget in January, which unfortunately recommended only $50 million for Legacy Roads next year (see DePaving the Way, page 10).  The President’s budget last year also recommended $50 million, so perhaps in the Administration’s eyes this is just a redo.  But Congress increased the funding to $90 million when they passed the final FY10 bill, and we’re hoping they’ll do the same (or even more) for FY11.  Our specific FY11 request is to increase Legacy Roads to $120 million next year, with an additional $30 million for identifying an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system.  This proposal has been endorsed by all the large national environmental groups as part of their “green budget” proposal for public lands.  On the bright side of the new budget, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell stated, as part of his testimony to the House Interior Appropriations Committee, that the agency is moving in a new direction of right-sizing the road system, so they are starting to hear and use our words.  He also said that there are at least 45,000 miles of roads the agency no longer needs.  While this number is only about a third of the 2001 “unneeded roads” projection by the agency, it’s still a lot of roads and a lot of work to do – if they would only start identifying which roads those are…

To identify those roads, the agency must define an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum roads system.  We are anxiously awaiting a nearly 3-months overdue Forest Service report to Congress about their plans for identifying the minimum road system.  Keep an eye on our website for updates about the plan as soon as the agency releases it.

In addition to national advocacy, Wildlands CPR staff have been engaged at the regional and individual forest level.  Both Bethanie and Sue coordinated regional responses to the FY10 Legacy Roads allocations in the Northern Region (MT and northern ID) and in the Pacific Northwest Region (WA and OR, Region Six). For example, Sue worked with our WWRI partners to inform Region 6 about potentially problematic projects.  The final allocations in the Pacific Northwest did not include any of the projects opposed by WWRI members.

And to start promoting all of this Legacy Roads work more effectively, we hired Greg Peters on a new contract to work on Legacy Roads communications for us, many thanks to the Temper of the Times Foundation.  He’s starting to update the WWRI website so that it has more recent data, and he’s begun work on an ambitious project to outline the intersection between community drinking water supplies and national forest lands.
 
Our restoration staff are also working on non-Legacy Roads issues as well.  For example, Science Coordinator Adam Switalski is finalizing the results of our five years of road removal research on the Clearwater National Forest.  He’s working closely with board member and University of Montana professor Cara Nelson on this final paper.  In closing that five-year research project, Adam is opening up a new one that is going to monitor the effectiveness of… you guessed it… Legacy Roads projects in the northern region.  We received a grant from the National Forest Foundation (who also funded the above-mentioned Clearwater monitoring project), to begin a citizen-monitoring program on Legacy Roads.  We’ve been working closely with the Forest Service to identify opportunities to expand their own monitoring efforts – field work will begin this summer.

Adam also gave a Legacy Roads/road reclamation presentation to all of the Forest Service Region One watershed staff at their annual regional meeting.  He talked with staff about ways to increase monitoring and research related to road reclamation and fish passage.  

On the combined restoration and transportation front, Adam also oversaw the biannual update of our bibliographic database.  Many thanks to Greg Peters who we contracted with to complete that project.  The database now sits at more than 20,000 citations/abstracts of road and ORV research and reports. 

Transportation Program

On the travel planning side of things, the agency is finalizing more decisions, leading to more appeals from all sides, including ours.  More appeals also has the potential to mean more litigation depending on how things play out.  Our Legal Liaison, Sarah Peters, has been working with activists around the west to address these decisions.  She also took the month of February off to study for the MT Bar (as if passing the CO and OR bar wasn’t already enough)!

Sarah worked with the Idaho Conservation League and The Wilderness Society on their challenge to the Salmon-Challis NF’s travel plan after the agency ignored extensive documentation of damage to important streams and riparian areas.  Sarah also worked with our Montana ORV Coordinator, Adam Rissien, and his partners from eastern Montana, the Pryors Coalition, on a lawsuit against the Custer National Forest’s Beartooth District Travel Plan.  Matt Bishop from Western Environmental Law Center is our lawyer for this case.   At issue are two popular horseback riding trails leading into the Gallatin NF, and the entire Pryor Mt. area where the Forest Service designated 124 miles (99%) of roads and trails for motorized use, and less than one and a half miles (1%) for those who rely on a quiet setting to enjoy traditional Montana activities. Additionally, the agency allows cross-country motorized travel up to 300 feet off either side of nearly every designated road and trail for the purpose of dispersed camping, which has led to extensive soil damage on Big Pryor Mt. and other places.

In addition to filing these new cases, Wildlands CPR’s settlement of the snowmobile grooming problem in the West Big Hole roadless area on the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest was finalized by the courts just around Christmas!  The settlement will stop 95 miles of snowmobile grooming in this spectacular roadless area.  And as a follow up to the settlement, Adam is coordinating with Friends of the Bitterroot and LightHawk to coordinate winter use monitoring over-flights of the area.  For more details about the settlement, see the regional report on page 15.  

Adam R. continues to participate in other travel plans still underway throughout Montana (including projects on the Flathead and Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forests).  He also worked with Montanans for Quiet Use to issue a report highlighting monitoring results from the 2009 season.  He has given presentations to local chapters of Trout Unlimited and Back Country Horsemen to identify vulnerable areas and opportunities to work together. And with the aid of volunteer Stu Smith of True North GIS, Adam R. determined that roadless areas on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge are threatened by nearly 1,000 miles of potential user-created routes, many of which could be formally designated when the agency undertakes travel planning.  As the Forest Service moves ahead, Adam R. will focus on preventing as many of these routes from being designated as possible.