Restoration Program

Our Restoration Program staff have been kickin’ ass (hey, if Obama can say it, can’t we?), with some exciting results.

Legacy Roads

Our Restoration Campaign Director, Sue Gunn, continues to put her magic money spell on the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (Legacy Roads and Trails), which has, to date, resulted in $180 million for Forest Service road reclamation, culvert upgrades and critical maintenance to protect and restore clean water.

Sue and Executive Director Bethanie Walder made a few trips to DC to continue to press the Forest Service to identify an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system. From Wildlands CPR’s perspective, the identification of this minimum system is the blueprint we need to ensure effective allocation of Legacy Roads and Trails funds over the long term. (Not to mention the fact that the agency was supposed to identify this minimum system by 2003, and still hasn’t done it.) To undertake this rightsizing initiative, and other watershed restoration needs in the most effective manner, we’ve been pushing the agency to create accountability and leadership for watershed restoration work by developing a Watershed Restoration Program within the agency.

Sue also made two trips to Montana to increase support for Legacy Roads and Trails here, including giving formal presentations to several state agencies about the benefits of this program in Montana. She was also invited by the Pacific Northwest Regional Office of the Forest Service to give a formal presentation in April about the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative and our broader Legacy Roads work. The presentation was for a “Chief’s Review” of the region’s work, and included numerous high level agency staff from around the country. Sue took advantage of the invitation to talk about the importance of water in the agency’s burgeoning restoration agenda.

Back down on the ground, Staff Scientist Adam Switalski is coordinating a Legacy Roads monitoring project on six forests in the Northern Region of the Forest Service – thanks to a challenge grant provided by the National Forest Foundation. Switalski met with agency staff to develop the monitoring program in a manner that is additive to the work they will be conducting themselves. He was also invited to give a presentation to watershed staff from forests throughout the region about the summer program, resulting in even more interest and requests from additional forests for similar work on their land. We hired Wildlands CPR former intern/contractor/recent UM graduate student/favorite son Greg Peters on contract as his field Coordinator/Outreach Specialist to implement this monitoring program.

Greg and Switalski are starting by collecting pre-reclamation baseline data on six national forests in western MT and the ID Panhandle. We’re partnering with the University of Great Falls, Friends of the Clearwater and Yaak Valley Forest Council to reduce our carbon footprint as we (and they) collect data from throughout the region. Check back this fall to learn more about our preliminary results.

Road Surveys on the Lolo National Forest

In other field news, we’ve also expanded our road inventory work on the Lolo National Forest. Beginning on May 3, returning field tech Adam Bender (yes, we love the name Adam!), and new to us, but not to this type of field work, tech Graham Byrd began surveying closed and abandoned roads. Switalski is overseeing the field work, conducted through a costshare agreement with the Lolo.

Montana ORV Coordinator Adam Rissien worked closely with Switalski and the Forest Service to develop this project and finalize the details. The primary purpose is to inventory and assess non-system and system roads and trails in specific project areas of the Lolo. The field crew is reconciling Forest Service maps of roads and motorized trails, assessing the condition of these routes (including presence and condition of drainage features, vegetation, wildlife use, noxious weeds, erosion, hydrologic interception or disruption, and nonmotorized and motorized vehicle use). Additional work includes inventorying, and monitoring the effectiveness of, past road storage and decommissioning treatments.

Transportation Program

While the Restoration Program rocks and rolls, our Transportation Program, led by Adam Rissien and Legal Liaison Sarah Peters, is speeding along just as quickly. For example, in late February Sarah took and passed the Montana bar (she was already licensed in OR and CO, but not here in MT). While waiting on her bar results, she continued to provide strategic legal coordination to activists and environmental lawyers throughout the west in response to a slew of final travel planning decisions (with many more to come).

Sarah assisted activists and lawyers with numerous appeals on the San Juan Rico-West Delores, Rogue River-Siskiyou, Modoc, and Stanislaus travel plans. The San Juan Rico-West Dolores appeal was successful, and the travel plan was sent back to the drawing board. The Rogue River-Siskiyou decision was withdrawn before the appeal could be decided, and the forest is engaging in further analysis of the effects of the TMP. The Modoc appeal was also successful and the decision remanded with substantive direction that could greatly improve the overall outcome for the forest. This was our biggest win so far in California. Unfortunately the Stanislaus appeal was denied.

In Idaho she is working closely with The Wilderness Society, Idaho Conservation League and Earthjustice on the case they filed against the Salmon-Challis Travel Management Plan. In this particular instance, the decision will have a significant negative effect on roadless and proposed wilderness areas, as illustrated by excellent field data collected by local activists. Though Wildlands CPR isn’t a co-plaintiff, we’re following this closely and will keep you posted on the outcome.

Sarah also hired Dave Whisenand as a legal intern for the summer, and he’s already hard at work researching a plethora of different legal questions that have arisen in the past few months. We’re looking forward to finding out more about what he learns. And while Dave is the fourth summer addition listed in this update, there’s also a fifth, and sixth. Intern Ryan Applegate will be helping us to monitor off-road vehicle damage and violations on the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF). The newly revised forest plan split the West Big Hole Inventoried Roadless Area into two units where the upper country is mostly protected from summer motorized use, but the remainder is mostly open; we will be concentrating our monitoring where the two areas meet.

Additionally, Rissien is working with a local horse packer to monitor the Pioneer Mountains, and so far this season we found significant ORV damage to meadows and documented sediment delivery to streams due to poorly maintained roads. Since the BDNF has not yet released its scoping document for travel planning, Rissien has been working in advance to increase support for preventing ORV abuse in BDNF roadless areas. He gave presentations to, or met with, members of a local Trout Unlimited chapter, the Back Country Horsemen, Montana Wilderness Association, the Continental Divide Trail Alliance, and the High Divide Alliance. He also continued meeting with district and forest level staff on the BDNF to discuss the upcoming planning process and the ongoing delays.

Also in light of the pending BDNF travel planning process, Rissien has been researching the Western Governor Association’s Decision Support System as implemented through Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to see how it may help protect ecologically sensitive habitats (see Policy Primer, this issue, pages 10-11).

In other news, the Bitterroot National Forest also delayed release of their Draft Environmental Impact Statement for their travel plan, and Rissien was invited by the Custer National Forest (MT) to comment on their Travel Monitoring Plan as a result of an appeal we filed. If they adopt some of our recommendations, it should dramatically improve the type of data they collect regarding off-road vehicle impacts in the area. Ideally that data would also be used to affect future management actions.