Wildlands CPR's Blog

Walking trails with the Forest Service

Bethanie Walder — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:54:45 -0600

I spent three days this week checking out hiking, biking, equestrian and motorized trails on Forest Service lands in Montana and Idaho. I was participating, along with a handful of activists representing each of the trail user groups mentioned above, in a Forest Service “field listening session” about the agency’s revision of their trail classification system.

Back in 2006, Wildlands CPR coordinated comments for nearly 60 other conservation groups on a revised “trail classification system” that the Forest Service was putting together. It’s taken them more than 2 years to respond to those comments, and this week, in conjunction with the listening session, they posted their new “interim final” directives for 60 day comment. Wildlands CPR will also be coordinating comments on this next step in the process as well.

It was an interesting three days, highlighted by a much better understanding of the intent of the proposed trail classification system, in addition to a better understanding of recreational interests and conservation issues when it comes to trails.

After a half day classroom session reviewing the proposed classifications, we spent 2 days in the field looking at how these directives would apply to hiking, biking, equestrian, motorcycle and ATV trails. We spent our last night/day out at Wilderness Gateway in Idaho, camping out to a wonderful feast hosted by the local chapter of the Backcountry Horsemen. It was a pleasure to get to know those folks, and to get to ride on some trails the next day to see things from their perspective.

It was that opportunity to understand the impact of the new system from other people’s perspectives that was the most enlightening part of the three days (I even learned some interesting things about motorized recreation). A few key themes came up from all recreational and conservation participants:

•   The overall trails management system is broken and this trails classification effort, while it addresses some engineering issues, still does not address the outstanding need for comprehensive recreation planning (which, for example, is not being done through the current travel planning process).
•   It may be difficult and expensive to maintain trails to such rigorous classifications, which we fear could result in trails being dropped to lower maintenance levels without adequate public process.
•   It takes a lot of experience with the trails classifications for forest managers to apply them correctly on the ground.

In addition to these broad themes, we had a lot of questions about the specifics of the classifications language. As just one example, the new directives requires Trail Management Objectives for each trail (kind of like road management objectives that already exist for each road). According to one of the Forest Service trails experts who attended, just about a quarter of the trails on the national forest system have TMOs at this point in time, with more TMOs being developed every day. The problem is that the TMOs should be based on previous management decisions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and it is highly questionable whether or not such previous decisions actually exist for many trails. With no NEPA, the creation of a TMO could be considered a decision, since it will then dictate maintenance levels and designated use on the trail, but TMOs are not decision documents and are not subject to NEPA. Many of us were concerned about the potential for abuse under this ambiguous system.

We’re glad the Forest Service pulled together this listening session and that we were invited to participate to raise environmental and other concerns. Seeing the impacts/intent of the classification in the field, instead of just reading things on paper, gave us a much stronger sense of how they will work and of what their intent is (both positive and negative). We also left with a far greater understanding of other recreational interests related to trails. With this knowledge and understanding, we will be able to provide more targeted comments to the agency about the “interim final” directives they released this week. If you are interested in learning more about this, don’t hesitate to contact our office.

Utah's Republican governor calls ORV abuse an "abomination"

Laurel Hagen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:06:48 -0600

Utah's governor, Republican John Huntsman, told the Salt Lake Tribune in a recent interview that he had witnessed extensive ORV abuse in Utah, and that "a crackdown is coming." The Trib's editorial cartoonist, Pat Bagley, responded with this excellent illustration (the little dude in the corner is supposed to be the governor):

The article:

***

Guv: ORV off-trail damage an 'abomination,' crackdown is coming

By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 10/02/2008 10:52:51 AM MDT

Off-road vehicles that stray from trails are doing immense damage to the state, said Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has directed state officers to begin cracking down.

"It's an abomination, it's an embarrassment," the governor said Wednesday during a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.

Huntsman said that he recently visited the area around Moab with David Bonderman, a prominent venture capitalist and major financier for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, to see the damage done by illegal off-road travel.

"I wanted to get a sense of what the concern was, and it became a concern to me," he said...

For the rest of the article, go here.

The article concludes with a few words from Michael Swenson, the head of USA-All, an off-roading advocacy group:

"There are many cases where there is not a travel plan in place or there is one that was put together in such a fashion that the recreation community just cannot support it," he said. "We understand why there is this perception of abuse and I guess really it depends on your point of view."

"The word 'abomination' is a pretty harsh word," said Swenson. "I don't know that most of the folks that put the governor in office would consider people using the public lands and using ATVs on public lands an abomination."

***

No, Mr. Swenson, the governor was not referring to "people using the public lands" in this sense:

I think he had a problem with this sort of thing:

Training Montana's Restoration Workforce

Marnie Criley — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0600

On October 2, three of us from Wildlands CPR attended a one day workshop in Butte, Montana titled Growing Montana's Restoration Workforce. Wildlands CPR Board member Cara Nelson spoke about the educational opportunities and needs across the state and was quoted in an article that appeard in The Montana Standard. I spoke on a panel that focused on workforce needs across the state, specifically about training heavy equipment operators to do road decommissioning work. In attendance were representatives from the Operating Engineers Union and the University of Montana's College of Technology. These folks seemed interested in initiating a training program focused on road decommissioning.

It is our belief that more and more road decommissioning will occur across the state with the Legacy Roads funding for the National Forests and the sale of Plum Creek timberlands in Montana. Wildlands CPR will be following up from this workshop to put together a training session that can enable heavy equipment operators to get good restoration jobs restoring watersheds across Montana.

Illegal ORV Use Booms - FS Says Policing "Virtually Imposible"

Adam Rissien — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:36:06 -0600

The Great Falls Tribune has an excellent article on the expanding illegal ORV use near Glacier National Park and places on the Lewis & Clark NF.

See http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081002/LIF...

Some of the article highlights:

"Forest rangers say the last couple of months the unauthorized use of ATVs is showing up all over the forest,..."

Judith District Ranger Ron Wiseman says the problem is apparent on the east side of the Little Belts as well.

"There are the people who seem to want to use the ATVs and do it right and then there is the other percentage, maybe 30 to 40 percent, who don't care about rules or regulations and seem to think they have a right to do what they want."

"Wiseman said policing all of the roads is virtually impossible."

What is amazing is that we still hear the constant mantra from the ORV groups that violations are the result of a few bad apples. The agency does not have the ability, and in some places the will, to adequately enforce its new travel plans. Instead they rely on "education" and hope that people will simply follow the law, which on the Lewis & Clark NF has resulted in expanded illegal use and resource damage.

One solution to this problem would be to expand the agency's enforcement capacity and pass laws that give penalties some real teeth such as higher fines, loss of hunting privledges, and in some cases confiscation of user's machines.

University profs recommend broader view of restoration

Bethanie Walder — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:18:36 -0600

On Tuesday, September 23, the University of Montana Forestry School released a report to Senator John Tester (D-MT) regarding the state of Forest Service management. The report was presented as part at the 32nd annual Public Land Law Conference in Missoula. The National Forests Policy Assessment includes seven key findings in the executive summary, as follows:

Lawmakers should reinvest in the protection and management of National Forests and fund the USFS at levels commensurate with its responsibilities.
There is broad-based national and state-level support for admin¬istratively protecting inventoried roadless areas and these lands should be protected accordingly.
The 2008 forest planning regulations fail to find an appropri¬ate balance between adaptability and enforceable standards and should be rewritten.
Private land development adjacent to National Forests is an in¬creasing problem that must be systematically confronted via an assortment of policy approaches and tools, from fully-funded land acquisition programs to landscape-level planning initiatives.
Forest restoration begins with comprehensive transportation plan¬ning that identifies and funds upgrading, maintenance, or decom¬missioning forest roads.
Legal standards must play an essential role in National Forest management. Increasing conflict and uncertainty has led to al¬ternative methods of conflict resolution, including place-based (forest-specific) legislative proposals. Several questions need to be answered before these approaches are replicated elsewhere. Their formation should be as transparent and inclusive as found in exist¬ing decision making processes.
A comprehensive assessment of National Forest policy and man¬agement by an inclusive set of interests and perspectives should be initiated in 2009.

According to the authors, the report was requested by Senator Tester in January as an independent assessment of selected issues facing the Forest Service combined with policy recommendations. As noted in the final bullet above, the authors feel this is a preliminary analysis and that a further, more comprehensive assessment is still needed. For more about the report and conference, check out this article from New West.

The authors’ initial assessment is well-crafted, and to our delight, addresses both of Wildlands CPR’s key issues – restoration and off-road vehicle use. Most significantly, we are extremely pleased to see the authors articulate that, “(f)orest restoration begins with comprehensive transportation plan¬ning that identifies and funds upgrading, maintenance, or decom¬missioning forest roads.”

Wildlands CPR has long argued that the debate of forest restoration has gotten unnecessarily stuck on questions regarding timber management instead of addressing larger watershed issues. The authors echo this concern in the restoration section, where they state that, “even though the goals of forest restoration ac¬tivities can be quite broad, the focus of forest restoration projects frequently returns to a relatively narrow objective of treating forest fuels.”

They pointedly refer to the impacts of roads, the interconnectedness of roads with all of the “four threats” identified by former Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth in 2003, and the opportunities to address restoration by focusing immediate attention on reducing the impacts of the transportation system. While they never discuss the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative, their statements certainly support the need for continued funding of this critical new Forest Service program.

The authors also address some of the key problems with off-road vehicle recreation, beginning by arguing that off-road vehicle management is the most “virulent controversy” facing Forest Service recreation managers, and that the agency does not have the capacity to enforce inappropriate activities.

The assessment looks at these and other issues from an independent perspective, and offers those interested in national forests some excellent food for thought about future agency management and challenges.

The Myth of the Few Bad Apples

Franklin Seal — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:13:48 -0600

"We discovered that a full 50 percent of ATV riders chose to ignore the signs and go around a closure" -- Mesia Nyman, Forest Service officer

I can't count the number of times I've witnessed the Myth of the Few Bad Apples at work within our culture, especially within the media and state and federal land management agencies. Whenever some off-road vehicle advocate is confronted with the evidence that off-road vehicles are ripping up our public forests and deserts, it never fails — out comes the Myth of the Few Bad Apples — their claim that the damage is the result of a very small fraction of motorheads and that the majority of ATV, dirt bike and jeep operators are law abiding — they always stay on the trail and never ride in areas closed to motorized vehicles.

Never mind that these ORV defenders don't cite a single fact to back up their Few Bad Apples myth. Never mind that even agencies demonstrably in favor of promoting off-road vehicle use have come up with surveys that indicate the complete opposite is the case — that a large portion of motorized recreation users routinely break the law, ripping up untracked territory when they think they're not being watched (see Just a Few Bad Apples).

Never mind all that. You don't need it. Not when you have direct eye-witness accounts, especially when they're from law-enforcement officers hiding in the bushes. That's why this article in the Emery County Progress caught my eye. Forest Service officer Mesia Nyman told Emery County officials about the rampant off-road violations and destruction that occured during the recent bow hunt in Utah.

...officers were inconspicuously posted at points where trails end and carsonite signs are placed to close the trail. These officers issued citations to those who chose to go around the closure signs. "We discovered that a full 50 percent of ATV riders chose to ignore the signs and go around a closure. We will continue our enforcement activities through the regular hunts," Nyman said.

Wildlands CPR Organizational Development in the Spotlight

Franklin Seal — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:09:59 -0600

In addition to being at the cutting edge of watershed restoration via road removal, preventing new wildland road construction and stopping off-road vehicle abuse, periodically, the staff and board at Wildlands CPR also get to do other fun things like meeting our organizational development goals and paying the bills. You can read about one of those efforts, our six-week Annual Gifts Campaign, here.

Happily, we not only have some of the most innovative staff in their fields in our Restoration and Transportation programs, we have very talented folks in our development department as well. Wildlands CPR Development Director Tommy Peterson was recently asked by the prestigous publication Grassroots Fundraising Journal to publish this article about a Major Gifts Campaign That Works.

Oral Argument heard on Gallatin Travel Plan Challenge

Sarah Peters — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Oral argument happened today in the US District Court of Montana over the intensity of use that should be allowed in the Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area on the Gallatin National Forest in Montana. All four sides presented their perspectives on how the land should be managed in order to comply with the Montana Wilderness Study Act of 1977. Normally I'd say both sides, but in this case the Montana Wildernes Association filed suit against the Forest Service, the Treasure State Alliance intervened on behalf of the Forest Service but also filed their own claims challenging the Gallatin's decision, and the Citizen's for Balanced Use filed their own claim against the Forest Service, which was consolidated into this one case.

Confused yet? What all this means is that the oral argument went on for almost three hours, with lawyers presenting their cases, while trying to tear down the other side at the same time. Now it waits for Judge Lynch to make his recommendations on how he thinks the case should be decided. Was the Forest Service required to take into account the intensity of use and how that affects wilderness characteristics? Or was the Forest Service analysis correct that the wilderness characteristics of the area as a whole were not harmed, and therefore their decision should stand.

One of my favorite statements came from the Treasure State Alliance, when they essentially said that the Forest Service should have evaluated what would be the effects to the wilderness character of the area if they had left more trails open, but somehow limited the number of users permitted on those trails at a given time. I took this to mean they were suggesting something like the permit system that is used to regulate nonmotorized activities in certain heavily used wilderness areas. This was a new one on me, and from what I know about the motorized use crowd, I couldn't imagine they'd be into going to the Forest headquarters to register to use the trails or applying months in advance for a permit every time they wanted to visit the area.

Overall I'd say the argument went well for the good guys and we'll just have to wait and see whether Judge Lynch agrees.

Bush Administration takes (another) last swipe at Utah

Laurel Hagen — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:57:22 -0600

Another in the series of Utah Bureau of Land Management Plans has been released, this one covering the portion of southeast Utah south of Moab and east of the Colorado River. The Salt Lake Tribune editorial describes the Monticello District's Resource Management Planlike this:

"The BLM says it can better enforce rules prohibiting human contact with the remains of Anasazi dwellings and relics under the new designation. That's ludicrous. The BLM has one enforcement officer for the entire Monticello region. Inviting more visitors and making it easier for looters and vandals to find the ruins, without beefing up enforcement, sounds a death knell for these archaeological treasures.

"In its single-minded focus on opening up all public lands--even those that are home to irreplaceable artifacts--to motorized recreation and development, it is willing to sacrifice other values that are important to Americans.

"The BLM seems oblivious to the value and unique nature of these ruins. The agency insists it can educate visitors about the fragility of the ruins while allowing them free rein to run roughshod over the area. Nonsense."

Click here to read the rest of the editorial.

Click here to read an article from Archaeology magazine on off-road vehicle damage in the Monticello district.

Click here to read a High Country News article on archaeologial vandalism and the BLM in the Monticello district.

Here are a couple of photographs of Arch Canyon, one of the major archaeological sites subject to San Juan County's illegal bulldozing campaign:

Links to some other photos of the area:

San Juan River

Angel Arch

Arch Canyon (several photos)

Six Shooter Peak

Pictographs

Sanctuary Tower

Forest Service Moves to Protect Important Area in Idaho

Sarah Peters — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:31:09 -0600

On Monday the Nez Perce National Forest took action to protect a sensitive and special place in Idaho from destructive ORV use. Reasons given by the forest include protecting wetlands and habitat for endangered species from further damage. Idaho Conservation League, The Wilderness Society, Friends of the Clearwater, and others have been working for many years to gain protection of this area from increased and often illegal damaging ORV use.

You can check out the Forest Service press release here. A map of the area is available here and the official travel order here.