Remediation project a win-win

Check out this great article by the he Helena Independent Record here about the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative in action on the Helena National Forest.

"Manipulating the controls inside his excavator, Kerry Cross gently drops the claw-edged bucket onto the Forest Service spur road, then pulls backward, recontouring the ground so it gently slopes downward like it did before men and equipment made the road.

Earlier, he noted with a hint of irony, he used to ride on ’dozers as a 4-year-old with his father, an engineer who built roads for the U.S. Forest Service.

“He put ’em in and now I’m taking them out...”

Follow it up with an editorial by the paper about the restoration work:

"...The Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative tackles a troubling mess in the nation’s forests: tens of thousands of miles of abandoned, obsolete and eroding logging roads that choke streams and rivers with sediment and contribute to other environmental problems."