Walking trails with the Forest Service

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.