October 5, 2011

	Featured Story: Road Reclamation on the Mount Hood Two great news reports about road reclamation in Oregon. Our partners from Bark and Pacific Rivers Council are both featured in the stories, which highlight the impacts of roads to community drinking water supplies, and the economic and other benefits of this work.
	News: Legacy of logging roads brings change to Oregon forests, and so do the courts Miami Forest Road is what Oregon foresters call a "legacy" road, meaning it is left over from the days when people built a slap-dash network of dirt logging roads without much thought to salmon habitat.
	News: Forest Service probes road grading (NM) (Click twice to get past the ads-it's worth it!) Federal officials are butting heads with Catron County over the county’s unauthorized grading of parts of a 13-mile stretch of road that runs alongside, and sometimes across, the San Francisco River.
	News: Washougal businesswoman competing for National Minority Small Business Person of the Year award (WA) For as long as she can remember, Kim Erion has been in love with the wilderness. The daughter of a lifelong logging man, it’s no surprise that her “office” is located outside, in Mother Nature.
	Opinion: A forest, watershed and community jobs bill In hard economic times, Montana has relied on its forests for jobs and income. Today, logging cannot lift the state alone, but logging combined with forest and watershed restoration work can be the basis for job growth in Montana’s rural counties.
	Opinion: McClintock holds tea party 'field hearing' House Republicans and Tea Party Caucus members Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, Wally Herger of Chico and Rob Bishop of Utah held a "field hearing" to examine U.S. Forest Service policies. But it was less a field hearing than a rally to burnish the tea-party cred of the hosts.
	Opinion: Illegal ATV use needs more enforcement Not long ago, the Glamis off-road recreation area in S. California was notorious for two things: a place where ORV drivers could have a lot of fun and cause a lot of problems. Glamis, or the Imperial Dunes Recreation Area, came to define what happens when illegal activity on public land occurs with no one around to police it.
	Opinion: Road ecology: an often overlooked field of conservation research One of the themes highlighted in the introductory editorial is the need for greater public awareness about the effects of roads, as well as a greater emphasis on collaboration between managers, politicians, and road ecology experts.
	Resource: Road RIPorter Volume 16.3, Fall Equinox 2011 online In this issue, our cover story includes a photo essay on roads and floods with catastrophic images of road failures on national forests. You will also read about the Clean Water Act and how it is under attack; the impacts of roads and snakes; climate change, flooding and roads; an essay about the violence of driving; and more!
	Resource: Efficacy of road removal for restoring wildlife habitat: Black bear in the Northern Rocky Mountains, USA While there are thousands of research articles documenting the negative impacts of forest roads on wildlife, very few studies have been undertaken to determine if reclaiming roads restores wildlife habitat.
	Resource: New photo website of roadkill, wildlife overpasses, wildlife & mitigation A new web site by road ecologist and photographer Marcel Huijser, featuring photos of “Highways, Wildlife and Mitigation” with thirteen different galleries covering wildlife on roads, roadkill, a variety of mitigation measures, animal detection systems and more.