Field Notes

For the last year and a half, Wildlands CPR and Northwest Connections have been working together to expand road restoration in the Swan Valley of Montana. As part of this project, we worked with American Wildlands’ geographic information systems (GIS) lab (www.wildlands.org) to create a visual history of road development in the Swan Valley. This shows the progressive increase in road mileage over the last 100 years, providing a graphic picture of the current situation and how different it is from the past.

One of the greatest impacts of roads and (especially motorized) trails is their effect on the hydrology of natural landscapes, including the flow of surface and ground water and nutrients. These hydrologic effects are re­sponsible for changes to geomorphic processes and sediment loads in roaded areas (Luce and Wemple 2001).

Assessing Roads

Citizen science is a powerful way to monitor the long-term trends and conditions of natural systems while also encouraging a stewardship ethic for natural resources. Citizen science is popular across the United States: according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, there were more than 772 citizen monitoring projects across the country in 1998, mostly focusing on stream ecosystems. Participants in these projects become intimately acquainted with the systems they monitor, and often become advocates for their protection and conservation.

These guidelines were developed to assist citizen scientists in monitoring aquatic habitat following road removal. Roads can have major impacts on water quality and habitat value due to landslides and general erosion of the road bed over time. For fish, increased fine sediment in streams has been linked to decreased fry emergence, decreased juvenile densities, loss of winter carrying capacity, and increased predation. Road removal has been shown to reduce erosion and sedimentation but its impact on aquatic systems has not been well studied.

Road decommissioning has been defined as “the physical treatment of a roadbed to restore the integrity of associated hillslopes, channels, and flood plains and their related hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes and properties” (Switalski et al. in press). In practical terms, decommissioning is a process in which the Forest Service (FS) determines that a road is no longer needed or desirable and then physically removes it from the ground, the road database, and/or published maps. Road decommissioning should not be confused with road closure.

What is the distribution and intensity of OHV use on the landscape, and what are the impacts? The fact is, no one really knows. Yet many government agencies, scientists, conservationists and recreationists need to answer this critical question in order to manage lands well.

Collectively, counties, local governments, and in a few cases private parties have asserted jurisdiction over tens of thousands of R.S. 2477 rights-of-way. They would use the 135-year-old mining law to gain motorized access to and “improve” so-called highways (in many cases, two-tracks, cow paths, and river bottoms) across BLM lands, Forest Service lands, National Parks, and even designated Wilderness areas.

Amid the excitement of the final rule on the Roadless Policy, the Forest Service released the new long term roads policy with barely a notice in the media. We have not yet done a full scale assessment of the new policy -- that will come in the next issue of The Road-RIPorter -- but below is a glossary of revised national forest road definitions and some preliminary assessments (in italics). The new Road Management Policy changes a lot of terminology and that terminology is what we in the environmental community will need to know.

Road obliteration is more than pushing dirt into a semblance of the original terrain and camouflaging the scar with grass.

It should mean restoring the structure and function of all natural processes, especially hydrologic functions, and establishing a plant community. In my experience, the revegetation element of a road obliteration project often suffers inconceivable neglect. This short guide should help you uncover inept plans before they have a chance to be implemented.