Legacy Roads Remediation Initiative, Nationwide

Nationally, the Forest Service estimates that they need to remove an estimated 186,000 miles of roads to bring the road system down to a manageable, maintainable system that still meets the needs of the agency and forest users. A 2003 Wildlands CPR study found that it would cost approximately $93 million per year for about 20 years to implement a national road removal plan. That $93 million would provide between 2,000-3,000 high-wage, high-skill jobs in rural communities, making such an appropriation good for the land and for the communities that depend on the land. Wildlands CPR is active in this effort to address the legacy roads issue in our public lands. Click here for more information.

Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida

Wildlands CPR has been working to protect Big Cypress from damaging off-road vehicle abuse for more than a decade. We won an important legal victory a few years ago that, once implemented, will limit off-road vehicles to 400 miles of designated routes, down from the 23,000 miles of user-created routes that exist now.

The Park Service has taken an interesting perspective on the implementation plan, however, and has now opened up 20 miles of motorized routes in key panther habitat and meadows. We don't think that's okay and we're working with a coalition of groups to stop that. For more information, click here.

Clearwater National Forest, Idaho

In the winter of 1995-1996, right on schedule with predicted historical records, Idaho's Clearwater National Forest experienced a dramatic rain-on-snow event that caused extensive flooding and more than 900 landslides. The Clearwater National Forest (CNF) responded quickly, acquiring emergency federal funds from Congress to begin an extensive road decom­missioning program with the help of the Nez Perce Tribe (NPT). Budget cutbacks in the Forest Service haven’t allowed the CNF or the NPT to conduct extensive monitoring on the decommissioned roads. In addi­tion, there isn’t much peer-reviewed scientific research about the effects of road decommissioning on wildlife, vegetation or stream integrity.

Wildlands CPR recognized both the extraordinary nature of the CNF/NPT restoration program, and the importance of monitoring that work. In 2004 Wildlands CPR received a generous grant from the National Forest Foundation that enabled us to begin working with the CNF and NPT to ex­pand their efforts by creating the first citizen monitoring program to focus on road removal as a key form of watershed restoration.

For more information, click here.

Past Successes

Wildlands CPR has a strong history of collaborative work across the country, from Washington to Florida. Click on the map for a larger national-overview map of a sample of our work (270kb).