Travel plan’s release delayed

by PERRY BACKUS - Ravalli Republic | Posted: Friday, May 28, 2010 12:00 am

People waiting to get their hands on a brand new travel plan map for the Bitterroot National Forest are going to have to be patient.

The long anticipated release of an updated travel management plan has been pushed back to sometime in late fall.

The plan was expected to be released in April.

That delay is just fine with folks representing both motorized and non-motorized camps. They say the agency should do whatever it needs to get the updated plan right.

"We don't have any problem with the delay," said Dan Thompson of the Ravalli County Off-Road Users Association. "We always thought the time-frame was kind of short anyway ... we don't want them to force anything to meet an artificial Washington, D.C. imposed deadline."

The travel management plan details where motorized recreation is allowed on the 1.6-million acre national forest. The last time the Bitterroot National Forest completed a forest-wide update was in 1976.

The Forest Service officially started work on updating the plan in 2007 with a series of public meetings. In the summer of 2009, it released a draft management plan and officials said then the final version should be complete by spring.

Travel management is one of the most challenging issues facing public land managers and that work on the Bitterroot Forest is no different.

"It's the most complicated project that I've ever worked on," said Chris Fox, the Bitterroot National Forest's north zone ID team leader. "We're talking about hundreds of miles of road and trails, some of which has been used by people for generations. Based on resource concerns and other factors, we may be changing the use on some of those ... the social issues are major."

The 2009 draft proposed closing some trails open to motorized travel.

Motorcycle trails would be cut by about half from 408 miles to 187 and ATV users would lose about 54 miles of trail - mostly in the Sula District's Chain of Lakes area - under the agency's draft preferred alternative.

Adam Rissien of Wildlands CPR said the agency is also considering turning over 600 miles of what's now classified as road into mostly motorized trails.

"That is one of our concerns," Rissien said. "Managing a road as a trail can create its own set of problems. If it looks like a road, acts like a road, then it should be managed as a road."

Overall, Rissien said the agency's preferred alternative in its draft plan was a mixed bag.

"We didn't fully agree with it, but we didn't fully oppose it either," he said. "We think the Forest Service should take as much time as it needs on its analysis."

The agency is currently sifting through over 3,400 comments it received on a draft of the plan released last summer.

"We are working to respond to all of those comments," Fox said. "That is many, many more comments than we would typically receive on other types of projects."

While most of the comments are mass-produced forms from different organizations, Fox said about 500 are individual comments that address specific trails or concerns.

Those are time consuming to address and answer, he said.

"We understand that this issue is important to people," Fox said. "We want to take the time necessary to adequately address those site specific comments."

Fox's team temporarily lost several of its members who were detailed to work on projects funded by American Recovery Act monies. The so-called stimulus funding came with set deadlines.

"On the forest, those projects are the number one priority right now," Fox said.

In the final environmental impact statement, Fox said the agency will detail the changes it made between the draft and final documents.

Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Julie King will make the final decision on the update.

Editor Perry Backus can be reached at 363-3300 or editor@ravallirepublic.com.