Policy Primers

June 19, 2009 - By Vera Smith and Sarah Peters   Just as this, the final year of the four-year travel planning initiative began, the Forest Service issued a series of guidance documents — known as ‘directives’ — providing detailed instructions to Forest Supervisors on how to go about travel planning.  Unfortunately, portions of these directives run contrary to regulatory requirements as they relate to road and trail management, as well as the 2001 Roadless Rule.  

September 18, 2008 - By John Meyer and Jack Tuholske   In 2005, the Forest Service finalized what is commonly known as the Travel Management Rule. Among other things, the rule requires forest officials to publish a Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM).1  The MVUM displays National Forest System routes (roads and trails) and areas designated as open to motorized travel.

March 13, 2008 - Steve Ryder, Winter Wildlands Alliance   In “The ABC’s of Travel Planning” (see The Road RIPorter, 12-4, 2007), the authors discussed the Forest Service’s “Travel Management Rule,” which established a “closed unless open” policy for motorized users of forest lands. This positive policy change now appears much faded, however, as two glaring shortcomings have surfaced. First, the Rule allows Forest Service officials to focus only on Subpart B, requiring the publication of a “motorized vehicle use map” (or MVUM) for summer use, thereby missing the opportunity to create broad recreation and transportation plans.

December 17, 2007 - Adam Rissien and Sarah Peters   In 2005, the Forest Service published new regulations in the Federal Register1 (commonly called the Travel Management Rule) for managing the Forest Service Transportation System. The Travel Management Rule, found in the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR 212), has three sections: Subpart A, “Administration of the Forest Transportation System”; Subpart B “Designation of Roads, Trails, and Areas for Motor Vehicle Use”; and Subpart C “Use by Over-Snow Vehicles.” This article explains the intersection of these three subparts during the travel planning process.

September 20, 2007 - Laurel Hagen    Editor’s Note: this article is meant only as a practical orientation for the layperson, and does not represent the official legal positions of Wildlands CPR or our affiliates. RS 2477 law and policy is very complex and constantly shifting, and it would be impossible to represent the full spectrum of issues here.

March 3, 2007 - Carol Daly   Background: Experimental projects using some of the concepts now incorporated in stewardship end result contracting were conducted sporadically on federal lands beginning in the late 1970’s. Broad interest in the idea, however, did not develop until the mid-1990’s, when community-based forestry groups in the West started looking at it as a possible way to re­duce the contentious nature of public lands management.

October 10, 2006 - Tim Peterson   On June 8, 2006, several months after releasing their new rule, “Trav­el Management; Designated Routes and Areas for Motor Vehicle Use,” the Forest Service published a schedule for its implementa­tion by 2010. And while changes to the Forest Service Manual and Hand­book (necessary for implementing the rule) have still not been released for comment, Chief Dale Bosworth included guidance to help national forests begin the process.

July 22, 2006 - Tim D. Peterson   Because travel planning has significant environ­mental consequences, it constitutes a major federal action subject to the National Environ­mental Policy Act (NEPA). This means that citizens have the opportunity to submit alternatives for consideration in a draft environmental assessment (EA) or draft environmental impact statement (EIS). Many travel planning processes produce a range of alternatives that favor motorized recreation at the expense of solitude, natural quiet, and resource and wildlife habitat.

March 3, 2006 - Bryan Faehner   FLREA Background: Attached as a rider to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill and signed into law on December 8, 2004, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) extends and expands the Recreational Fee-Demonstration Program (Fee-Demo) begun in 1997. The Fee-Demo program allowed public land management agencies to retain at least eighty-percent of collected revenue from existing and new recreation fees.

September 8, 2005 - Amy Atwood   During the last five years, the Bush Administration has system­atically attacked scientific integrity in all aspects of govern­ment regulation. They have relied on junk science, innuendo, and anecdotes to support industry-friendly environmental policies or weakened environmental safeguards. This trend has only increased as the Administration’s friends have increasingly turned to a four-year-old law with a misleading name, the Information Quality Act (IQA), in their ongoing effort to weaken federal environmental regulations. IQA in Theory and Practice