The four national forests of southern California – the Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino, and Cleveland National Forests – include more than 3.5 million acres of public land, from the famed Big Sur coast south to the Mexican border. The forests host a high diversity of ecosystems, including chaparral, oak woodlands, savannas, deserts and alpine areas that provide a refuge for imperiled plants and animals, diverse outdoor recreation opportunities, and clean water for local farms and communities.

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The four southern California forests also harbor more than 5,000 miles of roads. Many of these roads are part of the forests’ official system of roads, and are formally authorized by the Forest Service, regularly maintained, and necessary for public access and forest management. However, nearly one-third of these roads are “unclassified,” meaning they have not been formally approved by the Forest Service because they do not meet federal road standards or were not officially constructed. These informal roads fragment habitat, promote the spread of invasive weeds, increase fire risk, and send sediment into mountain streams. In January, conservation groups, the State of California, and the U.S. Forest Service reached a landmark agreement to protect more than one million acres of roadless areas from development. The agreement – now approved by a federal judge – will also jump-start efforts to right size the extensive road network within these four forests.

The agreement resolves a federal lawsuit brought by several conservation groups challenging Forest Service management plans for four Southern California national forests. The challenged plans – issued by the Forest Service in 2005 – opened up 900,000 roadless acres for possible road building and other development across the four forests. In 2008, seven groups filed suit over this and several other flaws in the plans. The groups included the Center for Biological Diversity, Los Padres ForestWatch, Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, California Native Plant Society, California Wilderness Coalition and The Wilderness Society, all represented by Earthjustice attorneys Erin Tobin and Trent Orr.

In 2009 a federal district court agreed with the groups, ruling that the plans violated the National Environmental Policy Act. After that ruling was issued, the parties agreed to negotiate a settlement. Under the agreement, the Forest Service will reconsider how the management plan can better protect roadless areas. The agency will also seek funding for restoration projects in roadless areas, and refrain from approving road building and other activities that could diminish the areas’ chances of qualifying for permanent protection as Congressionally-designated wilderness. While the analysis is underway, a stakeholder group will identify and prioritize road decommissioning projects in those areas.

The Agreement

The agreement was reached after more than a year of negotiations between the Forest Service, conservation groups, and off-road vehicle user groups (which formally intervened in the lawsuit). Specific terms of the agreement include:

• By December 2012, the Forest Service will complete a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) in which they will propose rezoning 37 priority Inventoried Roadless Areas as Recommended Wilderness, the highest level of protection set forth in the management plan.
• Until the agency completes the SEIS, all roadless areas will be protected from harmful activities. 
• The agencies and groups will work together to identify unclassified roads that are degrading roadless areas, and will prioritize these roads for decommissioning and restoration by July 2011.
• The Forest Service will identify and apply for federal, state, and private sources of funding to carry out priority decommissioning and restoration projects in the four forests.
• The Forest Service will increase public disclosure about which proposed development activities will affect roadless areas.
• The Forest Service will evaluate ways to improve how it monitors the impacts of land uses on the national forests. The Forest Service will summarize the results of its monitoring in a report made available to the public each year.

Rightsizing the Road System

As part of the forest plan revision process, the Forest Service began looking at the extent of roads in the four southern California forests. And what officials found was astonishing: more than 5,535 miles of roads criss-cross the four southern California forests, including 1,755 miles of temporary and unclassified roads (mainly user-created roads and trails that do not meet forest standards and that are not formally part of the national forest road system). Over the years, many of these roads were constructed in Inventoried Roadless Areas, and the Forest Service estimates that as of 2005, 522 miles of roads cross through these areas that are supposed to be “roadless.”

To begin addressing this problem, the land management plan for the four forests establishes a strategy to reduce the number of unnecessary or redundant unclassified roads. The plans set a goal of evaluating 30% of the forests’ unclassified roads by the year 2020, using a site-specific analysis to determine whether to restore the roadways to natural conditions or convert them to  trails. However, in the five years since the plan went into effect, no site-specific analysis has been conducted on any of the four southern California forests.

The January 2011 settlement agreement jump-starts this process, requiring the Forest Service and conservation groups to conduct a series of workshops to identify priority roads for decommissioning. Once a list of priority roads is finalized, the groups and agencies will work together to identify and secure funding to implement these priority projects and conduct the appropriate environmental analyses.

 

 

Next Steps

The Forest Service will complete its SEIS by December 2012. In that document, officials will evaluate whether to rezone many roadless areas as Recommended Wilderness. When the draft is released, conservation groups will carefully review it to ensure the highest level of protection for these pristine roadless areas.

Between now and when the SEIS is finalized, the groups will work to identify illegal roads in roadless areas that are harming the environment. Using our on-the-ground knowledge of these areas, ForestWatch will help identify which roads to prioritize for decommissioning, and will work to identify funding sources to carry out the work.

January’s agreement represents the first step towards right-sizing the road system in the four southern California national forests. Stay tuned for updates as this exciting and long-awaited effort unfolds.

— Jeff Kuyper is Executive Director of Los Padres ForestWatch. To track the progress of the agreement’s implementation, visit www.lpfw.org