Spring Equinox 2007, Volume 12 #1

Road Decommissioning on the Clearwater: In the winter of 1995-1996, right on schedule with predicted historical records, the Clearwater National Forest (ID) experienced a dramatic rain-on-snow event that caused extensive flooding and more than 900 landslides. Due to a legacy of logging and associated roading, some areas on the Clearwater had road densities as high as 40 miles per square mile. These roads were the cause of more than half of the 900 landslides in the region in ’95-’96, several of which literally carried area residents’ homes off the mountains.

For a couple who claims to be retired, one quickly learns that Karen Boeger and Dan Heinz define retirement as being retired from their professional goals, not their passionate ones. They are too busy fight­ing tooth and claw to keep off-road vehicles out of Nevada’s once quiet, wild places to slow down.

Picture a restored road halfway overgrown with vegetation. Most of us involved in restoration would generally see this vegetative cover as a good thing. It is a sign that something is able to grow on the once disturbed and compacted soil. Erosion is held in check, minus some bare spots here and there. Wildlife are likely beginning to use some of the plants for cover and food. As for the plant community itself, we expect that successional processes will eventually result in a diverse array of desired plant species.

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.