Spring Equinox 2008, Volume 13 # 1

When it comes to salmon recovery, removing dams grabs the headlines, and when it comes to forest health, wildfire and thinning projects are in the spotlight. But there is an intersection between these issues that’s equally important, if not yet considered front-page news: reclaiming forest roads. That’s because decaying, unmanaged, under-maintained roads are a top threat to endangered salmon and clean drinking water for thousands of communities, as well as elk, grizzly bears and other wildlife that depend on large blocks of intact habitat to survive.

Based in Bishop, California, conservation group Friends of the Inyo (FOI) works to protect the Eastern Sierra’s unique landscape. The “Inyo,” a Paiute word meaning dwelling place of the Great Spirit, encompasses 13,140 square miles of land in eastern California’s Inyo & Mono Counties. Ninety-four percent of this area is publicly owned: from the top of 14,495 ft. Mt. Whitney, through the sagebrush Great Basin, to 282 ft. below sea level at Badwater (Death Valley).

Bringing home the bacon… That short phrase pretty much sums up Wildlands CPR’s most significant successes last year. Through two campaigns, we helped secure $73 million for federal and state agencies for public lands watershed restoration (to be spent mostly in 2008)! To accomplish this and our other work, we expanded significantly — increasing our staff from six to ten people and engaging in more work on-the-ground. Restoration Program

Restoration Program

Editor’s note: Ellen Meloy was a writer, artist and naturalist. Her books include Raven’s Exile: A Season on the Green River, The Last Cheater’s Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest, and Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for The Anthropology of Turquoise Meditations on Landscape, Art & Spirit (2003). Ellen gave us permission to reprint this essay in The Road-RIPorter before her unfortunate and sudden death in November 2004, at the age of 57. She lived in Bluff, Utah.

It’s been a fantastic winter for skiing in Missoula, making it hard for many of us to get into the office at regular hours. That said, we’ve still accomplished a great deal this winter, and have lots on tap for 2008. So sad to see you go

This seemingly innocuous title is attached to House Bill 5263 and its companion, Senate Bill 2593, both introduced in February, 2008. While the bills (hereafter called “the Restoration Act” or “the Act”) have not attracted much media attention, those of us who work on forest and restoration issues have taken notice. The Restoration Act may be a step in the right direction, as it enables the Forest Service and BLM to prioritize collaborative, science-based restoration projects at a landscape level (50,000 acre or greater).

Editor’s Note: This review updates research since our last Bibliography Notes on this topic, in May/June 1998 (Vol. 3 #3, or visit: http://www.wildlandscpr.org/biblio-notes/roads-kill-grizzly-bears-and-ef...). Since that time, more research has addressed the effects of highways and railroads, rather than just low volume roads.

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.