Winter 2010 Program Updates

Restoration Program

The big news we’ve been crowing about since November is the Forest Service’s national guidance to the field to rightsize their road system! (For details, see p.3) Wildlands CPR has pressed for this action for years, through a variety of venues. We’re pleased the agency has finally released the guidance, and we’ll continue meeting with national Forest Service leadership, regional teams and individual forests to watchdog its implementation on the ground. This new guidance is an extraordinary opportunity to restore watershed health, aquatic connectivity, and large landscape connectivity. It is also a major opportunity to increase the acreage of unroaded lands.

During the last quarter, Wildlands CPR’s Restoration Campaign Director, Sue Gunn, and Executive Director Bethanie Walder participated in meetings with top officials in the Forest Service regarding the (then pending) guidance and its intersection with ongoing climate change and watershed analysis work. We are perhaps most pleased to point out that the Watersheds, Fisheries and Wildlife department will lead the rightsizing effort concurrent with a watershed analysis effort that was launched about a month earlier. In December, we met with the new national leadership team for the rightsizing effort to learn more about their plans for implementation and to share some of our concerns about ambiguities within the guidance. In addition, Sue coordinated a thank-you letter to the Chief that was signed by more than 50 groups from around the country.

While the rightsizing analysis is in its earliest stages, our Legacy Roads and Trails (LRT) efforts are maturing. Months of hands-on organizing work came to fruition in October when we introduced the new Montana Legacy Roads, Trails and Jobs Coalition, with 28 initial member organizations, including seven unions, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and the Montana Association of Conservation Districts among others. Key members of the coalition met with Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) to inform him about the importance of Legacy Roads and Trails to water quality, wildlife connectivity and green jobs in the state of Montana (the state has received $16 million in LRT funds over the past three years).

In addition to policy work, we continue to engage on the ground. Science Program Director Adam Switalski wrapped up our Lolo National Forest (MT) Road Survey Project for the season. Our field crew surveyed abandoned and closed roads to identify hydrologic risks, weeds, and signs
of wildlife. Adam S. summarized the key restoration needs in each project area, including places with high weed concentrations and evidence of use by threatened, sensitive, or endangered species. Adam S. presented the field data to the Forest Service and have now begun discussing inventory and analysis projects for 2011.

Adam S. also coordinates our new program to monitor Legacy Roads and Trails projects. Earlier in the year he worked with the agency to identify sites and ensure that our monitoring would be additive and not redundant with their limited monitoring efforts. This enabled him to design a monitoring program to collect pre-decommissioning baseline data, and set up permanent photo points. Near the end of the field season, Adam S. worked with several specialists in vegetation monitoring to set up a new, robust vegetation monitoring program on the five forests (Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Helena, Gallatin and Clearwater) where we were already collecting wildlife data (through motion sensitive cameras). At each site, they established five vegetation transects along the roadbeds, two reference transects, and a photo point on each transect, for a total of 50 permanent vegetation plots, 20 reference vegetation sites and 70 photo points. It was a lot of work over a very short time period, but we’re hopeful it will pay off over the long-term with data we can use to analyze the effectiveness of different road reclamation treatments.

Transportation Program

Now that the Forest Service has begun releasing final decisions on travel plans, our multi-year travel planning campaign is entering a new stage, at least at the national level. Here in Montana, however, both of our priority forests (the Bitterroot and Beaverhead-Deerlodge) are behind schedule. Adam Rissien, our Montana Transportation Coordinator, continues to prepare for the eventual release of travel plans on these forests. The Bitterroot NF announced in October that they were pushing back the release of the updated travel plan to next spring. (The plan was initially expected last April.) However, as a complicated effort that includes the entire forest with both summer and winter use, we understand the delay, and support the agency undertaking an effective analysis. A District Ranger working on the draft plan said, “This is, by far, one of the most complex analyses that we’ve ever done.” We remain hopeful that the final decision will protect roadless areas from summer motorized recreation (and we’re pressing for the same protections from winter motorized recreation as well).

As one example of Adam R.’s efforts to protect Bitterroot roadless areas, he partnered with American Wildlands, Trout Unlimited and Hellgate Hunters & Anglers to develop a map illustrating a proposal for road removal and new protections between a Wilderness Area and a game range. We hope to effectively counter the Bitterroot NF’s draft proposal to create an off-road vehicle loop at the border of the Welcome Creek Wilderness, a popular hunting and fishing area.

While the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF) still hasn’t begun its travel planning process on several districts, we continue to try to improve their recently revised forest plan. In September, we filed a lawsuit challenging the BDNF for failing to follow its own rules (really?!) regarding winter recreation. The forest plan designated winter motorized recreation across 60 percent of the forest, including Mt. Jefferson, the West Pioneer Wilderness Study Area, the West Big Hole, and other roadless areas. We believe the agency failed to analyze how allowing snowmobile use on more than two million acres would affect elk, wolverine and mountain goats, among other species. Friends of the Bitterroot and Montanans for Quiet Recreation joined us on the litigation, which requests that the agency undertake a formal winter travel planning process before designating such use.

In other BDNF news, Adam created a monitoring report and associated Google Earth map (available for download here) summarizing our summer field monitoring. The map displays waypoints with associated photos for each trip, along with roadless area boundaries. He’s sent all of this data to the Forest Service as part of the travel planning record and pre-scoping process.

Our Staff Attorney/Legal Liaison Sarah Peters helps Adam with legal and administrative efforts like the BDNF forest plan challenge) while also providing strategic and legal assistance to grassroots groups throughout the west. With so many decisions out, Sarah has been swamped assisting groups throughout the country on appeals and possible litigation for final travel plans that don’t comply with the regulations. This quarter she’s provided support to groups addressing problematic travel plans on the Stanislaus (CA), Salmon-Challis (ID), and Humboldt-Toiyabe (NV) National Forests, among others. In addition, Sarah took the lead in both writing and resolving an appeal on the Fremont-Winema on behalf of Wildlands CPR and several local Oregon groups. After the agency removed several egregious provisions from the final decision, Wildlands CPR and our local partners withdrew our appeal.

The fall equinox RIPorter included a Legal Notes explaining a recent Ninth Circuit Court of appeals decision ruling that run-off from logging roads is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act as a point source. Defendants in the case have requested a re-hearing, and Sarah has been working overtime to put together a comprehensive amicus brief supporting the original decision – we’ll keep you posted on the outcome.