Policy

Roadless Rules?

bethanie — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:14:48 -0600

Last week a Wyoming judge overturned the Clinton roadless rule once again. Today, the New York Times editorialized that, "There ought to be a roadless law." It's a short editorial, but it does argue that leaving this to the courts isn't going to solve anything - it's time for Congress to take action and pass the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act.

We agree - and we hope that any roadless rule that is eventually enacted into law will protect roadless areas not just from road building, but from off-road vehicle use as well. Even with the roadless rule in place, the Forest Service has attempted too many shenanigans and shell-games to try to keep business as usual even when it shouldn't. Our favorite: the routine "reclassification" of roads as motorized trails open to all-sizes and types of vehicles. The roadless rule, as currently written, allows trails, including motorized trails, in roadless areas. We're working to change that the next time around.

2008 Schedule for Implementation of the Travel Management Rule

Franklin Seal — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:06:10 -0600

2008 Schedule for Implementation of the Travel Management Rule

On June 8, 2006, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth approved the agency's schedule for implementation of the travel management rule. The schedule will guide local efforts to designate those roads, trails, and areas open to motor vehicle use through a collaborative travel planning process emphasizing public involvement and coordination with state, local, and tribal governments. The schedule also contains important information on the current status of travel planning on each national forest and grassland across the country. Attached is the most recently published version of the schedule for 2008.

Roadless areas in the news again

bethanie — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:48:25 -0600

It was way back in 1997 that the Clinton Administration first began a process to protect roadless areas from new road construction. After a long public process, with hundreds of public meetings, Clinton signed the "roadless rule" a few days before leaving office in 2001. Since then, the rule has been referred to as a last minute approach to protect roadless areas, and it has been caught up in politics and litigation.

On Tuesday, August 11, a Wyoming judge ruled for the second time that the Clinton rule was illegal and imposed a permanent injunction against its implementation. For more info on the see-sawing legality of the rule, and the alternative proposed by the Bush Administration, see the NY Times article or the Heritage Forest Campaign website.

Judge Brimmer's rhetoric seems a little out of line with the facts of the case. According to the NY Times, the decision includes the following quote from the judge, “This court is of the opinion that the Forest Service violated the public interest when it flagrantly and cavalierly railroaded this country’s present environmental laws in an attempt to build an outgoing president’s enduring fame.”

That said, roadless area protection remains a hot button issue. While the fight has been mostly over whether road building or logging would be allowed, there's another "elephant" in the roadless area: off-road vehicles. Too many national forests, even under the protections of the roadless rule, have allowed off-road vehicles to use roadless areas. Off-road vehicles have developed their own user-created, renegade routes in roadless areas, and now the Forest Service is designating those routes as legal motorized trails in many instances. We're working hard to protect roadless areas from the impacts of off-road vehicles, but it's a challenge. It's a challenge in part becuase the Forest Service has adopted meaningless definitions of "road" and "trail" whereby any travelway on the ground, pretty much regardless of how big or impacting it is, can be called a road, or a trail. So as they complete travel planning, and they find travelways that look, act, and function like roads, in roadless areas, they are simply renaming those travelways as motorized trails, and voila, they're legal, even under the roadless rule.

Now that the roadless rule is temporarily out of favor again, perhaps the agency will stop this semantic shell game and start managing these travelways as what they are - roads. Regardless of what they call them, however, we don't want them in roadless areas, and we're working hard to keep them out.

Collaboration Websites: A list of internet resources for creating and funding successful collaborations

Greg Peters — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0600

The following are links to collaborative conservation sites. These sites are very useful for researching collaboration types, funding sources, histories, successes, failures, and for learning about collaborating with various federal agencies.

Partnership Resource Center - Online resource developed by the National Forest Foundation and the Forest Service providing information on partnering with the Forest Service, funding for partnerships, contact information, etc. http://www.partnershipresourcecenter.org

Cooperative Conservation America - Searchable database of cooperative conservation work across America. Sponsored by the Federal Government. http://www.cooperativeconservationamerica.org

Cooperative Conservation-Government Site - Official multi-agency site devoted to fostering collaborative conservation projects with governmental agencies. Comprehensive site with good information on funding, agency contacts, news, government links and contact information, award information. http://www.cooperativeconservation.org

Red Lodge Clearinghouse - This site by the University of Colorado School of Law Natural Resources Center provides great natural resource management information and news. Provides searchable funding information, project descriptions, news, and general information regarding cooperative natural resources management. http://www.rlch.org

Natural Resources Conservation Service (formally the Soil Conservation Service). Official USDA department dedicated to conservation. http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs

Karuk Tribe and Six Rivers National Forest Road Removal Reports

Greg Peters — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Beginning in the mid 1990's the Karuk Tribe and the Six Rivers and Klamath National Forest have partnered to address restoration in the Middle Klamath River watershed. This partnership has proven very successful for the tribe, the national forests, and for salmon and the river.

These excellent PDF's detail the collaborations between the Karuk Tribe and the Six Rivers and Klamath National Forest which removed and recountoured the Steinacher Road and sections of the East Ishi-Pishi Road. These PDF's provide great technical, funding, historical, and other details.

Proposed Resource Management Plan (RMP) and Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)

Franklin Seal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:17:26 -0600

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management Moab Field Office, has released its final plan to manage 1.8 million acres of public land in Grand and San Juan counties, including some of southern Utah's most treasured redrock regions near Moab and portions of the Green, Dolores and Colorado rivers. The Travel Plan portion of the RMP, if implemented, would designate thousands of miles of user-created off-road vehicle routes.

Western Governors Association Resolution on Sustainable Forest Roads

Franklin Seal — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:20:31 -0600

At its annual meeting in July, 2008, the Western Governors Association passed this resolution on Sustainable Forest Roads. It advocates that the Forest Service restore and maintain a sustainable road system on their lands. Action items requested of the Forest Service include completing a prioritized inventory, developing a funding strategy and fixing the problem within 15 years.

Legacy Roads Funding — Complete List by Project

Franklin Seal — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:37:34 -0600

Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Funding:
Approved Projects (listed regionally)

In 2008 Congress provided first-time funding to the Forest Service for the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (LRRI). With $39.4 million in new money, the Forest Service will be able to being addressing some of the problems created by the legacy of logging roads in our national forests. According to the legislation, the money can be used for critical maintenance and restoration work, particularly where forest roads create risks to water quality and threatened or endangered wildlife species. Aging, undermaintained forest roads endanger public lands, clean water and fish populations. Thousands of miles of roads block fish passage and are at risk of triggering destructive landslides. And while $40 million may seem like a lot of money, the Forest Service estimates the maintenance backlog on our national forest roads to be as high as $10 billion. It’s our hope that the LRRI will become a permanent program, with annual funding to restore watersheds by decommissioning unneeded roads, while fixing culverts and performing regularly needed maintenance on those roads that we do need.

In July, we received a set of spreadsheets from the Forest Service that describes how they intend to use the initial LRRI funding. According to the totals calculated from these spreadsheets, the Forest Service will:

Construct or reconstruct 407 stream crossings to restore fish passage,
Restore or enhance 581 miles of stream habitat,
Improve 236 miles of passenger car roads and 908 miles of high clearance vehicle roads
Maintain 529 miles of passenger car roads maintained and 999 miles of high clearance vehicle roads,
Decommission 303 miles of roads,
Construct or reconstruct 66 bridges,
Maintain 1165 miles of trails to standard,
Improve 618 miles of trails to meet standards, and
Improve a minimum of 60,831 acres of watershed (several regions did not report the acres of improved watersheds).

This is an impressive first step towards the comprehensive stewardship of our national forest watersheds. The totals listed above are based on the Forest Service’s allocation of funding. Most of these projects are expected to be completed in 2008, but we will be checking back again at the end of the year to see if the projects proceeded as planned. (Weather, cost-shares, or other factors could possibly delay some implementation.)

While ideally there would have been more miles of roads decommissioned, this is still a great start toward dramatically reducing the impacts roads have on water, fisheries and wildlife. Wildlands CPR is a key group in the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative, which advocated on behalf of this initiative.

To find out what’s happening on your favorite forests, and to learn which projects have been funded in your region, download the Forest Service spreadsheet. Please note that all Forest Service regions are included on this one spreadsheet and you can click on the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet to pull up the individual data for each region. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Below you’ll find a key to determine where your local forest is found and what some of the key abbreviations mean in the spreadsheet.

USFS Regions:
Region 1: Montana, Northern Idaho, North Dakota
Region 2: Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas
Region 3: Arizona, New Mexico
Region 4: Southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada
Region 5: California
Region 6: Oregon, Washington
Region 8: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Okalahoma, Texas
Region 9: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Region 10: Alaska

Abbreviations Key:
AOP – Aquatic Organism Passage (fish passage)
CMP – Corrugated Metal Pipe (culvert)
HC – High Clearance Vehicle
NEPA – National Environmental Policy Act
PC – Passenger Car
TMDL – Total Maximum Daily Load (of sedimentation in a stream)

There are several Forest Service abbreviations that are specific to funding or agency data and we have not listed those here (e.g. CMLG, RFFF).

Legacy Roads Funding FY08 Region Totals

wildlandscpr — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:25:01 -0600

Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Funding:
Approved Projects (listed regionally)

Construct or reconstruct 407 stream crossings to restore fish passage,
Restore or enhance 581 miles of stream habitat,
Improve 236 miles of passenger car roads and 908 miles of high clearance vehicle roads
Maintain 529 miles of passenger car roads maintained and 999 miles of high clearance vehicle roads,
Decommission 303 miles of roads,
Construct or reconstruct 66 bridges,
Maintain 1165 miles of trails to standard,
Improve 618 miles of trails to meet standards, and
Improve a minimum of 60,831 acres of watershed (several regions did not report the acres of improved watersheds).

Distribution of Legacy Roads Funding by State

wildlandscpr — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:19:57 -0600