Travel Management: A Success Story in the Gold Belt
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Between Canon City and Victor, Colorado is a little-known region referred to locally as the Gold Belt. Similar to many other BLM areas, the Gold Belt’s 564,600 acres of shrublands, gulches, cliffs, and high grassy balds are mixed into a complicated mosaic of ranches, subdivisions, city parks, and federal lands. The federal lands, totaling about 139,000 acres, provide some of the most rugged and wildlife-rich country in the region, with mountain lions, peregrines, Mexican spotted owls, leopard frogs, and bighorn sheep.
Included within the Gold Belt planning area is the Gold Belt Tour National Scenic and Historic Byway, and the Garden Park Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), which is also designated as a Research Natural Area and a National Natural Landmark. The planning area also includes the renowned Shelf Climbing area, the Beaver Creek Wilderness Study Area and two additional ACECs. Garden Park contains world-class dinosaur fossils as well as a buckwheat plant species that is listed as sensitive, and in decline. As often seems the case in southern Colorado, off-road vehicles have adopted these paleontologically and botanically sensitive locales as play areas, resulting in an unfortunate confluence of incompatible interests.
The majority of the lands in the Gold Belt Planning Area were zoned in 1996 to limit OHV use to existing routes. Since then, OHV use (including extreme jeeping) and target shooting have led to user-created routes which are damaging dinosaur fossils and river health, and, in some places, creating dangerous conditions. In addition, the BLM purchased some significant inholdings that required they develop a plan to guide visitor use, and so the BLM decided to initiate a travel management planning process.
Citizens Team Up
Supported by 13 prisons, Canon City and Fremont County have not traditionally been strongholds for the conservation community. However, over the years a handful of citizens have grouped together to fight for wilderness designation and oppose proposals that would damage important conservation lands. When we found out about BLM’s travel management planning in the Gold Belt, we contacted this core group and developed an action plan. Our plan roughly consisted of early and consistent interactions with BLM staff, developing a Citizens Management Alternative, and broadening our small group to incorporate other local land users such as equestrians and trail runners.
Our first step was to subdivide the planning area into logical sub-areas, and then characterize the current condition of each by the types of recreational experiences and condition of the land. We did this by collating resource information with expert local knowledge on specific routes, impacts, and areas. We put together detailed GIS maps showing riparian areas, perennial streams, Colorado Natural Heritage Program element occurrences and Potential Conservation Areas, and Colorado Division of Wildlife big game and fish data. For the entire planning area and for each sub-area, we crafted a Desired Future Condition (DFC) that spelled out a vision for management, detailing desired recreational settings and experiences, ecological conditions, and management styles. From this step flowed the development of management objectives and tasks for each area, including specific route recommendations.
The BLM met with members of our group several times, beginning long before they initiated scoping. These meetings gave us the opportunity to share our approaches, priorities, and concerns, and to learn how the BLM intended to carry out their process, as well as what they were thinking about certain areas and routes — points to which we could rally our troops to either reinforce the BLM’s approach, or urge them to shift it.
Notably, the Royal Gorge Field Office hired a full-time transportation planner, whose sole job was to coordinate the Gold Belt travel management planning process. Moreover, the Field Office manager made it clear to the staff and the public that transportation planning was a priority. These two factors were critical in developing a timely and well-conceived plan.
Because our core group was so small (and because the ORV community in and around Canon City was so large, relatively), it was imperative that we broaden our ranks. Through word of mouth, finding friends of friends, reaching out to key community members we didn’t know, and leaving flyers at the climbing area, we forged links to the local trailrunners, Audubon Society, and Colorado Backcountry Horsemen Association. We included these new-found allies in subsequent meetings held to refine the Citizens Management Alternative.
Strong Science and Solid Process are the Keys to Success
The BLM, for its part, was serious about transportation planning. It was clear from the start that the Field Office staff had great affection for the lands entrusted to their management, and wanted to address the growing problems responsibly and scientifically. The difficulty was that they did not know how to conduct travel management or recreation planning, and had little guidance from the state or Washington offices (not to mention funding).
We provided a template for planning: establishing DFCs and management goals, objectives, and tasks to achieve them, as well as standards to ensure they would be maintained. The BLM provided staff expertise in fisheries, hydrology, soil science, wildlife, wilderness, and GIS, and developed an analytical approach for assessing the ecological benefit and cost of current routes (legal and illegal) and cumulative route systems.
The BLM analyzed the impacts of the no action, low use, medium use, and high use alternatives on factors such as core interior habitat; wildlife habitat including winter range and calving areas; visual resources; watershed condition focusing on riparian zones; route density; natural quiet; fossil resources; and threatened and endangered species.
In addition to using GIS analysis to find an appropriate mix of recreational access and ecological protection, the Royal Gorge Field Office was proactive and effective in the way it handled public outreach. In contrast to many other offices who fear the controversy that travel management planning invites, this office developed a public outreach process that seemed to reduce controversy, or at least keep it at a manageable level.
The Field Office manager integrated the Resource Advisory Council into the process by creating a subcommittee that would help contact the public as well as digest the public input. This subcommittee and the BLM interdisciplinary team (ID team) put together a short list of 43 people who were interviewed by a team consisting of one BLM staff person and one RAC member. In addition to these personal interviews, BLM conducted scoping by soliciting comment through a federal register notice, mailed notices, and a public meeting.
Lastly, and importantly, the BLM ID team organized two Saturday field trips: one for the motorized community and another for the non-motorized and conservation communities. The BLM brought the participants to locations where easy solutions were not obvious, and asked for ideas. From our perspective, these field trips were key. Not only did the BLM staff teach us about their approach and share their concerns and challenges, but they also gave us an opportunity to reciprocate. Moreover, we had a chance to explore trouble areas together, and acquire a field sense for the overall planning area.
Before publishing the final environmental assessment, the BLM held two public meetings at which they presented the basic framework of the GIS analysis and provided examples of the algorithms used to determine which route segments were problematic for specific resources (e.g., labeled as highly problematic for watershed health). They placed ten stations around the room with large maps showing the GIS output for specific resources, and members of the ID team explained the approach and the output at each station. The BLM did not “dumb down” their presentation, nor did they bore people with powerpoint presentations on NEPA flowcharts. Instead, staff took the time to walk the audience through a complicated process, and by doing so, provided some level of assurance that decisions were neither arbitrary nor ill-considered.
Where the Plan Fell Short
Although the Royal Gorge’s first attempt at travel/recreation planning deserves kudos, it clearly was a learning process. To our knowledge, they are the first office in the Southern Rockies region to identify Desired Future Conditions for sub-areas and an entire planning area. However, the DFC descriptions lacked development and breadth. Recognizing this, the Royal Gorge Office is improving these statements in their next travel management planning process.
Also absent in the plan were three important, and linked, components: a capacity model, a detailed monitoring plan, and an outreach strategy. The BLM staff understood the need to integrate a capacity model into the plan (an estimation of the amount of use that a particular landscape or site can handle before it begins to decline), but simply didn’t know how to go about doing it. Because they did not want to include an inadequate model (and potentially face legal action), they opted to not address the issue of capacity and adaptive management at all. Related to this is the absence of a strong monitoring plan and outreach strategy. A travel management plan without built-in mechanisms to address movement away from the DFC is all bark and no bite. The plan should set out monitoring requirements, including timelines, indicators, thresholds, and consequent management actions. Informing the public about how, when, and where they can access public lands, the importance of personal responsibility in complying with the plan, and the benefits to the community that will result are also integral to success. I have yet to see a travel management plan that has an adequate outreach strategy (or one at all).
The final decision did not remove the camping/firewood gathering/game retrieval buffers that exist in most land management plans today, but instead reduced them to 100 feet. Removing these buffers altogether would go a long way in curbing the continuous creep of illegal ORV routes across our public lands. We argued strongly, although unsuccessfully, to remove these buffers and replace them with periodically widened road segments where vehicles can park parallel to the road.
Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: The reason the Gold Belt planning effort was a success (in that the BLM used a sound process to reach a reasonable decision, not necessarily that the most conservation-oriented alternative was chosen) was because the Field Office Manager provided direction to his staff that travel management was a priority, and that resource conservation was the driver. To that end, he established an ID team and hired a full-time transportation planner. (Notably, since then, he has hired a full time monitoring coordinator as well.) Because the Field Office was prepared to make some serious changes to protect resources and experiences, the investment by the conservation community really paid off. This may not be the case if the Field Manager is not prepared to address the issue of unfettered ORV use in a substantial and effective way.
Lesson 2: We need to invest our resources into developing capacity modeling approaches that will work and be legally defensible, yet can be practically implemented in the field with existing staff. A travel management plan without teeth can only be so effective.
Lesson 3: Pick the travel management plans in which to invest time and resources, and then really do it. We are most effective when we engage land managers pre-scoping, and continue to interact closely with them until the decision is signed (some groups, if they have the resources, develop programs to help with and/or monitor plan implementation).
— Vera Smith is Conservation Director for the Colorado Mountain Club.
Included within the Gold Belt planning area is the Gold Belt Tour National Scenic and Historic Byway, and the Garden Park Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), which is also designated as a Research Natural Area and a National Natural Landmark. The planning area also includes the renowned Shelf Climbing area, the Beaver Creek Wilderness Study Area and two additional ACECs. Garden Park contains world-class dinosaur fossils as well as a buckwheat plant species that is listed as sensitive, and in decline. As often seems the case in southern Colorado, off-road vehicles have adopted these paleontologically and botanically sensitive locales as play areas, resulting in an unfortunate confluence of incompatible interests.
The majority of the lands in the Gold Belt Planning Area were zoned in 1996 to limit OHV use to existing routes. Since then, OHV use (including extreme jeeping) and target shooting have led to user-created routes which are damaging dinosaur fossils and river health, and, in some places, creating dangerous conditions. In addition, the BLM purchased some significant inholdings that required they develop a plan to guide visitor use, and so the BLM decided to initiate a travel management planning process.
Citizens Team Up
Supported by 13 prisons, Canon City and Fremont County have not traditionally been strongholds for the conservation community. However, over the years a handful of citizens have grouped together to fight for wilderness designation and oppose proposals that would damage important conservation lands. When we found out about BLM’s travel management planning in the Gold Belt, we contacted this core group and developed an action plan. Our plan roughly consisted of early and consistent interactions with BLM staff, developing a Citizens Management Alternative, and broadening our small group to incorporate other local land users such as equestrians and trail runners.
Our first step was to subdivide the planning area into logical sub-areas, and then characterize the current condition of each by the types of recreational experiences and condition of the land. We did this by collating resource information with expert local knowledge on specific routes, impacts, and areas. We put together detailed GIS maps showing riparian areas, perennial streams, Colorado Natural Heritage Program element occurrences and Potential Conservation Areas, and Colorado Division of Wildlife big game and fish data. For the entire planning area and for each sub-area, we crafted a Desired Future Condition (DFC) that spelled out a vision for management, detailing desired recreational settings and experiences, ecological conditions, and management styles. From this step flowed the development of management objectives and tasks for each area, including specific route recommendations.
The BLM met with members of our group several times, beginning long before they initiated scoping. These meetings gave us the opportunity to share our approaches, priorities, and concerns, and to learn how the BLM intended to carry out their process, as well as what they were thinking about certain areas and routes — points to which we could rally our troops to either reinforce the BLM’s approach, or urge them to shift it.
Notably, the Royal Gorge Field Office hired a full-time transportation planner, whose sole job was to coordinate the Gold Belt travel management planning process. Moreover, the Field Office manager made it clear to the staff and the public that transportation planning was a priority. These two factors were critical in developing a timely and well-conceived plan.
Because our core group was so small (and because the ORV community in and around Canon City was so large, relatively), it was imperative that we broaden our ranks. Through word of mouth, finding friends of friends, reaching out to key community members we didn’t know, and leaving flyers at the climbing area, we forged links to the local trailrunners, Audubon Society, and Colorado Backcountry Horsemen Association. We included these new-found allies in subsequent meetings held to refine the Citizens Management Alternative.
Strong Science and Solid Process are the Keys to Success
The BLM, for its part, was serious about transportation planning. It was clear from the start that the Field Office staff had great affection for the lands entrusted to their management, and wanted to address the growing problems responsibly and scientifically. The difficulty was that they did not know how to conduct travel management or recreation planning, and had little guidance from the state or Washington offices (not to mention funding).
We provided a template for planning: establishing DFCs and management goals, objectives, and tasks to achieve them, as well as standards to ensure they would be maintained. The BLM provided staff expertise in fisheries, hydrology, soil science, wildlife, wilderness, and GIS, and developed an analytical approach for assessing the ecological benefit and cost of current routes (legal and illegal) and cumulative route systems.
The BLM analyzed the impacts of the no action, low use, medium use, and high use alternatives on factors such as core interior habitat; wildlife habitat including winter range and calving areas; visual resources; watershed condition focusing on riparian zones; route density; natural quiet; fossil resources; and threatened and endangered species.
In addition to using GIS analysis to find an appropriate mix of recreational access and ecological protection, the Royal Gorge Field Office was proactive and effective in the way it handled public outreach. In contrast to many other offices who fear the controversy that travel management planning invites, this office developed a public outreach process that seemed to reduce controversy, or at least keep it at a manageable level.
The Field Office manager integrated the Resource Advisory Council into the process by creating a subcommittee that would help contact the public as well as digest the public input. This subcommittee and the BLM interdisciplinary team (ID team) put together a short list of 43 people who were interviewed by a team consisting of one BLM staff person and one RAC member. In addition to these personal interviews, BLM conducted scoping by soliciting comment through a federal register notice, mailed notices, and a public meeting.
Lastly, and importantly, the BLM ID team organized two Saturday field trips: one for the motorized community and another for the non-motorized and conservation communities. The BLM brought the participants to locations where easy solutions were not obvious, and asked for ideas. From our perspective, these field trips were key. Not only did the BLM staff teach us about their approach and share their concerns and challenges, but they also gave us an opportunity to reciprocate. Moreover, we had a chance to explore trouble areas together, and acquire a field sense for the overall planning area.
Before publishing the final environmental assessment, the BLM held two public meetings at which they presented the basic framework of the GIS analysis and provided examples of the algorithms used to determine which route segments were problematic for specific resources (e.g., labeled as highly problematic for watershed health). They placed ten stations around the room with large maps showing the GIS output for specific resources, and members of the ID team explained the approach and the output at each station. The BLM did not “dumb down” their presentation, nor did they bore people with powerpoint presentations on NEPA flowcharts. Instead, staff took the time to walk the audience through a complicated process, and by doing so, provided some level of assurance that decisions were neither arbitrary nor ill-considered.
Where the Plan Fell Short
Although the Royal Gorge’s first attempt at travel/recreation planning deserves kudos, it clearly was a learning process. To our knowledge, they are the first office in the Southern Rockies region to identify Desired Future Conditions for sub-areas and an entire planning area. However, the DFC descriptions lacked development and breadth. Recognizing this, the Royal Gorge Office is improving these statements in their next travel management planning process.
Also absent in the plan were three important, and linked, components: a capacity model, a detailed monitoring plan, and an outreach strategy. The BLM staff understood the need to integrate a capacity model into the plan (an estimation of the amount of use that a particular landscape or site can handle before it begins to decline), but simply didn’t know how to go about doing it. Because they did not want to include an inadequate model (and potentially face legal action), they opted to not address the issue of capacity and adaptive management at all. Related to this is the absence of a strong monitoring plan and outreach strategy. A travel management plan without built-in mechanisms to address movement away from the DFC is all bark and no bite. The plan should set out monitoring requirements, including timelines, indicators, thresholds, and consequent management actions. Informing the public about how, when, and where they can access public lands, the importance of personal responsibility in complying with the plan, and the benefits to the community that will result are also integral to success. I have yet to see a travel management plan that has an adequate outreach strategy (or one at all).
The final decision did not remove the camping/firewood gathering/game retrieval buffers that exist in most land management plans today, but instead reduced them to 100 feet. Removing these buffers altogether would go a long way in curbing the continuous creep of illegal ORV routes across our public lands. We argued strongly, although unsuccessfully, to remove these buffers and replace them with periodically widened road segments where vehicles can park parallel to the road.
Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: The reason the Gold Belt planning effort was a success (in that the BLM used a sound process to reach a reasonable decision, not necessarily that the most conservation-oriented alternative was chosen) was because the Field Office Manager provided direction to his staff that travel management was a priority, and that resource conservation was the driver. To that end, he established an ID team and hired a full-time transportation planner. (Notably, since then, he has hired a full time monitoring coordinator as well.) Because the Field Office was prepared to make some serious changes to protect resources and experiences, the investment by the conservation community really paid off. This may not be the case if the Field Manager is not prepared to address the issue of unfettered ORV use in a substantial and effective way.
Lesson 2: We need to invest our resources into developing capacity modeling approaches that will work and be legally defensible, yet can be practically implemented in the field with existing staff. A travel management plan without teeth can only be so effective.
Lesson 3: Pick the travel management plans in which to invest time and resources, and then really do it. We are most effective when we engage land managers pre-scoping, and continue to interact closely with them until the decision is signed (some groups, if they have the resources, develop programs to help with and/or monitor plan implementation).
— Vera Smith is Conservation Director for the Colorado Mountain Club.