Road Riporter 11.1 Spring Equinox 2006

Spring Equinox 2006. Volume 11 No. 1

Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Alaska’s Roads to Nowhere By Emily Ferry

Inside… Just the Tip of the Iceburg: Alaska’s Roads to Nowhere, by Emily Ferry. Pages 3-5 Policy Primer: The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, by Bryan Faehner. Pages 6-7 Depaving the Way, by Bethanie Walder. Pages 8-9 Citizen Spotlight: Emily Ferry, Coordinator for Alaska Transportation Priorities Project. Pages 10-11 Wildlands CPR’s 2005 Annual Report. Pages 12-13 Odes to Roads: Getting There, by David Havlick. Pages 14-15 Get with the Program: Restoration and Transportation Program Updates. Pages 16-17 Biblio Notes: Off-Road Vehicle Emissions and their Effect on Human Health, by Jason Brininstool. Pages 18-20 Regional Reports. Page 21 Around the Office, Membership Info. Pages 22-23

Check out our website at: www.wildlandscpr.org

Mt. McKinley as seen from the end of Stampede Road, a point popular among local residents and visitors for its vistas and blueberry picking, yet threatened by a state-planned 40-acre gravel pit. Photo courtesy of Alaska Transportation Priorities Project.

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t’s an election year, and Montana’s Senator Conrad Burns (R) is busy defending himself from the Jack Abramoff scandal and promoting his policies to the people of Montana. In December, Burns held a forest management hearing in Missoula that was ostensibly focused on wildland access and wilderness. While the issue of access has heated up since then, with several proposals to sell off public lands, it was the comments of Burns and one of the hearing witnesses with regard to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that most caught our attention. Mike Hillis, of the Montana-based Ecosystems Research Group, was the last witness to speak at the hearing. He focused his comments on NEPA and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and how these laws are affecting resource extraction, and hence the economy, in Montana. Hillis argued that NEPA was written for a different era, a time of resource extraction, and because the Forest Service is now more focused on restoration, NEPA is no longer the right tool for assessing projects. NEPA was designed to slow down resource extraction, he said, but restoration needs to move quickly and therefore NEPA should change to accommodate it. He didn’t specifically argue that restoration projects should be exempt from NEPA analysis, but that was certainly one of his implied messages. Of all the other issues mentioned at the hearing, this was one of the key things that Burns focused on in his questions to the witnesses, and that should raise red flags for conservationists. While the current Congress has been eviscerating NEPA indirectly during the past few years (e.g. exempting projects from NEPA through legislation like highway bills or salvage logging/forest health bills), it is likely that the House and Senate will consider changes to NEPA itself this year. Burns’ interest in restoration foreshadows one of the key themes that will likely emerge during upcoming debates over the utility, timeliness and continued applicability of NEPA. Congress will probably consider exempting or streamlining the process for restoration projects. The problem lies in defining restoration. While there are some cases where it might be appropriate to streamline NEPA analysis because a project would improve the environment, many “restoration” projects are just the same old timber sales repackaged. Without a clear and scientifically defensible definition of restoration, it will be impossible to consider any reasonable provision to exempt restoration projects from NEPA analysis. But that’s just what this Congress may try to do (in addition to all sorts of other things). Conservationists should be on the lookout for this argument — that NEPA was written for a different time and needs to be rewritten to better handle restoration. This red herring is just one of many that we will be dealing with, and fighting against, as NEPA goes up for review.

P.O. Box 7516 Missoula, MT 59807 (406) 543-9551 www.wildlandscpr.org

Wildlands CPR works to protect and restore wildland ecosystems by preventing and removing roads and limiting motorized recreation. We are a national clearinghouse and network, providing citizens with tools and strategies to fight road construction, deter motorized recreation, and promote road removal and revegetation. Director Bethanie Walder Development Director Tom Petersen Restoration Program Coordinator Marnie Criley Science Coordinator Adam Switalski NTWC Forest Campaign Coordinator Jason Kiely Transportation Policy Coordinator Tim Peterson Program Assistant Cathy Adams Newsletter Dan Funsch & Marianne Zugel Interns & Volunteers Katherine Court, Eliza Donoghue, Sonya Germann, Anna Holden, Josh Hurd, Breeann Johnson, Laura McKelvie, Kevin Newman, Kylie Paul, Tracy Jo Schweigert, Jennifer Scott Board of Directors Amy Atwood, Greg Fishbein, Jim Furnish, William Geer, Dave Havlick, Rebecca Lloyd, Cara Nelson, Sonya Newenhouse, Patrick Parenteau Advisory Committee Jasper Carlton, Dave Foreman, Keith Hammer, Timothy Hermach, Marion Hourdequin, Kraig Klungness, Lorin Lindner, Andy Mahler, Robert McConnell, Stephanie Mills, Reed Noss, Michael Soulé, Steve Trombulak, Louisa Willcox, Bill Willers, Howie Wolke

Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, AK. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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© 2005 Wildlands CPR

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Alaska’s Roads to Nowhere By Emily Ferry

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laska. The typical image of the state is a vast stretch of wilderness with towering mountains off in the distance. This fall, however, Alaska’s “Bridges to Nowhere” dominated the headlines and national image of the 49th state. One study found that more people could tell you about the two boondoggle bridges than could name Alaska’s congressional representatives. What most people don’t know is that the bridges are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Governor Frank Murkowski has been pushing an agenda chock full of roads and bridges to nowhere throughout the state.

Road Block

Project promoters hit a bump in the road this fall when pundits and politicians called into question the $450 million set aside for the Knik Arm and Gravina Bridges. It’s easy to see why these projects became the poster children of pork.

Off-road vehicle use near this remote road will further disturb wildlife. Photo courtesy of Alaska Transportation Priorities Project.

The $328 million Gravina Bridge would link the island community of Ketchikan, population 13,000, with Gravina Island, population 50. Higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and almost as long as the Golden Gate, the Gravina Bridge would replace a five minute shuttle ferry ride to the airport on Gravina. Meanwhile, estimates for the proposed Knik Arm Bridge in Anchorage run anywhere from $600 million to $1.5 billion. The primary benefit of both crossings is to open up more developable land (read: sprawl). The Gravina Bridge has the added “benefit” of facilitating a proposed timber sale in a roadless portion of the Tongass National Forest.

However, it wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast that the nation truly took a hard look at our spending priorities. After endless editorials in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, frontpage coverage in Parade magazine and countless letters to the editor, the Alaska delegation finally yielded by removing the bridge earmarks from the federal transportation bill.

The Alaska Transportation Priorities Project, a watchdog group advocating for a sensible transportation system for the state, brought the bridges to the attention of groups ranging from the Sierra Club to the conservative Heritage Foundation. The Taxpayers for Common Sense even gave Alaska

Congressman Don Young (R) the Golden Fleece Award for his efforts to fund the Gravina Bridge.

Shopping List

But there’s a catch: Alaska got to keep the money. Congress removed the mandate that Alaska had to build the bridges, but there is also nothing stopping Governor Murkowski from moving ahead with them, or perhaps worse, spending the money on a slew of other controversial “roads to nowhere.” There are certainly plenty of road proposals. As the Anchorage Daily News put it, “Governor Frank Murkowski’s enthusiasm to build roads knows few bounds. He wants to build roads

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

the way beavers want to build dams.” Roads through wilderness areas, roads through the Tongass, roads to benefit the mining industry, roads to benefit the oil and gas industry, roads just for the sake of building roads. And then there are ports to be built to profit private corporations, dead-end railroad extensions, and of course, the bridges to nowhere. Three of the most egregious projects are the proposed Juneau Road, the Stampede Road, and the Bradfield Canal Road.

The Juneau Road

The $260 million (or more) Juneau Road (see The Road RIPorter 3.3 and 5.6) is among the most immediate threats. Originally, the project was proposed to connect Juneau with the mainland. Currently, Alaska’s capital city is connected to the road system in Haines and Skagway by a state-run ferry that travels the Inside Passage. With an avalanche hazard so severe that the state Department of Transportation pre-

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— continued from page 3 — dicts the road would be closed for more than a month each year, it’s no wonder that residents in all three communities prefer ferry service rather than a road through North America’s deepest fjord. One resident felt so passionate about the issue that he swam the 92 miles between Skagway and Juneau in an epic nine-day protest. The state changed plans last summer when they learned they could not build the road through a recreation area and historic site next to the Klondike Goldrush National Historic Park. The proposed road will now dead-end 18 miles south of the continental road system — but not before slicing through some of the most spectacular habitat in the Tongass National Forest, including the beloved Berners Bay. The proposal entails a shorter ferry ride and a longer, more dangerous and less convenient drive to the capital city — now it really is a road to nowhere. Construction could begin this summer.

The Stampede Road

More than 40 years ago, pioneers traveled the boggy Stampede Trail to reach antimony and placer gold mines, within the borders of what is now Denali National Park. The mines have since closed, and while the first four miles of the route is now speckled with residential development and small lodg-

An avalanche cascades across the proposed path of the Juneau Road on a Saturday morning in March. Photo by Scott Logan.

es, the remaining 80 miles have readily receded into the wilderness. The area is excellent habitat for wolves, caribou, and tour operators seeking to give their clients a taste of wild Alaska. Plans to piecemeal the Stampede road extension could ruin all that. Local officials, tour operators, residents, and the National Park Service are all opposed to the project. Many fear the state will push the sub-standard road to the border of Denali National Park and then sue to establish a right of way through wilderness designated sections of the Park to complete a loop with the existing Park road near Wonder Lake.

The Bradfield Canal Road

There seems to be little that can discourage Governor Murkowski’s road building efforts. In 1997, a Department of Transportation study on the proposed Bradfield Canal Road concluded that “[W]e have no compelling reasons to spend more public money on more detailed corridor studies. The project won’t work.” Nearly a decade later, however, the state continues to pour tax dollars into studying the project. As currently proposed, the $315 million Bradfield Road would start in the middle of the wilderness (travelers who wished to reach the road-head from Southeast Alaska would still have to take ferries). The 86-mile road would stretch across the border to connect with the desolate Cassiar Highway in Canada. In order to pave a region so rugged that it achieved a perfect score in the Forest Service’s roadless review, engineering studies predict the route would need a mile and a half long tunnel at an eight percent grade. The state plans to kick-off an official Environmental Impact Statement later this year.

Still Time to Cancel the Check

The $328 million Gravina Bridge would replace a 7-minute ferry ride between Ketchikan and its airport. Photo by Mike Sallee.

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Before meaningful work progresses on any of these projects, the state legislature needs to approve significant sums of match money. Previously, the republican-lead legislature followed the Governor’s lead on transportation issues, but the state is now awakening to the fact that funding for the megaprojects will take funding away from desperately needed repairs to our existing road system.

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There are certainly plenty of needs: the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that roughly one-third of the state’s existing roads and bridges are in poor condition. The Alaska Transportation Priorities Project (ATPP) has been working with communities, travelers, unions, and state legislators on both sides of the aisle to identify and fund the state’s outstanding transportation needs. In a state that’s two and a half times the size of Texas with a population density of approximately one person per square mile, it’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all answer. In urban areas people are concerned about teeth-rattling potholes, life-threatening curves, and overcrowded intersections. In rural areas, on the other hand, concerns include asthma-inducing dust from dirt roads, along with ports, harbors, and airstrips that connect bush villages with metropolitan areas. Alaska’s ferry system is key to connecting coastal communities.

In 1963 the state constructed a 55-mile primitive road to the Stampede antimony mine and workers brought this Fairbanks municipal bus for shelter. The bus is still used by hunters and dog mushers. In 1992 Chris McCandless starved to death here when he could not recross the Teklanika River and return from the “wild”. The state proposes to upgrade this Stampede trail with bridges and a gravel road passing next to the bus and onto the Denali Park wilderness. The State then hopes to form a loop with the existing Park road. Photo courtesy of the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project.

Transportation improvements in nearly every community have been axed under the Governor’s plan and no one is happy. Mayors of the state’s three largest boroughs including the Municipality of Anchorage signed a letter urging the state to “fix it first.”

Unfortunately, Alaska’s lone Congressman Don Young hasn’t gotten the message. Recently he said that building the bridges to nowhere is far more important than filling potholes and fixing dangerous roadways. The Governor’s solution: a multi-million dollar public relations campaign to make America forget just how greedy the 49th state really is.

Meanwhile, the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project and their growing number of allies will continue to work in the real world for a more sensible use of Alaska’s transportation dollars. — Emily Ferry is the coordinator for the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project. For more information about how you can get involved, contact Emily at [email protected].

Alaska’s Other Roads to Nowhere Alaska’s Governor Frank Murkowski has promoted a long list of bridges and roads to nowhere. Most would subsidize the timber, mining, and oil and gas industries to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Pebble Mine Road – The state is currently considering a 100-mile road to facilitate development of the proposed Pebble Mine. If constructed, the mine would be North America’s largest open pit gold mine and would sit squarely in the headwaters of some of the world’s most productive salmon runs. Donlin Creek Mine Road – Two roads totaling over 90 miles proposed for Southwest Alaska would link ports on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers with the proposed Donlin Creek gold mine. Bullen Point Road – The proposed 50 mile road would stretch East from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. The road would subsidize Exxon’s attempts to develop oil and gas fields on the doorstep of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Nuiqsut Road – The project would include a bridge over the Colville River, the largest river on the North Slope, and is also intended to subsidize the oil and gas industry. In the past, similar roads have been paid for by industry, not the public. DeLong Mountain Port Expansion – This $75 million port expansion would be funded in part with public funds and would support the Red Dog zinc mine, in Northwest Alaska, currently Alaska’s single most toxic site. Cross-Baranof Road – This 45 mile road would stretch from Sitka across Baranof Island in the Tongass National Forest. Road access could make numerous currently uneconomical timber sales viable and poses risks to the ancestral lands of the Tlingit people. Railroad to Siberia – In talks with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin last year, Governor Murkowski stumped for a 42-mile railroad tunnel under the Bering Straight to connect Alaska with Russia.

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The Policy Primer is a column designed to highlight the ins & outs of a specific road or off-road vehicle policy. If you have a policy you’d like us to investigate, let us know!

The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act:

How Recreation Access Fees Are Transforming Public Land Recreation By Bryan Faehner

FLREA Background

Attached as a rider to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill and signed into law on December 8, 2004, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) extends and expands the Recreational Fee-Demonstration Program (Fee-Demo) begun in 1997. The Fee-Demo program allowed public land management agencies to retain at least eighty-percent of collected revenue from existing and new recreation fees. This was a significant change in how public lands are managed because it introduced an incentive for managers to increase recreation fee sites and costs in order to bolster their budgets. Before FLREA passed into law, Fee-Demo programs already existed in California, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and New Hampshire. They were so controversial that California, Colorado, Oregon, New Hampshire and dozens of counties, cities, and towns passed resolutions opposing them. Despite public resistance, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), who created the Fee-Demo program, worked with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to make the program permanent. For their part, Senators Thomas (R-Wyoming), Craig (R-Idaho), Burns (R-Montana), and Domenici (R-New Mexico) tried to stop the rider from being attached, and had earlier in 2004 worked to pass a bill that would have made Fee-Demo permanent solely for the Park Service and ended the program for other public lands. FLREA, which is often referred to as the Recreation Access Tax, or simply RAT, allows for three specific types of fees: •Standard Amenity Recreation Fees: This applies to developed “areas” with at least six “amenities” such as parking, permanent toilets, permanent trash receptacles, interpretive signs, picnic tables, and security services. •Expanded Amenity Recreation Fees: This applies to campgrounds, developed boat launches, developed swimming areas, and cabin or equipment rentals. •Special Recreation Permit Fee: This applies to commercial users and organized events. In addition, the law creates an interagency “America the Beautiful” pass that will replace the National Parks Pass (and likely cost over $85) and puts in place Recreation Resource Advisory Committees (RRACs) to make recommendations on implementing fee programs. Failure to pay these new fees can be either a Class A or B misdemeanor with hefty fines, considerable jail time, and leave you with a criminal record.

Implementation and Site Survey Report

Forest Service and BLM implementation of FLREA has vastly overstepped the law and has failed to drop sites not in compliance. In a nationwide survey the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition (WSNFC), a diverse network of groups opposed to recreation fees, found more than 300 non-compliant fee sites in 11 states and 28 national forests or BLM districts. WSNFC also found that the agencies have created new fee categories, are charging fees for the very uses the law prohibits (such as entrance fees), and are adding fee sites before mandatory RRACs have been established to review them.1 The agencies’ misuse of FLREA falls under three fee scheme categories: “High Impact Recreation Areas” (HIRAS), Special Recreation Permits, and Trailhead Fees.

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Photo courtesy of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition.

HIRAs were created by the Forest Service and BLM to describe fee sites with little or no federal investment and appear nowhere in FLREA. The agencies base HIRAs on one of many loopholes in the law that allow fees for an “area” with certain amenities, though it never defines their scale. As a result, hundreds of thousands of acres have been made HIRA’s with de facto entrance fees — often collected at entrance booths — in such places as Mt. Evans, Arapaho-Roosevelt NF, CO; American Fork Canyon, Uinta NF, UT; and a growing number of other public lands. According to FLREA, Special Recreation Permits are “specialized recreation uses of Federal recreational lands and waters, such as group activities, recreation events, motorized recreational vehicle use.”2 In the past, these permits were required for large events, commercial activities, and guides/outfitters. However, the agencies have now reinterpreted a “specialized” recreation activity to include backcountry camping, mountain biking, boating, horseback riding, and even using certain high-use hiking trails. Trailhead Fees are appearing in a growing number of forest and desert parking lots, despite parking fees being clearly prohibited without significant developments under FLREA. To capture more revenue, agencies are installing “amenities” to remote parking areas so fees can be collected. In addition, agencies are striking contracts with commercial enforcement companies and companies that administer automated pay stations that dispense parking passes.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

With the passage of FLREA and its implementation by the Forest Service and BLM, the states of Montana, Colorado, Oregon, the Idaho House and the Alaska House all passed resolutions opposing the law and calling for its repeal. Diverse interests have joined to protest the “pay to play” philosophy. In Montana, for example, the Montana Trail Vehicle Riders Association, Montana Wilderness Association, Montanans for Multiple Use, Montana Wood Products Association, Montana Logging Association, Citizens for Balanced Use, and the Sierra Club all joined in support of House Joint Resolution 13, which states: “Montana’s culture, quality of life, and traditions, demand free

Already, these two doctrines are being incorporated into the agencies’ travel and resource management planning, despite conflicts with FLREA that specifically prohibit charging for use of dispersed areas, minimally developed sites, and limiting the “use of recreation opportunities only to areas designated for collection of recreation

access to public lands.”3

Conclusion

Starving the Beast

With an annual budget between $4 billion and $5 billion, recreation fee revenue within the Forest Service is relatively insignificant. In a 2002 report to Congress, for example, the agency reported they collected only $35 million in Fee-Demo revenue in 2001. However, when you include the unreported $10 million appropriated to manage the program discovered by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and other overhead, the program’s total revenue was likely less than $15 million.4 Fee supporters claim that the revenue provided from recreation fees is critical for land managers as recreation funding at the forest and regional level has plummeted. Many fee opponents, however, suspect a strategy of ideologically driven political appointees intent on “starving the beast” by weaning forests and districts off federal appropriations and making them reliant on fees, partnerships, and private-sector revenue generation. While Congressional appropriations have generally increased 1% to 2% annually (still well below the rate of inflation), funding to the regional and district levels has been dropping in many cases by double-digit percentages. Interestingly, recreation funding has shrunk most in the very areas fee programs exist. For instance, in Oregon and Washington where a “northwest forest pass” is required for trailhead parking, recreation funding for the Forest Service dove by 14% from 2004 to 2005. Moreover, trails maintenance dropped 24%.5 Why these funding drops have occurred remains unclear, though many believe that money may be being siphoned off for exotic weed programs, relocating staff, and wildland fire control. Needless to say, recreation fees do not appear to be supplementing appropriated funding for those forests and districts — they are supplanting it.

Marketing Public Lands to the Public

With FLREA in place, the Forest Service and BLM are now in the midst of a national review of recreation sites that will steer the agencies towards more concessionaire partnerships and a greater reliance on volunteers. Known as the Recreational Site Facility Master Planning (RS-FMP) process within the Forest Service and the Cost Recovery Doctrine in the BLM, these programs call for recreation sites to be made “financially sustainable” (i.e. profitable) and have a marketable “niche” by 2007. The RS-FMP and Cost Recovery programs threaten to end free access to visitor centers, trailheads, undeveloped campgrounds, roads, and other recreation sites where recreation fees don’t already exist. The RS-FMP program has a tiered approach that ranks sites as either: •Non-discretionary (concession, partner operated) •Open (sufficient priority and funds) •Closed (needed, but insufficient funds) •Decommission (Non-niche conforming, high cost, low priority, etc). According to the Forest Service, sites “may move between open and closed categories annually based on changes in funding, revenues, partnerships, concessions, or volunteer availability.”6 Moreover, even sites that charge fees could be closed if they aren’t profitable enough. As one Forest Service manager put it “In our developed sites we’ve been told they need to pay for themselves, or we need to get rid of them.”7

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fees.”(Section 3.4)8

Without sustained public outcry and congressional intervention, political appointees will continue to direct the management of our public lands down a dangerous path that leads towards commercialization and privatization and away from the “public good” championed by Forest Service founder Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt. Once fully implemented, the socio-economic impacts of these changes will be catastrophic on rural communities where new tax prices will keep many folks off their public land. Our greatest hope is for public land patriots to continue to work together to protect one of America’s greatest birthrights — freely accessible wildlands.

What You Can Do

•Join WSNFC’s activist list-serve and get active; •Ask your representatives to stop non-park recreation fees; •Write letters to the editor; •Donate to the WSNFC — with no paid staff your contribution will go far.

Key Resources •www.westernslopenofee.org •www.fs.fed.us/recreation/programs/recfee/ •www.fs.fed.us/r3/measures/prioritize/rs-fmp. — Bryan Faehner works with the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition and others on funding and commercialization issues facing America’s public lands in Washington, DC. He worked as a park ranger at North Cascades National Park and has a M.S. degree from the University of Montana.

Endnotes

Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. “Site Survey Analysis of Forest Service and BLM Implementation of Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act.” Oct. 1, 2005. 2 Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. PL108-447. 3 2005 Montana Legislature. House Joint Resolution No. 13. 4 Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. “Appendix 1 and 2.” http:// www.westernslopenofee.org/nofee/appendix1.html. 5 Milstein, Michael. “US Forests Look For Sites To Close Down.” Oregonian. Apr. 12, 2005. 6 Forest Service. “Recreation Site Facility Master Planning Power Point.” http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/measures/prioritize/rsfmp/powerpoint/ 7 Brown, Keely. “Green Mountain Users Meet Forest Service Head-On.” Summit Daily News. Sept. 11, 2005. 8 Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. PL108-447. 1

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Technophobia/Ecophobia By Bethanie Walder “In the space of a century, the American experience of nature has gone from direct utilitarianism to romantic attachment to electronic detachment.” --Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.

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ere we are in the twenty-first century and I’m still dragging my feet, kicking and screaming, to minimize my interaction with the electronic age. I still don’t own a cell phone, I have no palm pilot, iPod, blackberry, gps unit, or other hand held communications device (though to be fair, I can’t imagine not using a computer, email and the internet, and I love my digital camera). Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking about how many people have these gadgets, small and large, and what our increasing fascination with electronics and technology might mean for how we interact with the environment. Walk around any American college campus and nearly every other student is plugged into their iPod, talking on a cell phone or otherwise “interfacing” with someone via some type of electronic device. In the process, they seem to be almost oblivious to their actual surroundings. In “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,” Richard Louv explores some of the causes and effects of society’s growing disconnection from nature. The book is focused on children, and how their lack of real, hands-on experiences in nature affects their ability to focus, concentrate, learn, and interact with other people. He reviews several studies that document how time spent in nature can reduce the symptoms of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and he questions whether children’s lack of free, unstructured time in nature and our increasing reliance on computers and technology might be a reason for increasing rates of ADD. (A lack of unstructured time reduces the ability of children to use their imaginations and be creative with their hands and real objects.) Louv and other authors have begun exploring how computers and technology are changing human development and human relationships. But more than human relationships are affected. Computers and technological devices also appear to change our relationship with nature. As people interact with nature via their computers, will they begin to consider virtual nature more important than, and perhaps even superior to, the natural world itself? If you can’t experience something via your computer or iPod, will it matter? In this era of speed, computers and electronics, we seem to have entered a time where a walk in the woods just isn’t interesting, fast or thrilling enough for a growing portion of the American public.

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Americans in particular have entered an era where we want instant gratification and entertainment (often including thrills) wherever we go. It seems that nearly any significant recreational activity that people talk about and engage in includes an “attraction” of some sort. It’s not good enough, for example, just to go to the beach and soak up the sun or build a sand castle, people want to go jet skiing or parasailing too. Recently my brother commented to me that Walt Disney World isn’t good enough anymore, because it’s not interactive enough — it’s just rides, he said, there are no computers, no new technology, nothing interactive like at Universal Studios (my family is from Florida, so we have lots of experience with theme parks). Apparently my brother is “right.” Louv points to the increasing recreational appetites of American children, “Like a sugared drink on a hot day, such entertainment [video games, adrenalineactivities] leaves kids thirsting for more — for faster, bigger, more violent stimuli.” Why walk anyway, when you can visit the woods riding an off-road vehicle? I can’t help but wonder if our increasing fascination with technology is also in part responsible for the explosion in activities like mountain biking and off-road vehicle use (granted that mountain biking is quiet and human powered, but it is still a thrill-sport for many riders). While outdoor recreationists of the twentieth century went to the woods for quiet contemplation, renewal, and solitude, it’s quite possible that future recreationists will mostly go for thrills, challenges and excitement. Natural places are rapidly becoming a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves. If that’s the case, then our public lands could become much different than they are now — places that allow or even promote domination and destruction of nature through technology. Just last month, the state of Wyoming considered a bill that would redefine off-road vehicles as machines that are up to 60 inches wide and weigh up to 1400 pounds. (Their current definition is 50 inches wide and 900 pounds, up from 40 inches wide in

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

the 80s and 90s.) As the technology advances, our sense of what is normal changes, and a behemoth vehicle no longer seems outrageous. Nor does it seem outrageous to argue that off-road vehicles are a great way to interact with nature. But if that’s the case, why is it that almost all off-road vehicle advertisements focus on the thrill, speed and power of the vehicles, not on experiencing nature itself? That sugared drink is getting sweeter and sweeter all the time. The off-road vehicle question isn’t just about the technology — it’s about our expectations of what constitutes recreation. Louv cites a story about a family that visited the Grand Canyon, but their children weren’t particularly impressed by the views because they had already seen the pictures. Their parents “salvaged” the trip by visiting a nearby reservoir and renting jet skis for the kids. This change in our interaction with nature is exacerbated by policies like recreation fees that promote the recreational “enhancement” of natural areas, turning our public lands into theme parks for RVs and off-road vehicles at the expense of wild nature. It’s no longer good enough to go camping in a national park or national forest, people want full service campgrounds and parking lots where they can hook up their recreational vehicle and plug in the satellite television and wireless internet. People are willing to pay for those services and amenities, so public land managers are increasingly emphasizing such developments, in addition to the fact that the Congress has now instituted mandatory recreational fee programs for many public land activities. (See related article on page 6.) Interacting with nature on its own terms is becoming harder and harder to do. As our basic opportunities for experiencing nature are changed by public land mangers and federal lawmakers, how will that affect the future of public lands, conservation, and outdoor recreation? Louv offers the following insight, when comparing the impacts of building a treehouse or fort, versus driving an ATV, “The difference is one of degree: one way of experiencing joy in nature excites the senses, the other way drowns the senses in noise and fumes, and leaves tracks that will last thousands of years.” Perhaps even more to the point,

he quotes a high school student from California, who enjoys four-wheeling with her father, “My dad has a four-wheel-drive truck and we go out in the desert, not out in nature or anything.” In her perspective the desert isn’t nature, so it just isn’t a problem to ride an ATV there. In addition to the fact that Americans want to be entertained, it also appears that we are losing the capacity to distinguish between real and synthetic nature. Louv argues that true nature could become irrelevant as technological experiences become the driving force for many Americans. This is significant not only from a developmental perspective, as Louv argues, but also regarding the long-term protection of wild places. If the next generation of Americans does not interact directly with nature, then they may not be interested in protecting nature. Louv writes that “If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.” While technology is certainly changing our experience of and interaction with the natural world, many people still long for quiet, calm and contemplative experiences in it. Our system of designated wilderness areas will continue to provide venues for such experiences. But that doesn’t mean everything outside of wilderness should be developed or motorized; those non-wilderness lands provide critical opportunities for “natural” experiences. If we share those experiences with the next generation, then it’s possible that we can build support for protecting wild nature from the technological advances and gadgetry that is overtaking nearly every other aspect of American life. Perhaps my nephew and nieces are finally old enough to come visit me in Montana for a wilderness camping trip. We can pick huckleberries, swim in backcountry lakes, hang our food to protect it from grizzly bears, and document the entire trip with digital photos that we’ll send to their parents over the internet when we get back to civilization.

Citations

Kahn, Peter H. Jr., 1999. The Human Relationship with Nature. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Kraut, R., V. Lundmark, M. Patterson, S. Kiesler, T. Mukopadhyay, W. Scherlis. 1998. Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being. American Psychologist 53, no. 9 (9-1998), 1017-1031. Louv, Richard. 2005. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Algonquin Books. Chapel Hill, NC.

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The Citizen/Organizational Spotlight shares the stories of some of the awesome activists and organizations we work with, both as a tribute to them and as a way of highlighting successful strategies and lessons learned. Please e-mail your nomination for the Citizen Spotlight to [email protected].

Spotlight on Emily Ferry,

Coordinator for Alaska Transportation Priorities Project By Cathy Adams

F

rom the Alaska Coalition office in Philadelphia, PA. Emily Ferry spent her time telling people what was at stake for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) should the United States decide to drill there. As an organizer for the coalition, she and about 1,000 other conservation, sporting, labor and religious groups were working together to protect Alaska’s wild public lands. But after countless hours of staring at pictures of the places she was trying to save, she thought her work would be better suited if she was actually in Alaska: “I wanted to live there and be there, not just look at photos from my office in Philadelphia.” So in 2003 she packed up her belongings and moved to Juneau, Alaska to live near, enjoy and protect the wilderness firsthand. Emily grew up in Ellington, CT and later attended the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH where she majored in Environmental Conservation & Advocacy. “I wanted a well rounded field so I combined science, communications and policy into one.”

After earning her degree, Emily was volunteering with an environmental student group when she came up with the idea to ride her bike across the country to advocate for protecting ANWR and to demonstrate how simple, every day choices can impact wilderness. Starting in Seattle, WA, Emily and her sister Betsy started their cross-country trip in June 2001. Emily’s sister accompanied her until they reached Iowa, and then Emily continued alone, stopping to give talks about her “Ride for the Refuge” to elementary students, college students, and community groups. Five thousand miles and three months later, Emily ended her trek in Washington, DC. With her compass pointing towards Alaska, Emily found a job in 2003 with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) in Juneau, working on transportation issues. Emily couldn’t have known her impeccable timing; that same year former Alaska senator Frank Murkowski became Governor. He had been one of Alaska’s senators for 22 years and his new agenda involves building a vast network of roads across the state. However, Emily’s biggest challenge began when Alaska republican senator Ted Stevens and republican representative Don Young earmarked more than $450 million for the infamous “bridges to nowhere” mega-projects (see cover story). Fighting projects at the state level is one thing, but when hundreds of millions of federal dollars come pouring in, the challenge is only harder. She decided to travel around southern Alaska and ask people in the community what they thought about the Governor’s agenda. She learned that many were opposed to new roads, especially those proposed to slice through the Tongass National Forest. She also learned that the ferry system was most important to people; roads were second. “When you live in an area that has a network of 1,000 islands, ferries are a necessity regardless of roads.” However, Emily knew a campaign that ‘just said no’ to roads wouldn’t gain momentum, so she organized around the ferry system and where the state’s financial priorities should be — fixing the roads they already have.

Emily Ferry in the Alaska tundra. Photo courtesy of the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project.

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Emily and SEACC knew that southeast Alaska was not the only place roads were being proposed: they needed someone to coordinate statewide transportation issues. They met with concerned folks, raised money, and with the help of a foundation started the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project (ATTP). “I was already working on some of these issues [with SEACC], so it was a natural fit for me to go.”

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money to help victims of the storm, some Alaskans suggested giving back their pork to help the southern cities. Floods of letters to the editor appeared across the country in favor of the idea and put a spotlight on the priorities of congress, namely its willingness to spend millions of dollars on bridges and roads to nowhere instead of helping victims of Katrina. After countless letters and pressure from her and her allies, Emily’s hard work paid off: the $450 million earmark for the bridges to nowhere was removed from the transportation bill. Alaska still got the money, but ATPP and its hard-working allies were pleased to see that they garnered so much attention, had a lot of support, and now had more time to fight the bridge and roads issues locally. “It will be an interesting spring and summer to see which projects the legislature will fund.”

ATPP’s motto, “Fix it First,” focuses on [local projects rather than mega-projects] and highlights what transportation priorities should be.

Last Lake along Sheenjek, Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

ATPP and others believe the Murkowski administration is putting mega-projects like bridges and roads to resources above all other needs in the state, when local projects like potholes and congestion should be number one. ATPP’s motto, “Fix it First,” focuses on this and highlights what transportation priorities should be. “The [proposed] roads would force people off of ferries and into cars, which means more driving, which changes lifestyle modes. On a ferry you slow down, meet people and talk. In a car you’re alone and in your own world, white knuckling the steering wheel through congested traffic,” she said. Being the sole employee of ATPP, Emily began talking to legislators and showing how the mega-projects would affect people. She demonstrated that the Murkowski administration was putting their “pork projects” above all other needs. She continued to work with SEACC, with republicans and democrats in congress, and groups from the Heritage Foundation to the National Taxpayers’ Union to the Sierra Club. Her strong team of volunteers wrote newspaper articles and letters to the editor, put up posters and analyzed Department of Transportation information. Other allied organizations sent information out to their members. She made sure ATPP had a presence in Washington, DC. And then something unthinkable happened that helped show the American people where priorities lie in Washington: Hurricane Katrina. When congress started looking for

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Emily credits ATPP’s success to talking with the legislature on the issues. Emily got people to talk about priorities and demonstrate that mega-projects don’t serve the public well, especially when current road systems are in such poor condition. “One of the key components is looking for people you wouldn’t normally talk to when building a coalition.” Creating non-traditional allies is a continuing success for the organization and others like it. Emily also suggests to “try to think of a positive solution to an issue, to be able to point to other ideas instead of just saying no.” For example, ATPP suggested giving Alaska’s pork to Katrina victims. Emily’s greatest advice to those working against great odds is to never give up. “When I first started in DC, people asked ‘Why are you here? Yes, [the pork] is outrageous, but it’s Don Young, you can’t take him on, he’s too powerful in congress!’” But Emily pressed the issue and spoke with those who shared her concerns. Then when the politics were right…it worked. Emily plans on staying in Alaska where she continues to ski, climb, kayak and live with her fiancée, who is an attorney for Earthjustice and shares her interests. She still hopes to see a stronger, more reliable ferry system and fewer accidents on the roads. She hopes people will be inspired to use public transportation more and hopes to see more walking communities in urban areas. When asked what keeps her going she says “I draw my inspiration from the people I work with, who feel passionately about where they live…the ferry system…and others who put in time as volunteers because they really care.” — Cathy Adams is the Wildlands CPR Program and Membership Associate.

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2005 Annual Report

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t’s been almost exactly eleven years since Wildlands CPR was formed to address road and off-road vehicle impacts on wildlands. During that time, transportation and recreation issues and problems in wildland ecosystems have continued to grow, and Wildlands CPR has grown along with them. We’ve had numerous small and large victories over the years, and 2005 was no exception. On the off-road vehicle front, we continued our focused national campaign on the Forest Service’s rulemaking process. We engaged in the renewed roadless debate, as a new process put authority in the hands of governors nationwide. Out in the field, our volunteers, students and staff got their hands and boots dirty collecting data and conducting new research on the role of road removal in watershed restoration.

Restoration Program

2005 was a year of intense activity for Wildlands CPR’s restoration program. Marnie worked on collaborative projects in Hells Canyon National Recreation Area (OR), in Lolo Creek (MT), and in the Yaak Valley (MT). In addition, Adam worked with students and professors from the University of Montana to develop original research that will begin answering critical questions about the benefits (and possible impacts) of road removal. For example, Wildlands CPR expanded our relationship with the Nez Perce Tribe, the Clearwater National Forest and the University of Montana by spearheading a citizen science project to collect data on how road removal is affecting watershed restoration on the Clearwater NF. After developing a protocol, University of Montana graduate student Katherine Court led volunteer monitoring trips nearly every weekend to collect aquatic and hydrologic data. After receiving continued funding for this project from the National Forest Foundation, we hired graduate student Anna Holden to continue Katherine’s work. Relying on more than 300 volunteer hours, we obtained data that will provide baseline information to the Nez Perce Tribe as they begin a ten-year study on the effectiveness of their restoration treatments.

On the national policy front, Wildlands CPR expanded our relationship with community-based forestry practitioners. Marnie worked closely with Rural Voices for Conservation (RVC) on numerous policy projects and she represented Wildlands CPR in the National Restoration Collaborative, promoting the intersection between the work of traditional conservation organizations and community-based forestry advocates. Marnie’s work included trips to Washington, DC to educate decision-makers about collaborative restoration, and it included numerous strategy meetings with groups like the National Network of Forest Practitioners and RVC.

Transportation Policy Program

Wildlands CPR’s 2003-2005 Strategic Plan lists the following goal for our transportation policy program: Motorized vehicular travel is limited to routes that have been designated for use via an appropriate environmental analysis process (for at least 50% of national forests). As remarkable as it may seem, we’ve nearly met that goal for 100% of the national forests with the November release of the Forest Service’s new national rule for off-road vehicle management. This rule, once implemented, will limit almost all off-road vehicle use to designated routes only. Nonetheless, we still have serious issues with the new rule, as articulated in The Road RIPorter over the past two issues. While the rule was being promulgated, Wildlands CPR staff worked with our grassroots partners to move the debate beyond the question of designated routes. Jason Kiely developed a “landscape approach” to off-road vehicle management that might well be more protective of the land. Jason and our new Transportation Policy Coordinator Tim Peterson are working with our grassroots partners to find places to model this new landscape approach.

Brooks Range Mountains in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Wildlands CPR also expanded our off-road vehicle program in 2005. We worked closely with the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition to implement our campaign on the Forest Service rule. At the beginning of the year, Jason

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was loaning part of his time to the Coalition for its Forest Service Campaign. In September we entered a yearlong agreement putting Jason “on loan” full-time to the Coalition as their Forest Campaign Coordinator, while still remaining, technically, a Wildlands CPR employee. That process enabled us to hire Tim Peterson as our newest program staff person, to address rapid response needs as activists throughout the country deal with the implementation of this new rule.

Clearinghouse

In addition to providing lots of information to folks via our website, Wildlands CPR staff directly responded to more than 150 information requests during the year, covering everything from how to develop a monitoring program, to scientific research on the effects of roads and off-road vehicles, to agency requests for information on developing road removal programs. We worked with activists in at least 20 different states and five countries outside the U.S. Wildlands CPR continues to act as a clearinghouse for road and off-road vehicle information for conservationists, decision-makers, the media and land managers throughout the country, providing the most up-to-date information

about roads, off-road vehicles and restoration. During the summer of 2005, Noah Jackson updated our bibliographic database on the ecological effects of roads and off-road vehicles to include more than 12,000 citations.

Thanks

Wildlands CPR was supported by more than a dozen foundations in 2005. Many thanks to the 444S, Brainerd, Flintridge, Harder, Lazar, Maki, Mountaineers, National Forest, New Land, Page, Weeden, and Wilburforce Foundations, and the Pope and Young Club for their generous support of our work. We also increased our private contributions to almost 20% of our income and increased our contract income. All of this is part of our goal to more broadly diversify our funding for the long-term. A huge thank you to all of the individuals and foundations who supported our work in 2005. Another big thank you to all of the people who volunteered their time to work on Wildlands CPR projects this year. We generated more than $10,000 in inkind donations, both in general volunteer time and technical support. We also want to thank Patagonia, Inc., for their patience and assistance in providing graphic design services for Wildlands CPR for a new general brochure – they did a fantastic job!

2005 Financial Report Expenses: $348,828.26 Income: $428,470.80

Volunteers (In-Kind) (2.5%)

Contract Income (13%)

Transportation Policy (24%)

Restoration (41%)

Other (.5%) Membership & Contributions (17%)

Natural Trails & Waters Coalition (8%) Grant Income (67%)

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Organizational Development (16%)

Administration & Fundraising (12%)

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Getting There

Editor’s note: This is an excerpted version of “Getting There.” To read the complete essay (and 27 others, with authors including Barry Lopez, Janisse Ray, and Peter Matthiessen, and a Foreword by Annie Proulx), pick up Wildlands CPR’s anthology on roads, A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places,” to be published by Johnson Books in June 2006.

By David Havlick

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n New England, where I now live, the old timers are known for being kind of cagey. When “leaf-peepers” arrive each autumn – tourists come north to check out the fall foliage – they invariably get lost on winding country roads. When these city slickers ask a local for directions they can expect a response along the lines of, “Ya cain’t get theah from heah.” It’s not a particularly helpful set of directions, but it’s all part of New England’s charm. You’ve got to work a little to find the beauty up here. As it turns out, charming or not, the New Englanders’ response isn’t very accurate. Whether you happen to be in the eastern U.S. or Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, southwestern deserts, Great Plains, deep South or Midwest, the actual answer almost surely is that you can get there from here. We now live in an America that is so vastly roaded and so thoroughly motorized that there is almost no place beyond easy reach of the recreational driver. At last count, using the digital GIS mapping systems that have charted our planet, the farthest point from a road in the lower forty-eight states is twenty miles – near the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park. Beyond a few bug-infested corners of Florida and Maine, you won’t find yourself more than five miles from a road anywhere east or south of Minnesota. That’s not even a long walk. Roads, for that matter, are only the opening wedge of the broader point of motorized access. In the past thirty years we have also developed a powerful fleet of all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles that carry us far beyond the road’s end into places that once seemed – and actually were – remote. You can get there from here, and chances are good you won’t even need to get off your cushioned, thermostatically-controlled seat to arrive, whether there’s a road that takes you there or not. There are more than 700,000 miles of road already built into America’s national forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and other federal lands, and each year Americans buy more than 700,000 new all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to roam far beyond those roads. You can do the math, but the land just is not large enough to absorb all that without a trace.

The asymmetry of experience surely accounts for some of the conflict and complexity of the motorized access question. People of decent character can have vastly different experiences on the exact same trail at the exact same time simply by virtue of their relationship to a certain piece of machinery – namely, whether they are straddling it or standing apart from it. What is it, after all, that makes a motorized outing into the woods different from a non-motorized one? How does relying upon a machine to take us somewhere alter our relationships to the places we reach or people we meet along the way? What does it mean to gain access to a place? We’re getting there. We’ve nearly arrived. We’ve almost made it. Sometimes I imagine Sir Edmund Hillary gasping such things to Tenzing Norgay as they staggered those final steps toward the summit of Everest. I hear an earnestness to his words, exhilaration wrapped in fatigue and days on end of trial, perhaps a sense of gratitude and relief that they were about to arrive. It makes me think that access is not just about getting to a place or knowing that a place is available. Access in its deeper sense must include the drawn out acts of arriving.

So what are we to do about all this motorized access? Go back to the age of steamships! Model-Ts! Get yourself a good horse! What greater access could a human want? No. What I want to do, actually, is to try to think like an off-roader. It’s not so crazy. The demographics of recreational off-roaders make them sound an awful lot like me: about 40 years old, male, college-educated, and professing an appreciation for the outdoors. In many respects we’re not that different, but here’s the rub: I say motorized recreation should be strictly regulated, limited to occur only on roads, and that hundreds of thousands of miles of the roads currently crisscrossing public lands (and many private lands) should be removed. Suddenly I seem a lot less like my ATV-wielding doppelgänger. That’s fine. I’m not trying to become him; I just want to think like him, work to understand his views and figure out why I disagree with them.

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Off-road vehicles drawing lines in the sand. Photo by Marcel Huijser.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Hikers take a break in Shenendoah National Park. Photo courtesy of Forest Service.

We want to reach places because we think it will be meaningful not just to be there, but because there is something worthwhile in the journey. How long, after all their efforts, did Hillary and Tenzing linger at the summit of Everest, their “destination”? Hillary himself later claimed that he sought to climb Everest because it was there, but how different would his accomplishment have been had he motored to the top in a snowmobile or been set gently on the summit ridge by a helicopter? Getting there often isn’t the whole of the experience, or even the most valuable portion of it. What, then, are some of the experiences commonly sought by motorized recreationists? Surveys consistently show a handful of responses: spending time outdoors with family or friends; assisting other activities such as hunting or fishing or ranch and farm work; and what one study categorized as “achievement and stimulation,” or more simply, skills, thrills and speed. Few accounts report that motorized users consider their machines essential to actually arriving at a particular place. What ORVers frame as a matter of access, then, often means not so much the ability to get somewhere as it means getting somewhere in a certain way – with a particular degree of ease or speed. Shouldn’t we be able to distinguish between those journeys for which speed and ease of travel are our highest priorities and those for which we’re seeking something else? If we could make such distinctions more clearly it might almost seem odd to note that the pitched battle over motorized access in recent years has focused on how extensively ATVs and snowmobiles should be permitted to reach into the remaining backcountry areas of the U.S. After all, if one of the fundamental points of driving a vehicle is to make it easier or faster to arrive at your destination, then why would you even bother trying to go to a backcountry region that is, by definition, out of the way or hard to reach? Once you make it easy and quick to get there, doesn’t it become just another version of a Drive-Thru?

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Off-road vehicle enthusiasts tend to answer comments like this by noting their appreciation of the outdoors or highlighting the merits of scenic loop rides through the mountains. In this, off-roaders are not so different in their desires than millions of other motor tourists who visit national parks each year or cruise scenic routes such as Shenandoah’s Skyline Drive or the Blue Ridge Parkway. The key difference is that these latter routes have been carefully designed and intentionally maintained to attract and accommodate just this kind of use. These roads come with their own supply of impacts and costs, to be sure, but they have long been built explicitly into our society’s infrastructure of laws, appropriations, and public works. As a broader public, we have effectively agreed that we value scenic roads in these places and are willing to support them. The case of off-road vehicles accessing public lands is rather different. ATVs and snowmobiles emerged abruptly in the past three decades. These machines carried with them a host of impacts and costs that laws and land managers have never adequately accounted for or successfully brought under control. Even where trails have eventually been opened up to legal motorized use, this access was commonly forced upon managers first by illegal or unplanned motorized activity. Outside the handful of off-road vehicle “play areas” or trail systems that have been designed, funded, and built from the outset with this type of activity in mind, what we find in the growing armada of ATV and snowmobile users is a widespread application of renegade ethics that disregards many social, legal, and economic boundaries. The renegade creed of off-road motorists often rides beneath a familiar American banner of individual freedoms and the liberal pursuits of happiness. But we are, when last I checked, a nation dedicated to laws more than hedonism. The fact that driving a snowmobile at 50 miles per hour across an alpine meadow could bring me great thrills doesn’t justify its acceptability any more than if my preferred source of adrenaline were throwing bricks through storefront windows. We live in a nation that cherishes its freedoms, but always within limits. It is just that trait – the disavowal of living within limits – that I find most profoundly troubling about motorized access and its current proliferation. We not only make ourselves vulnerable in the world when we engage it without humility, we also place an undue burden upon our environmental and social supports. I’d like to think there’s a better way to get from where we are to wherever it is we’re going. I would like to know what it means to try to get somewhere, not just easily or fast, but for the more drawn out act of arriving. Access for too long has meant that we expect to go anywhere to do anything no matter the cost. Fast and easy, in access as in food, often finds us quickly fulfilled but with a lingering case of dis-ease. Surely access can mean something else. Perhaps access can teach us not just about our own limitless desires, but also about the places that we’re trying to reach. We don’t need to get everywhere from here. Maybe that’s what the old New Englanders are trying to tell us. Maybe we’ve been taking them too literally all this time. Maybe we just need to figure out how to find satisfaction and inspiration and beauty in ways that don’t ride roughshod over our neighbors or have us motoring frantically past the flame-orange leaves of autumn maples. — David Havlick is a Wildlands CPR Board member and author of No Place Distant: Roads and Motorized Recreation on America’s Public Lands, and co-founder of Wild Rockies Field Institute. He currently teaches in the Environmental Studies program at Brandeis University.

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Restoration Program Update On-the-Ground Restoration

Restoration coordinator Marnie Criley is spending this winter putting the pieces in place for some exciting future road removal and restoration projects. In the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, the Hells Canyon CMP Collaborative is planning to conduct a watershed assessment and roads analysis this summer in the Upper Imnaha River watershed — an area with high road densities impacting stream and fisheries health. From this project, the collaborative hopes to get funding to conduct thorough transportation planning and road decommissioning. Our road removal and outreach program in the Swan Valley of Montana is kicking into gear this spring with meetings of local interested parties organized by our grant partner, Northwest Connections. This summer we’ll get local students and citizens out in the field to do some road assessments and pre-restoration monitoring.

Trainings

Wildlands CPR contractor Stephanie Naftal’s persistence is finally paying off. On March 15, Rebecca Lloyd from the Nez Perce Tribe (and new Wildlands CPR Board member) along with Anne Connor from the Clearwater National Forest will present a short road removal workshop to Forest Service Road Management personnel in Region 6 (Oregon and Washington). In early April, Rebecca and Marnie will present at a similar meeting for Regions 3 and 4 in Reno, Nevada.

Rolph wrote a Science Chronicle article for distribution to all TNC scientists. The article outlines road removal and the current state of research, and asks TNC scientists to identify opportunities within the Conservancy for road removal research. We hope that the paper starts a dialogue with TNC scientists and will lead to more road removal research on Conservancy lands.

Information Requests

Finally, Adam continues to provide activists, scientists, and managers scientific information on roads, road removal, and off-road vehicles (ORVs). Recent information requests included road and ORV resources for the Dixie and Fishlake National Forests, road improvement research for the Northfork Landowners Association, ORV resources for a student at Tahoe Community College, roads and human disturbance for Bankhead National Forest, contacts for Taxpayers for Common Sense, an ORV paper for a student at University of Sheffield (UK), research on using goats to control knapweed for the Nez Perce Tribe, ORV resources for a farmer in WA, database information for the Denver Zoo, and ORV scientific resources for a researcher at UC Davis.

Staff Scientist Adam Switalski is helping to organize a day-long workshop at the Forest Service’s Regional Training Academy. The workshop focuses on using Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) in ecosystem assessment and travel planning. This modeling tool has been successfully used to identify roads that could be decommissioned on the Tahoe National Forest, and is now being applied to off-road vehicle route designation.

Citizen Science in the Clearwater National Forest

Adam also continues to supervise our citizen science project on the Clearwater National Forest. University of Montana graduate student Anna Holden has been going full steam ahead organizing students and citizens to conduct monitoring this summer. She recently taught a class at Orofino High School where she discussed public land management and presented the case for citizen science. She will continue to work with the class and lead them into the field this summer. Anna has also developed a brochure on citizen science in the Clearwater to help recruit community members. For more information on citizen science on the Clearwater National Forest or to get involved, contact Anna at: [email protected].

The Nature Conservancy Science Chronicles

Adam met with Sanjayan Muthulingam, a lead scientist from the Nature Conservancy (TNC), to provide him with Wildlands CPR’s road removal resources and explore opportunities for road removal research through TNC. As a result, Adam and TNC researcher Dave

Button Bush flower from in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Transportation Program Update Forest Service Off-Road Vehicle Rule

With new Wildlands CPR staffer Tim Peterson behind the wheel, the Transportation Program is gearing up for a busy year focused on travel planning and implementation of the new Forest Service off-road vehicle rule. Tim is updating and expanding our activist toolbox with new tools ranging from a guide on submitting conservation and quiet-use alternatives, to a detailed list of places where off road vehicles don’t belong. Wildlands CPR and the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition recently attended a strategy session in Washington, D.C. to address off-road vehicles and travel planning on BLM lands. The gathering was attended by conservationists from around the country, and the marathon meeting helped us focus our goals and strategies. While in D.C., Jason and Tim met with a senior Forest Service staffer to discuss concerns with the new off-road vehicle rule. Most troubling is that the rule leaves out requirements to monitor and report illegal vehicle use off designated routes and outside designated areas. We initially thought this to be an oversight, but we were left with the impression that the omission of this basic requirement was intentional. We’re also continuing to follow and participate in the latest incarnation of the roadless rule, and to address the increasing number of proposals to privatize public lands and public access.

National Park Service Draft Management Policies

The Transportation Program has been busy responding to policy issues of late, the 2006 National Park Service (NPS) Draft Management Policies chief among them. The politically driven re-write would welcome dirt bikes, ATVs, personal watercraft, swamp buggies and other thrill-craft into a National Park near you. An attempt to wrongly re-interpret the Park Service’s Organic Act, the new policies would elevate “enjoyment” to the same level as the preservation of National Park Service resources. Wildlands CPR joined an international groundswell of public and NPS professional opposition to these ruinous ideas. Stay tuned. In addition to the management policies, we’re also continuing to move forward with our national lawsuit regarding off-road vehicle management throughout the national parks. This case in particular garnered a lot of attention in North Carolina, where Cape Hatteras National Seashore is undergoing a controversial negotiated rule-making process to determine off-road vehicle management.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

One Intern’s Winter at Wildlands CPR By Josh Hurd My internship at Wildlands CPR has kept me busy with many projects and ideas. My original goal was to compile a database on the status of National Forest Management Plan revisions, but after a week on the job, we found out that the Wilderness Society had already done a similar project. So, I began working with the Wilderness Society to update their database to include information on travel and general management planning. I have also been reaching out to our “natural allies,” including hunters, fishermen, and ranchers, and putting together outreach material to better disseminate information on off-road vehicles, roads, road removal, and watershed restoration. I have had a great time these past few months. It’s hard to believe that my internship is rapidly coming to an end. I know, however, that when I go back to school, I will have new motivations for my studies and a first-hand view of what environmental advocacy is all about.

NTWC Update The Forest Service is expected to propose changes to the Forest Service Manual and Handbook soon in order to implement the new travel planning and off-road vehicle management regulations released in November. The Natural Trails and Waters Coalition (the Coalition) has already met with agency staff and will submit recommendations for how these revisions can best implement the regulations to protect public wildlife, clean water, natural quiet, and traditional recreation. Even though the agency has yet to release the directives, the Forest Service is in the midst of a road tour to train regional staff in how to designate off-road vehicle routes and areas. The agency will soon release two additional sets of information that should enable conservationists and natural allies to better engage in travel planning. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth will announce a schedule for each forest to complete the designations in the recommended four-year timeframe. Simultaneously, the agency will release statistics documenting the number of miles of foot, hoof, and bicycle trails and off-road vehicle routes, as well as the number of acres open to cross-country motorized travel. The Coalition will make substantial contributions to build grassroots capacity in 2006. With the support of a matching grant from the National Forest Foundation, the Coalition is partnering with the University of Virginia’s Institute for Environmental Negotiation to provide workshops on “authentic collaboration” on travel planning. These workshops will be hosted by conservation allies who will invite a mix of conservationists, off-roaders, diverse interests, and agency staff. The first two workshops will be co-hosted by the Center for Biological Diversity and held this spring in Flagstaff, AZ and Albuquerque, NM.

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Bibliography Notes summarizes and highlights some of the scientific literature in our 10,000 citation bibliography on the physical and ecological effects of roads and off-road vehicles. We offer bibliographic searches to help activists access important biological research relevant to roads. We keep copies of most articles cited in Bibliography Notes in our office library.

Off-Road Vehicle Emissions and Their Effects on Human Health By Jason Brininstool

Introduction

I

n this paper I review off-road vehicle emissions and their deleterious effects on human health. With 36 million registered all-terrain vehicles and 12 million registered snowmobiles in the U.S. alone, these machines are a significant source of pollutants. They run on inefficient two and four-stroke engines that emit several dangerous gasses and chemicals including carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) (US DOT 2001). These emissions have all been shown to affect human health. Despite this fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has yet to establish emission standards for off-road vehicles.

How Emissions Threaten Health

Carbon monoxide binds to the hemoglobin molecule in blood and inhibits the transportation of oxygen in the body. High levels of carbon monoxide exposure have been shown to lead to visual impairment, reduced work capacity and mental dexterity, poor learning ability, nausea, headaches, dizziness, and even death (USEPA 1991). Carbon monoxide is especially dangerous to the elderly, people with cardiovascular disease or other circulation disorders, anemic individuals, young infants, and pregnant women (USEPA 1991). Hydrocarbons are volatile organic compounds that include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes. While these compounds can cause dizziness, headaches, and loss of consciousness, the EPA has also identified benzene as a carcinogen and those exposed to benzene have an increased incidence of leukemia. Nitrogen oxides can cause shortness of breath and chest pains and increase a person’s susceptibility to respiratory infections and asthma. Long-term exposure can cause chronic lung disease.

Snowmobiles hazing buffalo. Photo by the Buffalo Field Campaign.

Particulate matter, also found in off-road vehicle emissions, is detrimental in fine and coarse forms as it accumulates in the respiratory system, and can lead to decreased lung function, respiratory disease and even death (Janssen and Schettler 2003). Of the pollutants emitted by ORVs, particulates are of special concern because their small size makes them easily respirable and thus deliverable directly into the lungs, causing any number of the aforementioned maladies (NPS 2000).

Snowmobiles

Photo by the Swan View Coalition.

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While ATV sales outnumber those of other off-road vehicles, two-stroke snowmobiles are much more polluting and contribute more air pollution per vehicle than any other type of vehicle. Extensive research on snowmobile emissions has been carried out in Yellowstone National Park, and by the Southwest Research Institute, based in Texas. Research conducted in 2000 showed that average carbon monoxide levels sampled over an eight hour period inside the West Yellowstone park entrance exceeded the 9.0 parts per million (ppm) standard of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (Cain and Coefield 2001). Putting it in sharper per-

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

spective, at 25 miles per hour, on-road vehicles (cars, trucks, etc.) emit around 45 gallons/mile of carbon monoxide, while snowmobiles emit 348 gallons/mile. This is an 87 percent difference in emission rates between the two vehicles and the engines that power them (Cain and Coefield 2001). Thus, the 720 snowmobiles that are currently allowed in Yellowstone National Park each day emit more carbon monoxide than 5000 on-road vehicles.

ATVs

The EPA found that ATVs emit more than 381,000 tons of hydrocarbons, 1,860,000 tons of carbon monoxide, and 11,000 tons of nitrogen oxide each year across the country (USEPA 2001). While emissions from on-road vehicles decreased 56 percent over the last 20 years as a result of emission control programs, there was a 42 percent increase in ATV emissions during the same time period (Grambsch 2002). The list of greenhouse gases continues to show the impact of these vehicles. For example, on-road vehicle emissions of nitrogen oxide were virtually unchanged during the same twenty-year span, while emissions from off-road vehicles increased 56 percent (Grambsch 2002). Anthropogenic emissions of nitrogen oxide account for a large majority of all nitrogen inputs in the environment and off-road emissions are a large contributor (Grambsch 2002). The EPA went even further to research individual ATVs: they showed that a two-stroke ATV or motorcycle could emit as much pollution as more than thirty automobiles operating in the same time frame. Even more shocking is that the ATV took a distant second from two-stroke snowmobiles, which can emit as much as nearly one hundred automobiles in the same time frame (USEPA 1996).

Mitigation Measures

The EPA must establish emission standards for ATVs and snowmobiles and require industry to meet them. Industry standards have already started to show improvement without formal emission standards in place, but this trend must be hastened. Movement toward four-stroke technology should help, as it results in less unburned hydrocarbons, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide in comparison with two-stroke engines (MDEQ 2005b). Emissions for two-stroke engines are significantly higher for all compounds in comparison to a four-stroke engine, except for nitrogen oxide emissions, which are slightly higher on four-stroke engines (Sive et al. 2002). There are other mitigation measures that could be employed, such as using bio-based fuels and biosynthetic lubricants like ethanol-blended fuel. Ethanol fuel has been shown to produce moderate reductions in emissions with both two-stroke and four-stroke technology (MDEQ 2005a, MDEQ 2005c). Fuel injection should take the place of carburetion, simply for its more efficient fuel use, lower emissions, and increased engine power (MDEQ 2005b). Lastly, exhaust systems should be updated and modified with catalytic converters, which change pollutants and combustion byproducts during the exhaust process (MDEQ 2005b).

Conclusion

It is well-established that off-road vehicles contribute a large amount of pollution to the air. According to the EPA, if left uncontrolled, off-road vehicles will contribute 33 percent of hydrocarbon emissions, nine percent of carbon monoxide, nine percent of nitrogen oxide, and two percent of particulate emissions nationally by 2020 (USEPA 1996). The Environmental Protection Agency has yet to establish emission standards for off-road vehicles and the engines on which they run. The off-road vehicle industry has been slow to adopt technological changes that could lessen the impact of its machines on air quality at the local and, even the global, level. And while the industry has been sluggish, government regulatory and enforcement agencies have been all-too complacent in allowing continued degradation. — Jason Brininstool is a graduate student in the University of Montana’s Environmental Studies program.

— References follow on next page —

Off-road recreationists kicking up some dust. Photo by Howard Wilshire.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

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References Cain, C.J. and J. Coefield. 2001. Preliminary Air Dispersion Modeling Analysis of Yellowstone National Park West Entrance: Wintertime Carbon Monoxide Emissions. Monitoring and Data Management Bureau, Montana Department of Environmental Quality, Helena, MT. Grambsch, A. 2002. Climate change and air quality. In: The Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Transportation. Federal Research Partnership Workshop, Department of Transportation Center for Climate Change and Environmental Forecasting. Jamssem, S., T. Schettler. 2003. Health implications of snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park. 27p. http://www.womenandenvironment.org/Health_Imp_ snow.pdf Lela, C.C. and J.J. White. 2002. Laboratory Testing of Snowmobile Emissions: Final Report. Southwest Research Institute, SwRI 08.05486, Texas. Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). 2005a. Solutions-Oxygenated Fuels. http://www.deq.mt.gov/ cleansnowmobile/solutions/fuels/oxygenated.htm Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). 2005b. Solutions-Two-Stroke Engine Modifications. http://deq. mt.gov/CleanSnowmobile/solutions/engine/modifications. asp

Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). 2005c. Emissions from Snowmobile Engines Using Biobased Fuels and Lubricants. http://deq.mt.gov/Energy/ bioenergy/biofuels.asp National Park Service (NPS). 2000. Air Quality Concerns Related to Snowmobile Usage in National Parks. Washington, D.C. Sive, B., D. Shively, and B. Pape. 2002. Spatial Variation and Characteristics of Volatile Organic Compounds Associated with Snowmobile Emissions in Yellowstone National Park: A Preliminary Research Report Submitted to the National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior. Central Michigan University, MI, 2002. United States Department of Transportation (USDOT). 2001. About Transportation and Climate Change. Center for Climate Change and Environmental Forecasting http:// climate.volpe.dot.gov/national.html United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). 1991. Air Quality Criteria for Carbon Monoxide. Washington, D.C. EPA-600/8-90-045A. United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). 1996. Non-Road Engines and Air Pollution. Office of Mobile Resources, EPA 420-F-94-003, Washington, D.C. United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). 2001. Environmental Fact Sheet, Frequently Asked Questions: Emission Standards for All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs). Office of Transportation and Air Quality, EPA 420-F-01-027, Ann Arbor, MI.

Joyriding in the Far North By Rob Cadmus, with assistance from David van den Berg, Emily Ferry, and Nikki Braem

will be costly and dangerous. Senator Seekin’s bill includes no funding for off-road vehicle management.

In 1974, the Dalton Highway was pushed through northern Alaska to link Fairbanks to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. This 450-mile “haul road” passes between the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Gates of the Arctic National Park, traversing some of the most amazing, remote, and delicate wildlands in America.

Local residents, hunters, scientists, truckers, tour operators, and conservationists alike are fighting this shortsighted bill and showed up in force at public hearings around the state last year. But yet the bill is still making a track through the Alaska State Legislature, and it is yet to be seen if the voice of the people will be heard.

The road wasn’t built without controversy. Many warned that the tundra wouldn’t survive motorized use and that traffic and hunting would spoil subsistence lifestyles. The state made an unwritten promise to close the road to public traffic and ban rifle hunting and off-road vehicles nearby. In 1994, however, the Dalton was opened to the public. Today, the area is a destination for bow hunters, hikers, dog mushers, and others in pursuit of highly aesthetic, and easily accessed, wild land.

— Contact www.northern.org for more information or to find out how to help.

Now, State Senator Ralph Seekins (R-Fairbanks) is pushing to remove the ban on off-road vehicles with Senate Bill 85. The consequences would be immense. A single track through the tundra can take lifetimes to recover. The modern off-road vehicle hunter will decimate wildlife, create user conflicts, and destroy subsistence lifestyles. Field scientists stand to lose their work through the single pass of a wayward vehicle. The one trooper who patrols the entire Dalton Highway will be unable to enforce the law. Rescuing lost or injured joyriders

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The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs parallel to the Dalton Highway as it traverses through northern Alaska. Photo courtesy of Alaska Transportation Priorities Project.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

Off-Road Restrictions Protect Canyon A California canyon containing a rare desert stream has been closed to off-road vehicle use for four years, and in its recovery is transforming into prime habitat for wildlife, including some threatened species. A former hotspot of extreme “rock crawling” activity, Surprise Canyon, located on the western edge of Death Valley National Park, was protected as the result of a lawsuit in 2000 filed by the Center for Biological Diversity. The area was suffering soil erosion, streambed alteration, and other environmental degradation as the result of unregulated off-road vehicle use. The undisturbed stream now supports forests of cottonwoods, willows, cattails and other plants in a rare riparian habitat. The desert riparian habitat of the canyon makes is ecologically important, and the area functions as an oasis for numerous plant and animal species, including the rare Inyo California Towhee, a threatened species that flew into the canyon last year. The state of California’s Off-Highway Vehicle Commission recently passed a new policy designed to protect critically endangered desert riparian ecosystems stating that off-road vehicle recreation will not be “expanded, encouraged, or maintained” in these imperiled areas. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Land Management has responded with a letter to the state opposing and resisting the conservation measures. California Senators Boxer and Feinstein have responded as well, telling the BLM and National Park Service that they support the protection of these critical areas from off-road vehicle degradation. The National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management jointly manage Surprise Canyon, and are currently conducting a study to determine whether motorized access will be allowed in the future.

Chesler Park in Canyonlands National Park. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

Groups To Sue Over Grizzly, Bull Trout Protections The Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan have filed a notice of intent to sue the Flathead National Forest (Montana) and Secretary of the Interior for failing to protect grizzly bears and bull trout under the Endangered Species Act. The Flathead failed to meet deadlines for implementing road-density standards, as required by their 1995 plan. They claimed the delay will not impact bull trout, and the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed. The groups dispute this and also claim that the agency failed to implement guidelines established by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, a state/federal panel charged with developing a plan to help Montana’s struggling grizzly population. Also, the Flathead failed to limit snowmobile access after April 1. The groups also have active lawsuits against the Flathead Natioanl Forest in U.S. District Court, challenging site-specific exemptions from road-density standards.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

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W

ith one full-time and six part-time interns working on Wildlands CPR projects right now, our office is hopping. We’ve been amazingly impressed with the work that Josh Hurd has done since January. While we initially brought Josh on to help with restoration and forest planning, his project quickly morphed into outreach. Josh developed a comment database and recently finished powerpoint and slide show presentations for our website and other venues. We’ll be sad to see him head back to Dartmouth College to finish out his junior year, but we’re happy he spent part of his winter with us! Eliza Donoghue, a Wilderness and Civilization student at the University of Montana, started a fundraising internship with us this semester. She’s already helped develop and submit two grant proposals and she’ll be working on more fundraising research while she’s with us through May. Traci Jo Schweigert is a marketing student at Montana State University in Billings. She’s just begun working on a marketing plan for the release of our upcoming book, “A Road Runs Through It.” The book, to be published in June, features excellent essays about roads, off-road vehicles, restoration and wildness and Traci Jo, with the help of her advisor Sarah Keller, will ensure that we put the book in the hands of as many people as possible. Speaking of “A Road Runs Through It,” we want to extend a huge thank you to Claire Emery for her incredible woodblock prints that will be included in the book. Claire donated the bulk of her work on the prints, and they are stunning. After the book is published we’ll be working with Claire to sell her prints, so keep your eyes peeled for an opportunity to buy some great art in support of Wildlands CPR.

Rebecca Lloyd is a Project Leader/Hydrologist for the Watershed Restoration Program of the Nez Perce Tribe. Her first job with the tribe was as a road obliteration inspector, back in the mid-1990s, and she’s been working with them ever since, with ever-increasing responsibility. She oversees the road removal program on the Powell District of the Clearwater National Forest — a program that is co-managed between the Tribe and the Forest Service. Finally, we want to thank everyone who contributed to our annual gifts campaign, through which we raised $26,000. In a related fundraising effort, we received two large contributions for another $35,000. If you made a pledge for to our annual gifts campaign and haven’t sent in your donation yet, it’s not too late! A huge thank you, too, to the LaSalle Adams Fund and the 444S Foundation for generous contributions for our restoration and off-road vehicle work.

Sign up for citizen monitoring on the Clearwater National Forest! Wildlands CPR has partnered with the Clearwater National Forest and the Nez Perce Tribe to monitor the effects of forest restoration in the Clearwater National Forest. With the help of citizen scientists, we will be monitoring how fish, wildlife, and habitat recover following road decommissioning. Monitoring will take place during several trips from early spring until early autumn — if you are interested in volunteering, please contact Anna at: 406-543-9551 or email her at: [email protected].

We also have three interns from the Environmental Studies graduate program at the University of Montana. Breeann Johnson will be researching funding for road removal and restoration. Kylie Paul will be researching the state level off-road vehicle regulations, while our third intern, Kevin Newman, will be researching the legal applications of the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, as it is used as a tool in forest planning. In addition to all of these great interns, Wildlands CPR has two new board members to welcome to the organization. Pat Parenteau is a Professor of Law and Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School. Professor Parenteau has an extensive background in environmental and natural resources law, including positions with National Wildlife Federation, EPA and VT Department of Environmental Conservation. He is also a nationally recognized expert on the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws.

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Butterflyweed in the sun. Photo courtesy of freeimages.co.uk.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2006

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Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of Forest Service.

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“We learned to be chary of roads; they mean people and commotion and lack of peace.” Herbert Jacobs

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