Road Riporter 13.1 Spring Equinox 2008

Spring Equinox 2008. Volume 13 No. 1

New Partnerships Bring Funding and Restoration to National Forest Watersheds By Bethanie Walder

Inside… A Look Down the Trail, by Bethanie Walder. Page 2 New Partnerships Bring Funding and Restoration, by Bethanie Walder. Pages 3-5 Wildlands CPR’s 2007 Annual Report. Pages 6-7 DePaving the Way: by Bethanie Walder. Pages 8-9 Biblio Notes: Why Didn’t the Bear Cross the Road?, by Shannon Donahue. Pages 10-12 New Resources. Page 13 Odes to Roads: by Ellen Meloy. Pages 14-15 Policy Primer: The ABCs of Travel Planning II, by Steve Ryder. Pages 16-17 Organizational Spotlight: Friends of the Inyo, by Cathrine Walters Adams. Pages 18-19 Get with the Program: Restoration and Transportation Program Updates. Pages 20-21 Around the Office, Membership Info. Pages 22-23

Check out our website at: www.wildlandscpr.org

Above, in a scene that is emblematic of the urgent need to either storm proof or remove ailing forest roads in the Northwest, runoff from storms in Washington State in November 2006 buried this entire section of road in debris. Photo courtesy of Gifford Pinchot Task Force. At right, when Nokio Creek flooded in 1999, it took the road with it. Flathead National Forest, Montana. Photo courtesy of Swan View Coalition.

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

Economic Stimulus, Restoration and Green Jobs

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t’s not hard to find positive talk of green jobs these days — even the Presidential candidates have gotten into the game. It is hard, however, to find mention of restoration in those discussions, at least at the national level. I can’t help but think how nice it would be if we could bring the concept of restoration into the green jobs discussion, and see it as a viable path to economic stimulus. Most discussions about green jobs touch on a few themes. First, green-collar jobs tend to be concentrated in the energy and climate sectors. Second, the focus is often on providing jobs for out-of-work blue-collar workers — shifting the shrinking blue-collar field into a growing green-collar field. And third is a recognition that building a green economy will require federal workforce development programs to create a skilled labor pool, in addition to federal tax credits or direct inputs to stimulate private sector investments.

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

That’s where economic stimulus comes in. Unfortunately, much of the recent discussion on stimulating the national economy has focused on consumer spending rather than job creation. The economic stimulus bill that passed Congress in February did not include much for actual job creation, even though some members of Congress argued adamantly for such provisions. Instead, the Congress and President passed a stimulus package consisting largely of tax rebates to stimulate spending. We’ve entered an era where the U.S. economy is profoundly dependent on consumer spending, but this requires consumer income, and the only way to create lasting consumer income at the broad scale is to create more jobs. In reality, a one-time windfall of ~$600 per person is not likely to stimulate the economy for long, especially when much of the money is likely to be used to buy cheap goods produced in another country, or to pay off existing debt.

Legal Liaison/Agency Training Coordinator Sarah Peters

Our lawmakers had an opportunity to create new jobs instead of giving people rebates. If you look at the jobs and economic benefits that were created, for example, through the Civilian Conservation Corps, it’s incredible. (Never mind the fact that the CCC constructed a lot of roads in national forests and other wild lands.) A far-reaching, comprehensive approach to economic stimulus makes more sense than a quick fix that may actually cost more than it benefits.

Program Associates Cathrine Walters Adams

There will likely be future stimulus packages. The two remaining democratic candidates have both endorsed pending legislation that would provide funding for creating green jobs and helping build green economies. We hope that any future stimulus or green job creation packages include watershed restoration as a viable component of those programs. Restoration jobs are high-skill, high-wage, local jobs. If watershed restoration work is fully funded by public and private interests, including potentially through economic stimulus, we will see the emergence of a viable, dynamic and exciting new sector of the economy.

Montana State ORV Coordinator Adam Rissien Utah State ORV Coordinator Laurel Hagen

Membership/Web Marketing Associate Josh Hurd Journal Editor Dan Funsch Interns & Volunteers Mike Fiebig, Andrea Manes, Greg Peters Board of Directors Amy Atwood, Greg Fishbein, Jim Furnish, William Geer, Chris Kassar, Rebecca Lloyd, Cassandra Mosely, Cara Nelson, Brett Paben

© 2008 Wildlands CPR

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The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

New Partnerships Bring Funding and Restoration to National Forest Watersheds By Bethanie Walder

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hen it comes to salmon recovery, removing dams grabs the headlines, and when it comes to forest health, wildfire and thinning projects are in the spotlight. But there is an intersection between these issues that’s equally important, if not yet considered front-page news: reclaiming forest roads. That’s because decaying, unmanaged, under-maintained roads are a top threat to endangered salmon and clean drinking water for thousands of communities, as well as elk, grizzly bears and other wildlife that depend on large blocks of intact habitat to survive. These decaying roads are finally getting some of the attention they deserve. In December, Congress approved and the President signed the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2008. Tucked inside was a new allocation of $39.4 million for watershed restoration through road decommissioning and remediation on national forest lands — the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (LRRI). Securing this funding was one of Wildlands CPR’s priority campaigns last year — and it is a huge, welcome victory! So how did this funding come about, and how can we secure more in the future? Like many successful conservation initiatives, passing the LRRI was made possible by identifying common goals, building a diverse network, coordinating resources, and finding a champion to lead the charge. Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA) provided Congressional leadership, backed by the brain trust and footwork of the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative (WWRI), founded in late 2006. The WWRI includes Washington state officials, Indian tribes of western Washington, Wildlands CPR and about a dozen other conservation groups in Washington, plus other partners throughout the west, all committed to salmon recovery and watershed restoration. Wildlands CPR joined the WWRI in mid-2007 and hired Sue Gunn to represent us and serve as WWRI Campaign Coordinator. We view the Legacy Initiative as the start of a new effort to fund road remediation work in Washington and beyond.

Washington’s November 2006 floods caused severe damage to the 81 road, a paved, major access to Mt. St. Helens. Photo courtesy of Gifford Pinchot Task Force.

The Washington national forest road problem Back in 2000, the Forest Service and WA Department of Ecology signed an agreement that national forest roads would be subject to state forest practice standards, as well as those of the federal Clean Water Act. They agreed on a timeline: the agency would bring their roads up to standard by 2016. Restoring Puget Sound was one the state’s critical concerns. Many Forest Service roads bisect the headwaters of streams that feed the Sound, and water quality in these streams was below standards. The state recognized that restoring the Sound would require a real investment to fix these road problems. By 2006, however, it had become clear that little progress had been achieved in meeting this goal. The Forest Service is woefully behind schedule on meeting their agreement with the state, in large part due to a lack of funding. Their failure to make significant progress is one of the primary reasons the WWRI was

Problems with forest roads are not confined to Washington State. Here, on the Carson National Forest in New Mexico, oil and gas access roads dominate the landscape. Photo courtesy of Forest Guardians.

— story continued on next page —

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— continued from previous page — created, and one of the reasons Congressman Dicks made such a valiant effort to secure federal funding for road management. (We should point out that technically the funding is not new money. The Congress moved funds from an unexpended Forest Service account to be used for the LRRI, creating a one-time spending increase for road management.) The Forest Service estimates it will cost $300 million in Washington alone just to meet the standards. Three action items are priorities: reclaiming unneeded roads; restoring fish passage and clean water flow through culvert improvements; and performing critical maintenance on needed roads. According to a letter to the Forest Service from Washington’s governor, the road problem in WA can be summed up as follows: • “More than 1,700 culverts blocking or hindering fish passage; • more than 3,600 miles of roads no longer needed and not decommissioned to protect water quality; and • out of more than 22,000 miles of roads, less than 20% being addressed (and inadequately, at that) by USFS” (letter from Governor Gregoire to Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey; 2-15-08).

Montana: a blown out creek in the Flathead National Forest. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Wild Swan.

The national picture The Forest Service has accumulated a $10 billion national road maintenance backlog. This backlog could be significantly reduced if the agency invested in road reclamation to lower the overall mileage of roads they are required to maintain over the long-term. Nationally, the Forest Service estimates that they need to remove an estimated 186,000 miles of roads to bring the road system down to a manageable, maintainable system that still meets the needs of the agency and forest users. A 2003 Wildlands CPR study found that it would cost approximately $93 million per year for about 20 years to implement a national road removal plan. That $93 million would provide between 2,000-3,000 high-wage, high-skill jobs in rural communities, making such an appropriation good for the land and for the communities that depend on the land.

To make matters worse, the Pacific Northwest has been experiencing increasingly frequent and intense winter storms that cause landslides and road failures. The storms in late 2006 caused more than $30 million in damage to Forest Service roads in the region. Another set of storms hit in December 2007, causing millions more in damage. That damage can have long-lasting consequences, destroying fisheries habitat and clean drinking water, and damaging private and public property. Road triggered landslides have even resulted in lost lives.

After becoming involved in the WWRI, Wildlands CPR worked with our partner organizations in California, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado to help generate broad western support for the LRRI. After its passage we pulled together a quick summary of road removal needs throughout the country, again with help from partner organizations in the states above and in the southeast (http://www.wildlandscpr.org/ournews/road-remediation-reclamation-needs). We also met directly with Forest Service staff in DC to provide input on how the LRRI funding should be distributed nationally, and we provided numerous Wildlands CPR resources to help build effective road decommissioning programs. We also requested strong monitoring and guidance that the funding be used largely for decommissioning work, not just for critical maintenance.

The state of Washington recognizes that they can prevent much of the damage by decommissioning roads, fixing culverts and remediating those roads that are needed so they can withstand future storms. “Storm proofing” makes both ecological and fiscal sense. It is far cheaper to fix a road before it fails than to clean up the mess afterwards. In the same letter quoted above, Governor Gregoire told Undersecretary Rey, “Unless we storm-proof our forest watersheds, the price tag to fix these sub-standard roads will skyrocket.” Unfortunately, government doesn’t typically invest in prevention, but preventing damage is precisely why Congressman Dicks pushed for the LRRI funding. Furthermore, he pushed for it nationally because the problem is not limited to Washington State.

Next steps

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The LRRI is the first direct appropriation towards the agency’s longterm transportation goal to minimize the road system. It will help with the massive backlog of forest road maintenance, but one-time funding will not solve this problem. The WWRI and our partners throughout the country are committed to working for long-term, sustained funding for road removal and remediation in Washington and beyond. While this $39.4 million is a wonderful start, it is only a start and the agency still has a long way to go. Investing in road decommissioning can save taxpayers billions of dollars over the long-term, while also providing high-wage, skilled jobs in rural communities. As such, it creates an economic stimulus that benefits people and the land. We hope the agency uses this funding wisely and is able to show real progress on the ground because of this infusion. Their capacity to do that will be the biggest indicator of future funding success.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

$$$ Slicing Up the Pie $$$ The Forest Service has finalized LRRI allocations to the different regions. The funding will be used to decommission, repair and maintain Forest Service roads throughout the country in order to protect community water sources and threatened, endangered and sensitive species. The allocations are: Region 1 – $ 4.7 million Region 2 – $ 3.4 million Region 3 – $ 3.0 million Region 4 – $ 3.8 million Region 5 – $ 6.7 million Region 6 – $ 8.3 million Region 8 – $ 4.8 million Region 9 – $ 4.0 million Region 10 – $ .67 million

North Carolina: this sediment fence is supposed to catch sediment from an adjacent road and prevent it from entering the creek. Photo courtesy Southern Appalachian Forest Council.

Implementing the LRRI In January 2008 Wildlands CPR released a report: “Road Remediation & Reclamation Needs throughout the National Forest System” (see New Resources, page 13). Based on that survey, we recommend the following approaches to implementing the Legacy Roads Remediation Initiative:

• Prioritize watershed restoration in areas where limited investment can result in significant returns. Identify priority basins and sub-basins with the best opportunities to attain water quality objectives with limited investment and the treatment of relatively few road miles (e.g. treat healthier watersheds first). • Prioritize the majority of funding for actual road decommissioning efforts on the ground rather than fixing roads that are likely to fail again in future storm/flood events. • Upgrade culverts and fix barriers to fish passage on roads that provide critical access, and therefore cannot be decommissioned. • Provide dedicated Forest Service staff time to complete NEPA analyses for future road reclamation and reclamation projects. • Utilize Categorical Exclusions (CE) when conducting NEPA analyses for road reclamation and remediation projects. While some projects will require Environmental Analyses or Environmental Impact Statements, many projects can be implemented efficiently and effectively using CE’s.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

• Utilize some portion of the funding for monitoring project effectiveness over the short and long-term. Monitoring should include the collection of pre-project baseline data and post-project short- and long-term effectiveness. Forests should also monitor the economic benefits and impacts generated through watershed restoration activities. • At the project level, use some portion of this funding to engage and inform the public about watershed restoration and remediation needs, projects and opportunities (including through the use of pre- and post-project field trips). The most successful watershed restoration projects around the country are those that have strong community support from the outset. • Assess road reclamation and remediation needs and incorporate decisions articulating these needs into the travel planning processes that are currently underway on many forests. 5

Wildlands CPR 2007 Annual Report B

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

Restoration Program

A few years ago, we determined that a lack of funding was a primary reason that road removal and watershed restoration are not common wildland management activities. We shifted our work to focus on increasing both private and public funding for all watershed restoration, including road removal. In 2007 we saw our first major success with such work. In Montana, we continued our work with the Restore Montana network, leading that nascent coalition in its efforts to build a vibrant, sustainable restoration sector of the economy. Restore Montana is a unique coalition that includes state universities, labor, hunters/anglers, industry and conservation representatives. In 2007, our state legislature passed a budget with $34 million in new funding for watershed restoration, with a significant portion specified for particular projects, and almost $6 million for new projects. The legislature also set up a new office of watershed restoration at the Department of Natural Resources, and in December 2007, the DNR hired a state restoration coordinator to run that office. Restore Montana worked hard to get these initiatives passed through the MT legislature. We will continue to work closely with the state to ensure that the funding is well spent and that it results in real restoration work on the ground — including road reclamation! Our Restoration Program Coordinator, Marnie Criley, took a leadership role in our Restore Montana work and also in the Montana Forest Restoration Working Group, a separate broad-based collaborative group (including agency staff, conservationists, hunters, anglers, practitioners, and timber representatives) that crafted, negotiated, and eventually adopted 13 principles for watershed restoration in Montana. This diverse group then proceeded from theory to reality, by creating two sub-groups to test the principles on the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests. Early in 2007 we began working with the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative (WWRI) to advance their efforts to secure funding for road removal in Washington State and beyond. In mid-summer, we hired Sue Gunn to be the Campaign Coordinator for the WWRI effort. The WWRI is a network of conservation organizations and state agencies working to restore watershed health by reclaiming damaging and unneeded forest roads, and ensuring that those that remain are fully maintained to meet water quality standards. The WWRI went to work with Congressman Norm Dicks’ office to promote the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. In December 2007, the President signed the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which included $39.4 million for the Forest Service for this initiative. The WWRI, in one short year, had its first major victory!

Revegetating a removed road. Photo by Adam Switalski.

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Transportation

Our transportation program expanded tremendously in 2007, with the addition of three new staff and on-theground work on transportation plans in MT and UT. We also continued our national and regional policy work. In Montana, Adam Rissien chose the Bitterroot and Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forests as priorities, reinvigorating quiet recreation groups, submitting complex comments on plans, and influencing travel planning on these and other forests. Adam also partnered with the Forest Service to coordinate a day-long travel planning session for conservationists, recreationists and staff from eight different national forests. In Utah, Laurel Hagen partnered with grassroots groups to hold information workshops, prioritize field needs, and increase capacity for these groups to challenge off-road vehicle use. One result of her work: The town of Escalante turned away state funding to build a new ORV trailhead in town! In 2007, we tackled an under-addressed problem with off-road vehicle management: Enforcement. In May, we published a new report, “Six Strategies for Success: Effective Enforcement of Off-Road Vehicle Use on Public Lands,” which we distributed to hundreds of agency staff and activist organizations. The Forest Service’s national off-road vehicle team leader sent a message to travel planning staff encouraging them to use our report in their travel planning process. We conducted an extensive media effort to highlight enforcement problems nationally and received great coverage in the southeast and intermountain areas and we are now pushing this issue on Capitol Hill. In 2007, the Foundation for Deep Ecology granted us 5000 copies of a new coffee table book about off-road vehicle problems, Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation. Packed with alarming photographs and insightful essays, Thrillcraft is a powerful medium for conveying the graphic abuse that off-road vehicles inflict on public lands, waters, and wildlife habitat. Within two months, we had sent

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

Funding

more than 4500 copies to activists around the country for them to redistribute to decision-makers, agency staff, media and interested citizens. We also developed (in partnership with the Center for Biological Diversity) a messaging and distribution package for these activists.

Wildlands CPR was supported by the following foundations in 2007: 444S, Firedoll Foundation, Foundation for Deep Ecology (via Tides), Giles W. and Elise G. Mead Foundation, Google Adwords, Harder, LaSalle Adams, Lazar, Maki, National Forest Foundation, Norcross Wildlife Foundation, Page Foundation, Patagonia/Dillon, Tides, Weeden, and Y2Y Partner Grants.

On the legal front, our new Legal and Agency Liaison, Sarah Peters, took the lead in settling a lawsuit with the Forest Service over a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we made in 2005. Almost two years after our initial request, we finally began receiving data on road and off-road vehicle management on the 85 forests in the western U.S. We’re now knee-deep in data analysis, which is a 2008 priority for us. We also continued our legal battles to protect Big Cypress National Preserve by joining several other groups to file another lawsuit to challenge off-road vehicle use there.

Conclusion

Science

2007 was a banner year for Wildlands CPR. We successfully campaigned for new federal and state funding for watershed restoration and engaged new, diverse partners throughout the west. Our off-road vehicle program experienced profound growth, with new staff laying the foundation for influencing travel planning in UT and MT in the most positive way. We also worked with activists across the country to control off-road vehicle abuse.

We hosted a fantastic organized session at the Society for Ecological Restoration/Ecological Society for America meeting in California, which helped us identify new priorities for road removal research. On-the-ground, our Clearwater National Forest (ID) monitoring program documented lots of wildlife using decommissioned roads, including large carnivores such as bears, a cougar, and a wolf. In fact, we expanded our monitoring program to incorporate projects in the Flathead National Forest. Staff Scientist Adam Switalski worked closely with the Wild Utah Project to develop a set of off-road vehicle Best Management Practices (BMPs). We finished the BMPs at the close of 2007 and published them in early 2008. These guidelines will be a major contribution to off-road vehicle management in the future.

None of this would have been possible without the support of individuals and foundations. Our successes are your successes, and we hope to make even more progress in 2008.

2007 Financial Report Income Other Income $11,461

Contract Income $12,300

Contributions & Membership $65,216

2007 Income: 2007 Expenses:

$ 516,164.48 $ 511,275.79

In-Kind Donations & Services

$ 120,521.09

Expenses Grants $427,188

Admin $16,036

Fundraising $39,006

Org Develop $54,989

Transportation $219,628 Restoration $181,617

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

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The Forest Restoration Act of 2008 By Bethanie Walder

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his seemingly innocuous title is attached to House Bill 5263 and its companion, Senate Bill 2593, both introduced in February, 2008. While the bills (hereafter called “the Restoration Act” or “the Act”) have not attracted much media attention, those of us who work on forest and restoration issues have taken notice. The Restoration Act may be a step in the right direction, as it enables the Forest Service and BLM to prioritize collaborative, science-based restoration projects at a landscape level (50,000 acre or greater). However, it does not present a comprehensive approach to forest restoration, instead focusing almost exclusively on thinning to “fireproof” our forests. Perhaps the greatest flaw of the Restoration Act is its narrow consideration of the threats facing national forests, that is, the challenges that might necessitate “restoration.” This bill reduces those challenges to what has become an annual, sensationalist cry to defend against “catastrophic wildfire.” One would think that, given the increasing frequency and severity of storms and extreme runoff events, and the massive road-triggered landslides they cause, Congress would take note. These events and the damage they cause now run up price tags in the tens of millions per year for federal, state and local governments, while truly fixing the problems will cost billions. Reducing these impacts and costs would require us to look at the forest road system, and consider ways to “storm-proof” the system, while removing those roads that are chronic sources of trouble. The bill falls far short of such a comprehensive effort. That said, the Restoration Act does acknowledge road problems and allows for road removal as part of restoration projects. But road removal is not a primary purpose of the bill, which will likely leave it relegated to second-class status within the agencies. The purpose of the Restoration Act is to: “encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes through a process that-(1) encourages ecological, economic, and social sustainability; (2) leverages local resources with national and private resources; (3) facilitates the reduction of wildfire management costs, including through reestablishing natural fire regimes and reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire; and (4) demonstrates the degree to which-(A) various ecological restoration techniques-(i) achieve ecological health objectives; and (ii) affect wildfire activity and management costs; and (B) the use of forest restoration byproducts can offset treatment costs while benefitting rural economies and improving forest health” (section 2; HR 5263).

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Calling for forest restortation without addressing road impacts (such as this mass failure) is disengenuous. Photo by Adam Switalski.

Let’s take a look at how this bill is fashioned by reviewing each specific purpose. Purpose 1: Encourage ecological, economic and social sustainability The nomination criteria for projects that could be funded through the bill speak to ecological, economic and social sustainability. From an ecological perspective, the plans must incorporate best available science, and they can use fire as one of several tools for restoring ecosystems — activities are not limited to logging. In addition, projects must improve or maintain water quality, fisheries and wildlife habitat and reduce the presence and introduction of noxious weeds. Road decommissioning is mentioned as a tool that can be used, however, thinning projects are emphasized as a primary objective over all others. Ecologically, there are two other problems: the Act disallows the use of permanent roads (which means the Forest Service is likely to use only temporary roads), and it does not adequately protect old growth or roadless areas. Temporary roads tend to have no design standards, they are not mapped, and in many instances, they are never revegetated as required by law, leaving lasting impacts on the land. The Act calls for the creation of a scientific advisory committee, which could be beneficial, but the scope of the committee should be expanded to include other areas of ecological expertise.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

On the economic side, the criteria call for 10-year projects at a landscape analysis level (not less than 50,000 acres). The Act would provide 50% of the funding, while the other 50% would come from regional FS funds or private matching funds, creating opportunities to bring new money to the agency (this is a double edged sword, as described below). The Act also calls for capturing by-products of treatments and selling them to offset costs. On the down side, it does not include adequate sideboards for biomass projects to prevent against perverse incentives. Socially, the Act states that the plan should be developed in an open, non-exclusive manner that includes diverse stakeholders, and it focuses on creating jobs in rural communities. Purpose 2: Leverages local resources with national and private resources As stated above, the Restoration Act aims to stimulate financial inputs from communities. This is both commendable and problematic. It’s commendable because we cannot build a restoration economy without involving both the private and public sectors. The bill talks about incubating small businesses and investing in projects that create jobs in rural communities; these are critical investments that make sense as matches to public funding. It is problematic, however, to promote partnerships, because ultimately, national forest management should be funded by the federal government. While public-private partnerships can be beneficial, they can also change agency priorities and create opportunities for private interests to have undue influence. Additionally, they can create perverse incentives to manage for economic instead of ecological goals. There have been both good and bad partnerships. If restoration is to be a priority for the national forests, then it should be treated as a priority in the funding arena.

Purpose 4: Demonstrates the degree to which-(A) various ecological restoration techniques-(i) achieve ecological health objectives; and (ii) affect wildfire activity and management costs; and (B) the use of forest restoration byproducts can offset treatment costs while benefitting rural economies and improving forest health. As previously stated, this sets up a hierarchy with wildfire suppression at the top, which could reduce the agency’s capacity to engage in comprehensive watershed restoration. One simple way to fix this would be to require that projects demonstrate the degree to which various ecological techniques affect storm damage activity and clean-up costs, similar to part 4(A)(ii). A comprehensive watershed restoration program could provide high-wage, green-collar jobs to local communities in resource dependent areas. It could save millions, if not billions, in taxpayer dollars by preventing chronic and episodic erosion events from intense pacific storms. This is just as important as addressing growing wildfire costs and concerns.

Purpose 3: Facilitates the reduction of wildfire management costs, including through reestablishing natural fire regimes and reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire The Restoration Act states that an analysis of reducing wildfire costs is one criteria that will be considered when selecting projects. It is critical that the agency does not use this bill as one more justification to log, or otherwise reduce fire risk, in areas that are dependent on high-intensity, low-frequency fire. While the science committee should be screening to ensure valid ecological justifications for projects, it is not unreasonable to assume that projects with questionable ecological value will be approved over time. In addition, and as noted, the bill does not include criteria for reducing costs from storm damage. Federal, state and private interests are losing many millions of dollars from increasingly severe and frequent pacific storms and the road failures that they cause. While landslides don’t receive the same media attention as fires, their impact to water quality, fisheries, wildlife habitat and taxpayer dollars is equally significant. The agency can dramatically reduce such costs by investing aggressively in road removal and culvert upgrades. This bill should be changed to reflect this work as an equal priority.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

Many politicians have jumped on the bandwagon to “protect” our forests from wildfire. Photo by Karen Murphy, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Conclusion

It would not be very difficult to rectify the primary shortcomings in this bill, by giving equal attention and consideration to storm damage issues as they relate to roads. It is imperative that the federal government protect and restore not just the forest structure, but the entire forest ecosystem. While this bill offers a better, and arguably broader, approach to forest health issues than those we’ve seen over the past few years, it still fails to fully address comprehensive watershed restoration. With a small number of changes, the Restoration Act could become an important tool for redirecting Forest Service management towards true restoration. Without those changes, this Act will become one more in a long line of bills that increases logging on the national forests under the guise of forest restoration. We sincerely hope it doesn’t turn out that way.

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Bibliography Notes summarizes and highlights some of the scientific literature in our 15,000 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.

Why Didn’t the Bear Cross the Road?

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

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t has long been understood that roads have detrimental effects on bears and bear populations (both black and grizzly bears; see The Road Riporter Vol. 3 #3). As humans continue to develop bear habitat, construct more roads, and increase traffic volume on existing roads, we are reducing and fragmenting bear habitat. In addition, bear habitat that is protected from human development is increasingly used for recreation, reducing the amount of secure habitat for bears even where roads are limited. The primary factors associated with roads that affect bears are habitat loss and fragmentation, direct traffic-related and railroad mortality, habituation to humans and food-conditioning, and increased susceptibility to hunting and poaching due to better access for humans and loss of wariness in bears. Increased awareness of the negative effects of roads on bear habitat has compelled some agencies to close and decommission roads to improve bear habitat. In this article, I review recent research on the impacts of roads and other linear barriers on bears and propose ways to mitigate these impacts.

Grizzly in Yellowstone. Photo by Dan and Cindy Hartman.

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Habitat Loss and Fragmentation

The impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation have received increased research attention over the past decade. On Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, rapid human development is moving toward isolating the brown bear population from populations further inland. Traffic mortality, barrier effects from the Sterling Highway, increased rates of bears killed in defense of life or property, and a lack of genetic influx may soon threaten the population if human development is not checked (Suring and Del Frate 2005; Graves et al. 2006). On the Bow River watershed in Alberta, Chruzscz, et al (2003) found that the cumulative effects of human use, development, and railroads have limited grizzly bear access to important habitats and may negatively impact the bears’ populations. There are variations in bears’ use/avoidance of different roads depending on the type and amount of human use (Peralvo et al. 2005). For example, Reynolds-Hogland and Mitchell (2007) found that black bears in protected sanctuaries in the southern Appalachians reacted differently to paved and gravel roads depending on their previous experience with each type of road. In the Pisgah Bear Sanctuary in North Carolina, hunting and poaching in the area surrounding the sanctuary posed more of a mortality risk than did vehicle collision (Reynolds-Hogland and Mitchell 2007). They speculated that the bears associated gravel roads with hunters and poachers, while the paved roads posed less of a risk.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

Direct Mortality from Vehicle Collisions and Railroads

Collisions with vehicles has been a well documented source of mortality for bears (e.g., Gibeau and Herrero 1998; Forman and Alexander 1998; Kaczensky et al. 2003). In addition to highway mortality, railroads can pose an equal or larger threat to bears than do traditional roads (Waller and Servheen 2005; Huber et al. 1998; Kaczensky et al. 2003). In Montana, a railroad caused more direct mortality than the adjacent Highway 2, because bears attempted to cross the transportation corridor at night when highway traffic was lowest. However, in many cases, the railroad saw more traffic at night, and the bears would cross the highway successfully only to be hit by a train (Waller and Servheen 2005). Additionally, bears often use the railroad as a movement corridor (Kaczensky et al. 2003), and grain spills act as a further attractant (Waller and Servheen 2005).

Habituation and Conditioning

Loss of wary behavior in bears is a significant and complicated effect of roads. Additionally, high levels of human access present different problems depending on unique sets of conditions. When bears are exposed to humans over a period of time their response to humans changes depending on their cumulative experience (Herrero et al. 2005). If exposure has neutral consequences, they often become “human-habituated,” meaning that they become accustomed to human presence, and “they conserve energy by muting their reaction” (Herrero et al. 2005). When exposure to humans results in food rewards, bears become “food-conditioned,” meaning that they come to associate humans with an easy meal, whether it be from humans actively feeding bears, or if the bear learns to raid campsites and picnic sites or steal fish from anglers. Food-conditioning is probably the most problematic result of exposure to humans, as bears conditioned to human foods are more likely to become aggressive towards humans, and even occasionally treat humans as prey (Herrero 2002).

Poaching and Defense of Life and Property

Habituation to humans makes unprotected bears more susceptible to the dangers of interactions with humans, and even protected bears become more vulnerable to poaching or to legal harvest when they leave protected areas. A study of known grizzly bear mortality in and around Banff and Yoho National Parks showed that all human-caused mortalities in the study area between 1971 and 1998 occurred in areas along roads, trails, or around human settlements (Benn and Herrero 2002). Outside protected areas, Wielgus et al. (2002) recommended that open roads in grizzly bear habitat should be restricted to forestry use only. Defense of life and property (DLP) can also be a significant source of bear mortality. Suring and Del Frate (2002) found that the number of brown bears killed due to DLP on the Kenai Peninsula increased with road density, especially when roads occur near or increase access to favorable habitat such as salmon-bearing streams. They recommend that any new or upgraded recreational sites should be concentrated “as far as possible from salmon streams” (Suring and Del Frate 2002). However, this may be problematic, because salmon fishing is one of the area’s most popular recreational activities.

Possible Mitigation Strategies

While the effects of roads on bears are multiple and widespread, there are strategies to mitigate these effects. Some of the more viable options include establishing connectivity between areas of high quality bear habitat (Servheen et al. 2001; Primm and Wilson 2004), highway crossing

Bears have been using the removed roads of the Clearwater National Forest, like this one captured by one of Wildlands CPR’s remote cameras.

structures and fencing (Jaeger and Fahrig 2003), road closure and decommissioning (Switalski et al. 2007), control of human development (Gibeau et al. 2001), temporal closures (Graves et al. 2006), installation of wildlife sensors (Gordon et al. 2004), aversive conditioning (http://www. beardogs.org), and removal of bear attractants from roadsides and areas of human development (Weaver 2004). All of these strategies must examine the specific needs of each area, as successful mitigation strategies will differ with each situation (Clevenger and Waltho 2000; Clevenger et al. 2002).

Conclusion

“In the end, the most difficult aspect of making real gains in grizzly bear conservation may be mustering the social and political will to implement change” (Gibeau et al. 2001). Humans have had an enormous impact on bears all over the world, and as human population and development increases, bears continue to lose more habitat. If bears are to persist, humans are going to have to make some changes and learn to coexist with bears and other wildlife. Effective strategies for bear conservation exist, but we must implement and enforce them. Bear conservation will involve setting aside areas with restricted or controlled human use and access, controlling human development and road construction in bear habitat, and educating people to better understand bears, their behavior, and their habitat requirements. — Shannon Donahue is a University of Montana Environmental Studies graduate student and has previously worked to help mitigate bear-human conflicts.

— References on next page —

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— continued from previous page —

References Benn B. and S. Herrero. 2002. Grizzly bear mortality and human access in Banff and Yoho National Parks, 1971– 1998. Ursus. 13:213–221. Chruzscz, B., A.P. Clevenger, K.C. Gunson, M.L. Gibeau, B.Chruzscz. 2003. Relationships among grizzly bears, highways, and habitat in the Banff-Bow valley, Alberta, Canada. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 81(8):1378-91. Clevenger, A.P. and N. Waltho. 2000. Factors influencing the effectiveness of wildlife underpasses in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. Conservation Biology 14:47-56. Clevenger, A.P., J. Wierzchowski, B. Chruszcz, K. Gunson. 2002. GIS-generated, expert- based models for identifying wildlife habitat linkages and planning mitigation passages. Conservation Biology 16(2):503-514. Forman, R.T.T. and L.E. Alexander. 1998. Roads and their major ecological effects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 29:207-231+C2. Gibeau, M.L., S. Herrero. 1998. Roads, rails and grizzly bears in the Bow River Valley, Alberta. In: Evink, G., Ziegler, D., Garrett, P. Berry, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Wildlife Ecology and Transportation, Publication FL-ER-69-98. Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, USA, pp. 104–108. Gibeau M.L., S. Herrero, B.N. McLellan, J.G. Woods. 2001. Managing for grizzly bear security areas in Banff National Park and the central Canadian Rocky Mountains. Ursus. 12:121-129. Gordon, K.M., M.C. McKinstry, S.H. Anderson. 2004. Motorist response to a deer-sensing warning system. Wildlife Society Bulletin. 32(2):565-573. Graves, T.A, S. Farley, C. Servheen. 2006. Frequency and distribution of highway crossings by Kenai Peninsula brown bears. Wildlife Society Bulletin. 34(3):800-8. Herrero, S. 2002. Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance. Revised Edition. The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, USA. Herrero, S., T. Smith, T.D. DeBruyn, K. Gunther, C. Matt. 2005. From the field: Brown bear habituation to people – safety, risks, and benefits. Wildlife Society Bulletin. 33(1):362-373. Huber, D., J. Kusak, A. Frkovic. 1998. Traffic kills of brown bears in Gorski Kotar, Croatia. Ursus. 10:167-171. Interagency Conservation Strategy Team. 2007. Final Conservation Strategy for the Grizzly Bear in the Greater Yellowstone Area. http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/ species/mammals/grizzly/Final_Conservation_Strategy. pdf Jaeger, J.A.G. and L. Fahrig. 2003. Effect of road fencing on population persistence. Conservation Biology. 18(6):1651-1657. Kaczensky, P., F. Knauer, B. Krze, M. Jonozovic, M. Adamic, H. Gossow. 2003. The impact of high speed, high volume traffic axes on brown bears in Slovenia. Biological Conservation. 111:191-204. Peralvo, M.F., F. Cuesta, F. van Manen. Delineating priority habitat areas for the conservation of Andean bears in northern Ecuador. 2005. Ursus.16(2):222-233.

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Special Collector’s Edition Prints!

Reynolds-Hogland, M.J., M.S. Mitchell. 2007. Effects of roads on habitat quality for bears in the Southern Appalachians: A Long-Term Study. Journal of Mammalogy. 88(4):1050-61. Servheen, C., J.S. Waller, P. Sandstrom. 2001. Identification and management of linkage zones for grizzly bears between the large blocks of public land in the northern Rocky Mountains. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Suring L.H. and G. Del Frate. 2002. Spatial analysis of locations of brown bears killed in defense of life or property on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, USA. Ursus. 13:237-245. Switalski, T Adam, Len Broberg, and Anna Holden. 2007. Wildlife use on open and decommissioned roads on the Clearwater National Forest, ID. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation, edited by CL Irwin, P Garrett, and KP McDermott. Raleigh, NC: Center for Transportation and the Environment, North Carolina University. 627-632. Waller, J.S. and C. Servheen. 2005. Effects of transportation infrastructure on grizzly bears in northwestern Montana. Journal of Wildlife Management. 69(3):9851000. Weaver, H.W. 2004. Biometric analysis and aversive conditioning of black bears in southern West Virginia. Thesis,Wildlife and Fisheries Resource Management Program, Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Consumer Sciences at West Virginia University. Wielgus R.B., P. Vernier, T. Schivatcheva. 2002. Grizzly bear use of open, closed, and restricted forestry roads. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 32(9):1597-1606.

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Special Limited Collector’s Edition Now Available They’re here! The Limited Collector’s Edition of Wildlands CPR’s book, A Road Runs Through It, is now available. The Limited Edition is a special fundraiser for Wildlands CPR, consisting of only fifty copies of the signed, leather-bound book and a matching set of six original wood engravings from the book by Montana artist Claire Emery. The leather cover is a rich mokka-brown with gold leaf graphics and heron-blue lettering. Before binding, these books traveled coast to coast as they were signed by all 26 living contributors— from Peter Matthiessen in Long Island to Annie Proulx in Wyoming to Freeman House in California, where he picked them up at the general store in Petrolia. Claire Emery is a naturalist and artist, who designed the wood blocks based on themes in the text and then carved the images into a smooth maple block, using metal engraving tools in the tradition of Thomas Bewick. The set of six wood engravings are signed and numbered, and ready for framing in a leather-covered, mokka-brown clamshell box, with matching graphics and lettering. The complete set is $1,000, and only fifty sets are available. We also have a very limited number of books only, as above, for $500, and sets of prints only, as above, for $750. To purchase, call 406.543.9551 or email [email protected]

New Report Available on ORVs Best Management Practices For Off-road Vehicle Use On Forestlands A Guide for Designating and Managing Off-Road Vehicle Routes Designed as a resource for public land managers, law enforcement officials and citizens, this document outlines Best Management Practices (BMPs) to aid land managers in travel planning or any decision-making related to off-road vehicle management on forested lands. While many land management activities rely on established BMPs, until now no BMPs have been developed to manage off-road vehicles. These BMPs, based on the best available science, fill this gap, and cover the following topics: Laws and Regulations for off-road vehicles, Forest Soils, Vegetation, Wildlife, Special Ecosystems, Use Conflicts, and Research Needs. For a copy of the report, click on www.wildlandscpr.org/ORV-BMPs

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

Implementing the LRRI Road Remediation & Reclamation Needs Throughout the National Forest System This report, released in January 2008 by Wildlands CPR, provides a brief survey of road remediation and reclamation needs across the National Forest System. Prepared with assistance from organizations around the country, the report also includes recommendations for implementing the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (LRRI). See our cover story, pages 3-5, for more information and a copy of the recommendations. For a full copy of the report, please visit: http://www.wildlandscpr.org/road-remediation-reclamation-needs-throughout-nationalforest-system-january-2008 13

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

Photo by Laurel Hagan.

In 1995 Utah’s congressional delegation placed before Congress a bill that would have designated only 1.8 million acres of 22 million acres of roadless Utah administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The delegation’s concept of wild land was baffling at the least, if not outright defiant of the Wilderness Act. Their bill allowed roads and vehicles in much of the proposed “wilderness.” It created boundaries that made no sense to watershed, wildlife, or environmental assets and all the sense in the world to politics. Organized by writers Stephen Trimble and Terry Tempest

Photo by Laurel Hagan.

Williams, twenty-one writers sent Testimony, a multiessay letter to Congress, urging its members to protect Utah’s extraordinary wildlands. The bill was defeated. Five years later, similar efforts, through legislation and vandalism by illegal vehicle entry, leave Utah’s redrock country highly vulnerable. There is still room for testimony on its behalf. The following essay was included in Testimony, which Milkweed Editions published as a book in 1996. — Ellen Meloy

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The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

O

ne morning at my camp beside the Green River in Utah’s Desolation Canyon I awoke to a glorious surprise. From river’s edge to my open-air bed ran a swath of tracks and drip marks. The tracks curved around my sleeping bag in an easy lope then disappeared into the cottonwood trees. The pale sand was pebbled with the drips of an unshaken pelt. The deepest paw prints were still dark brown and wet. Near my bed the creature grazed my toes. Mere inches closer it would have leapt over my head, and I would have stared up at the belly of a cougar. The cougar brushed by me on one of hundreds of nights in Desolation Canyon, where I lived and worked with my river-ranger husband for eight years. Desolation is one of many wilderness study areas in Utah that could join a legacy of wild country like no other on the planet.

Cougar courtesy of DL Miller, Yellowstone National Park.

The Utah delegation’s wilderness bill falls miserably short of this opportunity. It fails to include millions of acres of extraordinary land, and in an unprecedented biological sterilization of public policy, it prohibits agencies from protecting their natural values. The remnants of proposed wilderness are worm-holed with exemptions to roads, dams, and utility lines. Contrary to myth, the current law “locks out” machines, not people. This bill, in places, would lift the ban on the infernal combustion engines, as if the amputation of our vehicles from our persons on a mere fraction of public lands would cause undue suffering, not welcome relief from the techno-shriek of daily life. There is little “wild” in this wildlands bill; it erodes the idea of wilderness upon which we agreed as a country in 1964. In this redrock desert, change is measured by sand drawn down the face and veins of the continent, grain by grain, a pace that defies America’s compulsion to reduce the particularity of a place. In Utah we still have islands of visible, palpable uniqueness. Here you can taste and feel color; the sheer immensity of distance becomes intimate. This land is remote, prickly, painfully beautiful. Its innate scarcities have preserved it despite a culture that mines, dams, and grids the rest of creation. Do we so lack in material well-being that we cannot leave the last 10 percent of Utah in its wild state? A hundred years ago desert lover John C. Van Dyke lamented the dismissal of aesthetics as a highest good, lifeblood as vital as food and love. He said of the prevailing ethos, “The main affair of life is to get the dollar, and if there is money in cutting the throat of Beauty, why, by all means, cut her throat.” Can we afford to live without beauty? We need wild country. We are mammals, not gods. We ask you to be visionary mammals. Others want political expedience. The latter would have you toss Utah’s finest asset to the profit geeks and still end up in debt. We’ve already done this in the West for over a century. You can listen to those with a frontier hangover so great, they still reject any notion of limits, or you can heed the enlightened consensus of ecological sanity and a hunger for wild places. The visionary says—awkwardly because it thwarts western history: We cannot measure this land with numbers or dollars. It looks so very peculiar, like red bones. But we need this strangely wild country, for here we can explore and rest and listen in an agreed peace.

Photo by Elizabeth Rieben, BLM.

Utah’s Green River flows through Desolation Canyon. Photo by Paul Martzen.

When I tell the story of the cougar, friends ask, Were you terrified? No, I was half asleep, sensing a liquid ghost at the edge of my slumber. Had I been fully awake I would have been filled not with fear but with ecstasy. In its graceful arc over me the cougar did not need my notice, only my care. — © 1996 Ellen Meloy. Reprinted with the author’s permission.

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The ABC’s of Travel Planning II, or The Charmed Existence of Snowmobiles By Steve Ryder, Winter Wildlands Alliance

Introduction

In “The ABC’s of Travel Planning” (see The Road RIPorter, 12-4, 2007), the authors discussed the Forest Service’s “Travel Management Rule,” which established a “closed unless open” policy for motorized users of forest lands. This positive policy change now appears much faded, however, as two glaring shortcomings have surfaced. First, the Rule allows Forest Service officials to focus only on Subpart B, requiring the publication of a “motorized vehicle use map” (or MVUM) for summer use, thereby missing the opportunity to create broad recreation and transportation plans. And second, the Rule opts out “over-snow vehicles” (OSVs) unless the forest manager decides to include them in the travel management process. This article discusses this preferential treatment given one type of motorized use, that of OSVs.

Why are snowmobiles excluded?

The Rule provides little insight into why the Forest Service decided to give snowmobiles a free pass. The rule-writers agree that snowmobiles are “off-road vehicles” under Executive Order 116441 and thus are subject to “administrative designation of the specific areas and trails on public lands on which the use of off-road vehicles may [or may not] be permitted.”2 This would appear to require the regulation of OSVs, but instead, the agency “believes that cross-country use of snowmobiles presents a different set of management issues and environmental impacts than cross-country use of other types of motorized vehicles.”3 As evidence, the agency offers that unlike ATVs, “over-snow vehicles traveling cross-country generally do not create a permanent trail or have a direct impact on soil and ground vegetation.”4 This assessment ignores minimizing user conflicts per the Executive Orders, and disregards the growing anecdotal evidence of snowmobile damage to alpine tundra, reforested areas (tree-top damage), and streambanks and riverbeds at water crossings. There are two important caveats to the decision exempting snowmobiles. First, the Rule allows a forest manager the authority to “allow, restrict, or prohibit snowmobile travel, as appropriate, on a case-by-case basis,” meaning that it is entirely up to the local official (Forest Supervisor, most likely) whether snowmobile use will be addressed in a forest’s travel planning process. And second, the new Rule introduces an entirely new definition of “over snow vehicle.” The rule-writers, “[i]n order to improve clarity and ensure equitable treatment of over snow vehicle use,” define over-snow vehicles to include not only snowmobiles but also snow-cats, snow groomers and treaded ATVs. While such clarity is warranted, the fact remains that these additional vehicles are now also excluded from the mandatory regulatory framework of the Rule.

Why travel managers should include winter users

While the Travel Management Rule simply “writes out” snowmobiles from its mandatory framework, Executive Order 11644 provides direction that would seem to compel forest managers to include winter travel in their forests’ travel planning, under certain circumstances. Section 3(a) of the executive order requires that regulations be based on protecting the resource, promoting the safety of all users, and minimizing conflicts among various users. Specifically, the regulations shall further require that the location of areas and trails minimize— • Damage to soil, watershed, vegetation, or other resources; • Harassment of wildlife or significant disruption of wildlife habitats; and • Conflicts between off-road vehicle use and other existing or proposed recreational uses of the same or neighboring public lands.

A new shipment of snowmobiles arrives. Photo by Jim Peaco, Yellowstone National Park.

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The occurrence of any of these problems during winter should compel forest managers to undertake winter travel planning. The difficulty lies in documenting damage, harassment or conflict. Evidence is largely anecdotal, giving forest managers what they may feel is a thin thread to order

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an unpopular action such as limiting where and how snowmobilers can go. Wildlife harassment by snowmobile users has been known to occur, but also difficult to document by the agency or other forest users. And since it’s often considered a “one time” occurrence, it provides little incentive for conducting OSV travel planning. The social conflict dimension is easiest to document and has been studied more by academicians, but can also be more subjective.5 The most telling characteristic of the conflict between motorized vs. quiet recreationists is that the impacts experienced fall disproportionately on one type of forest user. That is, the presence of a few skiers or snowshoers does not diminish the recreational experience of snowmobilers, while the noise, exhaust and speed of just one snowmobiler may significantly degrade the experience of many quiet recreationists. Winter Wildlands Alliance has encouraged its member and affiliated groups to provide documentation of user conflicts to forest managers in a systematic way, such as a standardized form with essential information. Given that local discretion is the rule, a forest manager must be convinced to conduct winter travel planning — and politics plays a large role. Snowmobile clubs have been very successful at influencing land managers and elected officials to keep areas open to motorized use. Also at play are the forest manager’s scarce resources. Agencies have been undergoing a “hollowing out” over the last two decades, with reduced personnel in the field, and more recently, reductions planned for regional offices. Thus, a manager must first perceive a significant need for winter travel planning, and devote scarce resources to that activity. If the need is not urgent, managers have no incentive to seek additional work and expend scarce resources by addressing winter use. Thus, the Rule itself seems biased against a local official undertaking winter travel planning.

Planning for “OSVs”

If the Forest Service manager decides not to include winter use during travel planning, OSVs are regulated under the existing regulations. That is, unless a road, trail or area is specifically closed to OSVs, the remainder of the non-wilderness forest is open to use. However, if the manager decides to embrace winter travel planning, the Rule requires a process that involves the public in designating roads, trails and areas where OSV use would be allowed, and generating a winter use map, which specifies the classes of vehicles and possibly the times of year when travel is allowed.6 Such a map would be the enforcement mechanism falling under the general prohibitions in 36 CFR 261 Subpart A to prohibit OSV use rather than the site specific prohibitions under Subpart B.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

Snowmobiles line up in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Jim Peaco.

Conclusion

One of the most glaring shortcomings of the 2005 Rule regarding OSV use is that it grants local forest managers complete discretion with regard to winter travel planning without any direction of when to trigger Section 212.81(c). Barring a complete reversal by the agency on this point, a simple “fix” to this omission should be considered. One approach is to amend the Rule to add threshold questions that managers would have to address prior to making any decision. For example, “is there conflict between winter recreationists that significantly harms one or both types of user’s experiences? And, “is there measurable evidence of harm to forest resources by OSVs that requires protective actions be taken?” Additionally there are enforcement problems. The 2005 Rule places a much greater burden on the Forest Service to monitor and enforce travel restrictions, year-round. Rather than monitor limited closures, the agency must patrol the entire forest if enforcement is to be meaningful. In many forests, motorized groups have made it clear that their members have no intention of obeying these new rules. This sets up a conflict between motorized users and the agency, with its field personnel continually shrinking and local law enforcement often sympathetic to motorized users. In the case of OSVs, the volunteerism that has led to documented abuses of public lands will likely need to be augmented, but ultimately the agency and local enforcement officials will be the ticket-writers. — In addition to holding a PhD in Political Science/Environmental Politics and Policy from Colorado State University and working with The Nature Conservancy in Helena, Montana, Steve has spent the last ten years doing land protection work in Montana and Colorado.

Endnotes

1 Executive Order 11644, the foundation for administratively controlling motorized recreation on public lands, was signed by Richard Nixon in 1972, and strengthened by amendment in 1977 by Jimmy Carter. 2 E.O. 11644, Sec. 3(a) 3 Federal Register, Vol. 70, No. 216, page 68273 (November 9, 2005). 4 Ibid., at page 68284. 5 Vitterso, J., R. Chipeniuk, M. Skar and O. Vistad. 2004. “Recreational conflict is affective: The case of cross-country skiers and snowmobiles.” Leisure Sciences 26(3): 227-243; Jackson, E. L. and R. A. G. Wong. 1982. “Perceived conflict between urban cross-country skiers and snowmobilers in Alberta.” Journal of Leisure Research 14(1): 47-62; Knopp, T. B. & J. B. Tyger (1973). A study of conflict in recreational land use: Snowmobiling versus ski-touring. Journal of Leisure Research, 5(3): 6-17. 6 Section 212.81(c).

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The Citizen Spotlight shares the stories of some of the awesome citizens 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].

Organizational Spotlight on Friends of the Inyo with Executive Director Paul McFarland By Cathrine Walters Adams

B

ased in Bishop, California, conservation group Friends of the Inyo (FOI) works to protect the Eastern Sierra’s unique landscape. The “Inyo,” a Paiute word meaning dwelling place of the Great Spirit, encompasses 13,140 square miles of land in eastern California’s Inyo & Mono Counties. Ninety-four percent of this area is publicly owned: from the top of 14,495 ft. Mt. Whitney, through the sagebrush Great Basin, to 282 ft. below sea level at Badwater (Death Valley). Basically, in this little corner of California, FOI works in every type of ecosystem found from Barstow, California to Barrow, Alaska. FOI was created by a handful of local activists who got together to comment on the Inyo National Forest plan draft in 1986. The organization was incorporated soon thereafter and hired its first staff in 2000. Since that time, they’ve worked to preserve and restore the beauty and diversity of public lands in the Eastern Sierra, for the people who visit and the wildlife that inhabit it.

Hand-on projects involve volunteers and accomplish results. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Inyo.

Executive Director Paul McFarland says conserving the Inyo has national implications, and demonstrates our nation’s commitment to preserving our wild heritage. All land has intrinsic ecological value, but the Inyo is home to species as isolated and diverse as desert pupfish and Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, as well as over 35% of California’s native plant species. Basically, the Inyo provides room to roam for critters on two legs, four legs or no legs. Economically, the area is driven by tourism, which depends on wild, open spaces. Unfortunately, the Inyo is the backyard of the nation’s most populous state, California, and within three hours of Reno and Las Vegas — the nation’s fastest growing cities. The result is too many visitors.

FOI: protecting the Inyo’s diverse ecosystems with a broad focus and strong citizen involvement. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Inyo.

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To protect the Inyo, FOI does not rely on one strategy; instead they claim to suffer from what McFarland calls a rare form of “Conservation Attention Deficit Disorder.” They feel that promoting sustainable use of places is as important as getting a species listed under the Endan-

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gered Species Act, because people generally will protect what they know and care about. Paul thinks that the narrow focus that defines some modern conservation work may have decreased the movement’s overall effectiveness. “I look to the early Sierra Club as the model. They did it all, from recreation to preservation. For them, getting people out into the wilderness was key to preserving places. I am particularly concerned about people being part of the land, not apart from it.” To get citizens involved on the ground FOI created the Eastern Sierra Stewardship Corps — a program that works to reconnect people with public lands through hands-on projects. From maintaining trails to restoring OHV abuse to monitoring water quality, they bridge the gap between the intentions laid out in law and regulation, and the reality on the ground. Their program has been extremely successful, with more than 1,500 volunteers contributing nearly 10,000 hours of labor for our public lands, in the last three years alone. The bulk of FOI’s advocacy and coordination is done by staff, with support from their Board of Directors and volunteers from other local conservation organizations. “Having a Board that is part of our local community has been key to our success,” Paul says. Volunteers provide the many hands that help FOI complete on the ground projects. However, as their stewardship work has grown, they’ve realized that they also need paid staff to provide continuity in things like route monitoring, restoration and construction projects.

A day in the field; FOI volunteers and staff have restored many damaged areas. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Inyo.

are working to defend the integrity of these areas until they can gain permanent protection, but, unfortunately, legislation takes time. The loudest opponents are strident off-road vehicle riders. “In reality, we probably agree on the same basic things — we want to be outside and enjoy the land. What divides us is that we have a different definition of “loss.” For them, loss is the perceived loss of motorized access or their ability to overgraze. For us, loss is a meadow needlessly trashed by tires or hooves, or the loss of wildness that comes from thoughtless use.”

Paul says that by far, the largest threat to the cultural, recreational and ecological integrity of the Eastside comes from unmanaged recreation, most of it motorized.

Paul said he was lucky enough to take part in some of the regional field meetings Wildlands CPR sponsored in the early days of the Inyo’s travel planning. “They were able to pull lots of folks together with a significant agency presence.” He thinks those early discussions are going to prove critical to seeing that process through.

“Our desert and alpine areas provide few geologic or vegetative barriers to cross-country travel, and with the recreational pressure from local and regional population centers places are getting hammered. In addition to these external pressures, the lack of sufficient agency funding, coupled with a pervasive sense of professional ennui, enables small problems to get out of hand.”

Paul believes everyone who lives near the Inyo loves the Eastside. “I think we all want these lands to look the same when we pass them off to our kids. We have great local support; you can see that in our membership and the number of volunteers we’ve enlisted. Some folks don’t like us for all the typical wise-use reasons, but we back up our words with real deeds and support our advocacy with the best possible data — data we make available to the public so facts can cut through the paranoia. This has garnered us grudging respect from those who may not like wilderness or coyotes.”

To combat the damage, FOI has worked for the last 8 years to generate support for the Eastern Sierra Citizens’ Wilderness Proposals, encompassing over 550,000 acres of proposed Wilderness and three Wild & Scenic Rivers. They

When Paul isn’t out defending the beautiful Inyo, he and his staff enjoy it all: birding, skiing, climbing, hiking, fishing, taking too many photographs, wandering aimlessly through groves of Jeffrey Pine, chasing butterflies, and even finding quiet places to drink beer. Just getting outside, and dragging others with them, is what they’re all about.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

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Program Updates, Spring 2008 Restoration Program

W

ith the success of the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative and passage of the Legacy Roads Remediation Initiative (nearly $40 million appropriated to restore watersheds — see cover story), we decided to increase our own investment in this effort. So on March 1st we brought Sue Gunn, our Washington State Representative, up to halftime. Wildlands CPR Director Bethanie Walder prepared a brief survey of road removal needs around the country (see new resources) and presented this to key staff from the Forest Service chief’s office in Washington DC. Wildlands CPR is also pulling together activists from around the country to expand this effort and pursue additional road removal funding over the long-term. Here in Montana, Restoration Coordinator Marnie Criley has been working closely with the Montana Forest Restoration Committee to implement a pilot restoration project on the Lolo National Forest. Similarly, Montana ORV Coordinator Adam Rissien sits on the Bitterroot National Forest working group that will implement a pilot project there. Both projects will be implemented within the context of the recently adopted Montana Forest Restoration Principles.

Montana Conservation Corps crew works to revegetate a removed road and landing. Photo by Adam Switalski, 2003.

On the science side, Staff Scientist Adam Switalski completed this year’s analysis from our Clearwater National Forest road removal monitoring project. Adam finished the season with a field trip with the University of Montana’s Wilderness and Civilization program and earned a front-page story in The Missoulian highlighting the field work and results. Adam’s preliminary analysis supported similar patterns in earlier data, showing increased use of removed roads by bear and other animals. In addition, for the first time we captured photos of a wolf, cougar, and bobcat on removed roads. Adam also updated our annotated bibliography on road impact review articles, in addition to an annotated bibliography on all of the off-road vehicle research that has been released in the past ten years. Both bibliographies are available on our website.

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This wolf was photographed by Wildlands CPR’s remote, motion sensitve camera on a removed road on the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

Transportation Program

T

o continue from the scientific perspective, Adam completed, in partnership with Wild Utah Project, a set of off-road vehicle Best Management Practices (BMPs). We’ve been partnering with Wild Utah Project for nearly two years on this project, which we finalized (after a round of peer review and revisions) in January. The BMPs provide a template for agency land managers to use when implementing off-road vehicle programs. They address laws and regulations, forest soils, vegetation, wildlife, special ecosystems and user-conflict (see New Resources, page 13). But just because we’ve released BMPs does not mean we are condoning off-road vehicle use on public lands. As long as off-road vehicles are allowed on public lands, they must be managed appropriately, but, unfortunately, it is rare to find places where this is the case. The problems with off-road vehicle management are graphically illustrated in the new Foundation for Deep Ecology book, Thrillcraft (see RIPorter 12:4 for more info). In December and January, Wildlands CPR distributed approximately 4,500 copies of the book to conservationists and recreation activists around the country to use in their efforts to control off-road vehicles and to stop off-road vehicle abuse. Over the next few months, these books will be distributed to decision-makers, media, land managers and others who have a role in how off-road vehicles are managed. In partnership with the Center for Biological Diversity, we crafted a compelling brochure to accompany the book and also developed resources for activists to use while distributing the book. In January, Wildlands CPR co-hosted a book release party with the Center for Biological Diversity in Washington DC. Here in Montana, Off-Road Vehicle Coordinator Adam Rissien continues to support the Bitterroot Quiet Use Coalition in mobilizing the silent majority to write their local newspapers and send comments to the Forest Service supporting roadless, wildlife and watershed protection from continued ORV abuse on the Bitterroot National Forest. In addition to alerting Coalition members of travel planning meetings, Adam helped create a distinctive brochure highlighting the Citizens’ Alternative, which was sent to over 1,000 local residents. Visit www.quietusecoalition.org to learn more. Adam is also keeping tabs on numerous other travel planning efforts around the state. He submitted comments on the Custer National Forest’s Ashland District Travel Plan, where the agency proposes opening nearly 400 miles of trails to all vehicle types. Additionally, he provided comments to the Kootenai National Forest’s Three Rivers District. Finally, Adam responded to the Flathead National Forest’s Glacier View and Hungry Horse Districts’ invitation to discuss travel planning by reminding forest officials of their commitment to grizzly bear recovery. Several previous decisions regarding road densities are not in compliance with Flathead Forest Plan standards.

In late December, the Bureau of Land Management issued a new report showing that off-road vehicle use is NOT king in southern UT, much to the surprise of local residents and activists. This study shows that less than 6% of visitors to Moab’s famous landscape come to ride off-road vehicles. Just before releasing this study, however, the Moab Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office closed the public comment period on its new management plan. This plan, still in its draft form, would put 84% of the Moab area’s BLM lands within half a mile of a road. Laurel is working with other conservationists in southern Utah to promote this new data and ensure it is applied to new management plans. On the other side of the country, Wildlands CPR continued our long-term battle to protect Big Cypress National Preserve from off-road vehicle abuse. Last summer, we joined numerous conservation groups, including Florida Biodiversity Project, on a Notice of Intent to sue the Park Service after they reopened, without any analysis, some off-road vehicle routes in the Bear Island unit of the Preserve. Some of the routes were closed again in late November 2007. So much damage had occurred in just 10 months that the agency could not keep the routes open, though they claim they have closed them only until they can harden the routes with limestone to reduce the damage (basically turning them into roads). We filed our lawsuit in December to challenge the overall management in Bear Island, and its lack of compliance with the off-road vehicle management plan that was adopted after previous legal efforts.

Down south in Moab, our Utah Off-Road Vehicle Coordinator Laurel Hagen had a terrific early success when the town of Escalante, UT refused $43,000 in state funds that would have been used to build a new off-road vehicle staging area in a city park. Citing concerns from highway safety to long-term ecological impacts, local residents asked the state not to grant the funds, which were requested by ORV boosters in the county seat to increase off-road tourism. Residents of Escalante and nearby Boulder are concerned about becoming ‘another Moab’ — with the accompanying overwhelming ORV tourism and manic in-town growth. Big Cypress: National Preserve or ORV playground? Photo copyright Marcel Huijser.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

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I

t’s been a fantastic winter for skiing in Missoula, making it hard for many of us to get into the office at regular hours. That said, we’ve still accomplished a great deal this winter, and have lots on tap for 2008.

So sad to see you go

We wish it weren’t so, but strategist extraordinaire Jason Kiely moved on from Wildlands CPR to a new adventure in February. The opportunity to join his dad in starting a new green company was too much to pass up. There’s no way we can capture all of Jason’s contributions to Wildlands CPR in one short paragraph, but we’ll try… Jason began working with us in 2003 as an intern in our restoration program. One of his first tasks was to promote the economic benefits of investing in watershed restoration through road removal. In the four and a half years since then, he held a variety of other positions, from Transportation Program Coordinator, to National Forest Campaign Director for the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition, to Communications Coordinator. Jason excelled in every role, and he brought a level of professionalism to Wildlands CPR that helped us mature as an organization. He’s a brilliant strategic thinker who shared his insights, energy and enthusiasm not only with those of us in the office, but with hundreds of grassroots activists across the country, helping them address off-road vehicle and restoration issues more effectively. He leaves some big shoes to fill – and in the interim, we’ll be more than a little short-handed around the office. Thanks for everything Jason – it’s been a fun and wild ride. We know your new venture will be successful and we wish you and the company all the best! We have another fond farewell to make, to outgoing Board President Dave Havlick. Dave has been involved with Wildlands CPR since our inception in 1994, and was one of the first people to conduct field surveys of impacts following Keith Hammer’s model. He was our first newsletter editor, and his wife was co-director of Wildlands CPR in 1995. He attended many of our board meetings before he was an official board member – in part because he was always doing projects for us. Finally, he joined the board in 2001 and most recently served as our President. While on the board, Dave published the book, No Place Distant: Roads and Motorized Recreation

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on America’s Public Lands. This book is an extraordinary history and compendium of transportation management and impacts on public lands. He also published several other articles and essays about restoration and off-road vehicle issues. Dave is an amazing thinker and writer and he’s done an extraordinary amount to promote our issues. We’ll really miss having him on the board.

Welcome

Actually, term limits for board members are both a good and bad thing. While we’ll certainly miss Dave, we’re delighted to welcome two new board members: Cassandra Mosely and Brett Paben. We’ve worked with Cassandra for many years now in our efforts to build a restoration economy in the west and nationwide. Cassandra is the Director of the Ecosystem Workforce Program (EWP) and a Research Associate in the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at University of Oregon. At the EWP, she has developed applied and participatory research and policy education programs, focusing on the restoration workforce. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, where she studied collaborative natural resource management and American political development. Brett is an attorney with Wildlaw in St. Petersburg, Florida. We’ve worked with Brett on several off-road vehicle issues over the past few years and we’ll engage him more on our Big Cypress work and other projects related to ORVs and restoration in the southeast. Brett received his JD at University of Oregon School of Law with a certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law. He works on public lands, endangered species and anti-pollution related issues, with a particular focus on national forests.

And a big thank you to...

... all of you who contributed to our fall annual gifts campaign. We have raised more than $30,000 so far, and we are hoping to increase that even more over the next several months. In addition, we’d like to thank the Bullitt, Horizons, and New Land Foundations for generous grants to support our work.

Heavy equipment operators that once worked in the logging industry may soon have opportunities to put their skills to practice in road removal and restoration. Photo courtesy of Natural Resource Conservation Service.

The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

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Thank you for your support! The Road-RIPorter, Spring Equinox 2008

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Big Cypress National Preserve. Photo copyright Marcel Huijser.

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