Spring 2007. Whistleblowers Make a Difference. Off-highway vehicles make tracks.
Illegal road building in the Tongass National Forest has been halted pending completion of the NEPA process. Photo courtesy Glen Ith.
VIGILANCE PAYS OFF
As 2006 drew to a close, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics scored a court victory in a road–building case in Alaska, and is now nearing resolution in a case over commercial farming on national forest land.
Thanks to the diligence of U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist Glen Ith, FSEEE learned that the Forest Service was reconstructing logging roads on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest without any public input or analysis. After comparing road locations with maps of proposed timber sales, FSEEE realized that these roads were being reconstructed in order to access harvest units for proposed sales. By the time the roads were discovered and FSEEE filed suit, the roads were nearing completion. However, U.S. District Judge John Sedwick enjoined any further work on the roads until the case could be heard.
Upon reviewing FSEEE’s motion for summary judgment, the Forest Service conceded that the roads were reconstructed in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, and that they were in fact connected to planned timber sales in the same areas. On December 15, 2006, Sedwick ordered the Forest Service to consider the road reconstruction within the NEPA analysis for the proposed timber sales, halted any further work on the roads until completion of the required NEPA process and ordered the Forest Service to restrict public access to the illegally reconstructed roads to prevent any significant increase in their historical use.
On the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in western Kentucky and Tennessee, the Forest Service has been allowing several farmers to grow thousands of acres of commercial crops. Besides the question of whether commercial farming is the best use of our national forests, two concerns with these farmlands are that the farmers annually apply significant amounts of chemical pesticides, and that the Forest Service has failed to require sufficient streamside buffers.
The first problem for these farmlands, however, is that the Forest Service failed to notify the public or prepare any environmental analysis prior to issuing the special use permits to allow the farming practices. As with the illegal roads on the Tongass, FSEEE would not have been aware of these farmlands without the assistance of a Forest Service employee. This time it was Paul Schaefer, a land–use planner, who is concerned about the impacts of the farming on sensitive amphibians and reptiles. FSEEE and Schaefer filed suit, alleging that the Forest Service violated NEPA and the Appeals Reform Act by failing to involve the public and assess environmental impacts prior to authorizing these farming permits. During preliminary settlement discussions, FSEEE has taken the position that if these Forest Service lands are going to be farmed, there should at least be sufficient buffers to protect streams, and the Forest Service should strive for organic certification to show leadership and environmental stewardship on the issue of chemical pesticides. Unless the case settles, a decision is expected in the spring of 2007.—Marc Fink
Some riders prefer to blaze their own trails, like these seen in Utah. Under new forest management plans, the illegal tracks could become permanent OHV trails. Photo courtesy Dan Schroeder, Ogden Sierra Club.
REWARDING RENEGADES
For decades, off–highway vehicles (OHVs) and U.S. Forest Service managers have been on a collision course. OHVs—a category that includes 4x4s, all–terrain vehicles and dirt bikes—have had free rein on national forests, with all non–wilderness areas of some national forests available for off–road riding. Off–road issues were not acute in the 1960s and ’70s, when off–road vehicles were heavy, unstable and unreliable, limiting their use to skilled riders in easy–to–reach areas. But today, the wide availability of relatively cheap, light, powerful and user–friendly vehicles has led to an explosion of OHV use on national forests.
At the same time that off–road recreation has been increasing, the amount of private land open to the public for recreation has decreased from 29 percent in 1979 to 15 percent in 1996, a trend that continues today.
It all adds up to increased pressure on public lands to provide off–road opportunities. And resource damage from OHVs, including erosion, sedimentation and disturbance to wildlife, is a growing problem on many national forests.
The Forest Service is finally doing something about it. Unmanaged recreation, especially OHV use, was identified by former Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth as one of the four most important threats to national forests. In November 2005, the chief announced a final rule for off–highway vehicle management. The rule requires every national forest and grassland to prepare a management plan for four–wheelers, dirt bikes, 4x4s and other all–terrain vehicles. The plans would designate routes and areas where OHVs are allowed, and ban their use elsewhere.
The rule is simple, straightforward and based on common sense. But conservationists worry that implementation may reward illegal road and trail building. At issue are so called “pioneer” or “renegade routes” created by the users themselves. Many of these routes are poorly placed on steep slopes or along sensitive stream banks, causing erosion, crushing sensitive plants and disturbing wildlife. It’s a huge problem, especially in the wide–open backcountry of the West. The 1.8 million– acre Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana, for instance, has 1,348 unauthorized roads and trails that extend for 646 miles.
The Lewis and Clark is one of the first national forests to prepare a travel management plan for OHV use, a document that implements the Forest Service’s OHV rule. Most of the rest of the country’s 155 national forests and twenty national grasslands will follow suit sometime between 2007 and 2009.
According to the Environmental Impact Statement for the Lewis and Clark plan, miles of roads and trails created and maintained by users within roadless wilderness will be added to that forest’s road and trail network.
Conservation groups, including Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, are objecting to these plans because the Clinton Roadless Rule makes illegal any “activity that results in the addition of forest classified or temporary road miles” in roadless areas.
At stake for conservationists is not just the question of whether dirt bikes will be allowed in roadless areas, but whether the Roadless Rule—recently reinstated by the courts—will have any teeth. If roads that are illegally created will later be made permanent, will roadless areas ever have any real protection?
Jerry Ingersoll, the Forest Service’s Off–Highway Vehicle Program manager in Washington, D.C., says the OHV rule, while a national initiative, is meant to be implemented locally. “The central priority of the travel management rule is not about roadless areas. The central priority of the travel management plans is to get motorized vehicles on trails.”
FSEEE believes the last wild and unroaded places on national forests should be protected for the benefit of clean water, wildlife habitat and non–motorized recreation. Dirt bikes and four–wheelers don’t belong in roadless areas. With the reinstatement of the Clinton Roadless Rule, we have strong legal grounds to oppose creation of OHV tracks in wilderness areas. FSEEE will continue monitoring the OHV rule as it’s implemented, forest by forest. We plan to administratively appeal, and, if necessary, bring lawsuits against OHV plans that reward illegal road and trail building.—James Johnston