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Winter Solstice 2007. Volume 12 No. 4

Inside…

Check out our website at: www.wildlandscpr.org

A Look Down the Trail, by Bethanie Walder. Page 2Restoring Montana, by Marnie Criley. Pages 3-6Regional Reports & Updates. Page 7DePaving the Way: Things aren’t always what theyseem, by Bethanie Walder. Pages 8-9

Restoring Montana,

One Collaboration at a Time

By Marnie Criley

Get with the Program: Restoration and TransportationProgram Updates. Pages 10-11Policy Primer: The ABCs of Travel Planning, by Sarah Petersand Adam Rissien. Pages 12-13Odes to Roads: Beach Bums, by Ted Williams. Pages 14-15Biblio Notes: Just a Few Bad Apples?, by Jason Kiely andChris Kassar. Pages 16-18New Resources. Pages 19Citizen Spotlight: Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, byBethanie Walder. Pages 20-21Around the Ofﬁce, Membership Info. Pages 22-23

Diverse interests came together to ﬁnd common ground, and crafted the Restoration Principles for Montana. Photo courtesy of Montana Forest Restoration Working Group.

The Road-RIPorter, Winter Solstice 2007

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.

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

Director

Bethanie Walder

Development Director

Tom Petersen

Communications Coordinator

Jason Kiely

Restoration ProgramCoordinator

Marnie Criley

Science Coordinator

Adam Switalski

Legal Liaison/Agency Training Coordinator

Sarah Peters

Montana State ORV Coordinator

Adam Rissien

Program Associates

Cathy Walters Adams & Andrea Manes

Membership/Web Marketing Associate

Josh Hurd

Utah State ORV Coordinator

Laurel Hagen

Journal Editor

Dan Funsch

Interns & Volunteers

Carla Abrams, Mike Fiebig, Marlee Ostheimer,Ginny Porter

Board of Directors

Amy Atwood, Greg Fishbein, Jim Furnish,William Geer, Dave Havlick, Chris Kassar,Rebecca Lloyd, Cara Nelson

FS Shell Game Thwarts Road Fix

n June, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) wrote to the Forest Service asking some point-ed questions about management of their road system. In October the Forest Servicefinally responded — the unfortunate thing is that even though Senator Cantwell askedsome good questions, she didn’t get many good answers.A few things are painfully clear from the agency’s response:• The Forest Service does not have a good sense of how its road system is impactingnational forest resources, and what it would take to reduce those impacts;• The Forest Service is playing a shell-game with maintenance costs and road clas-sifications, rather than seeking critically needed funding to bring their road system up tominimum water quality or wildlife standards;• Roads are being indiscriminately closed to address funding shortfalls, not to ad-dress resource management needs.The letter to Cantwell revealed a disturbing approach to the funding problem. TheForest Service first pointed out that federal regulations require that “management of thesystem of NFS roads be conducted in a manner that is sustainable with current levelsof funding …” (36 CFR 212 A). (Wildlands CPR strongly supports this policy in concept,unfortunately, agency efforts to implement it are fatally flawed.) The letter then explainsthat it is agency policy to reduce the service level of roads to a level that can be sustainedwith expected funding. The result? Fewer roads are available for passenger vehicles,and more roads are either closed or open only to high clearance vehicles. This backwardthinking only exacerbates natural resource damage, and potentially increases public an-ger over access. Not to mention that even with these reductions, there is still a $5 billionbacklog, so they remain out of compliance with their own policies.The Forest Service should have enough money to maintain their road system, butthis means increasing funding, not decreasing maintenance. The Forest Service is incharge of the largest road system in the world, and the bulk of it is in a terrible state ofdisrepair, wreaking havoc on America’s natural resources and natural heritage.The American taxpayer will continue to pay for these roads, either in a proactive wayby investing in needed maintenance and restoration (thereby preventing new damage),or in a reactive way, by paying to clean up the messes and clean up our water, when theroads fail. A significant portion of the road system is no longer needed and could berestored to natural conditions. The agency should first determine the minimum road sys-tem needed, and then manage their funds and roads to realize that minimum system. Re-storing unneeded roads to natural conditions should be an important part of this process.This letter from the Forest Service provides a disturbing look at how the agency ismanaging (or not managing) its road system. With limited knowledge about the extent ofthe environmental impacts of Forest Service roads and even less motivation to solve theproblem effectively, the agency is instead playing an ecologically dangerous shell gamethat will only result in greater impacts on the ground. We’re working to prevent that.To read the letter, go to www.wildlandscpr.org/files/NFsroadsresponse.pdf

The Road-RIPorter, Winter Solstice 2007

— story continued on next page —

Restoring Montana,

One Collaboration at a Time

By Marnie Criley, Restoration Coordinator

n February 2007 I took my puppy to a newlyformed collaborative’s first meeting to draft aset of Montana restoration principles. I knewsome folks; others I’d recently met for the firsttime. People in the group held different viewsabout how national forest lands in Montanashould be managed, but we had agreed to cometogether to find common ground around theissue of forest restoration. We knew it wasn’tgoing to be an easy process, but the tensionin the room was at least in part eased by thepresence of a 3 month old, floppy-eared beaglenamed Gypsy, who tried to drink our coffee andfell asleep on my pile of restoration documents.Over the next 6 months, both Gypsy and ourcollaborative grew from infancy to maturity.Our collaborative did it through a process that Ithink is worth reflecting upon.Collaboration seems to be the current “solution” for dealing with natu-ral resource issues. Collaborative groups are forming all around the Westto deal with issues ranging from fuels reduction around communities tomotorized recreation on public lands. While I’m not convinced collabora-tion is the answer to all our natural resource dilemmas, the Montana resto-ration collaborative that Wildlands CPR is involved in holds great promisefor accomplishing ecologically sound restoration projects in Montana.In January 2007, the National Forest Foundation and Artemis CommonGround convened thirty-four representatives of conservationists, motor-ized users, outfitters, loggers, mill operators, and state government andForest Service officials to discuss the possibility of writing a set of prin-ciples that might help guide the restoration process on national forests inMontana. These principles would represent a “zone of agreement” wherecontroversy, delays, appeals, and litigation are significantly reduced.While we recognized that there were some strong differences of opinionin the room, everyone agreed that the effort was worth pursuing — we allwanted to see restoration projects occur on the ground that would provideboth ecological as well as community benefits.At that first meeting the group brainstormed a list of 60 restorationvision categories and restoration attributes. We formed three subcommit-tees: one to work on a set of restoration principles, one to come up witha plan to implement those principles, and one to plan a field trip to talkabout restoration outside of a meeting room. We named ourselves theMontana Forest Restoration Working Group and set a deadline of August 1,2007 to complete the principles and an implementation plan. I volunteeredto chair the Vision and Principles Subcommittee as well as serve on theSteering Committee to help guide the larger effort.

Photos courtesy of Montana Forest Restoration Working Group.