The Road-RIPorter, Summer Solstice 2005
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© 2005 Wildlands CPR
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
Restoration ProgramCoordinator
Marnie Criley
Science Coordinator
Adam Switalski
Transportation Policy Organizer
Jason Kiely
Program Assistant
Kiffin Hope
Newsletter
Dan Funsch
Interns & Volunteers
Allison Clark, Katherine Court, Noah Jackson,Stephanie Naftal, Gordon Naranjo
Board of Directors
Amy Atwood, Karen DiBari, Greg Fishbein,Jim Furnish, William Geer, Dave Havlick, Cara Nelson, Sonya Newenhouse, Matt Skroch
Advisory Committee
Jasper Carlton, Dave Foreman,Keith Hammer, Timothy Hermach,Marion Hourdequin, Kraig Klungness, Lorin Lind- ner, Andy Mahler, Robert McConnell, Stephanie Mills, Reed Noss, Michael Soulé, Steve Trombulak,Louisa Willcox, Bill Willers, Howie Wolke
Spring thunderstorm brewing on the Madison River, Montana. Photo by Dan Funsch.
D
uring the last quarter, roadless protection and the six-year transportation fund-ing bill have both sprung back to life. While technically these two issues arecompletely separate, they both relate to public road management and have thepotential to impact our work. Please read our update on the latest changes to the road-less rule, on page 19.Congress is now finalizing plans for highway construction, maintenance, public trans-portation funding, wildlife mitigation and many other things as they discuss final terms ofa new federal highways bill. In early May, the Senate passed “SAFETEA,” the Senate ver-sion of the six year authorizing bill for federal highway projects. The House had passedTEA-LU a few months earlier, so now the two bills have gone to a conference committee,where conferees will fight over which components of which bills will end up in the finalproduct. Much is on the chopping block that shouldn’t be, and many other things are noton the chopping block when they should be. The negotiations will certainly be difficult.Wildlands CPR and our partners are particularly concerned about several provisions,while we support others. Here’s a brief list of the problematic items:• The House bill doubles funding for the recreational trails program over the sixyear life of the bill;• Both bills allocate funding for Public Lands Highways, including $250 million peryear for turning forest roads into forest highways;• The Senate bill includes an additional $60 million per year for additional forestroad upgrades, targeting a subset of the 67,000 miles of level 4 and 5 roads on FS lands;• Both bills have language that could fundamentally change current protectionsprovided by section 4f of the Transportation Act, which forces state or federal depart-ments of transportation to limit impacts of road construction on local, state or federalparklands.On the bright side, the bill includes language that would allow the FHWA and stateDOTs to spend more money on wildlife crossing structures and fish passage, criticallyneeded mitigation tools for restoring connectivity between habitat fragmented by high-ways.In addition to these two critical federal issues related to roads, we expect that thenew National Outdoor Recreation Policy Act will be released sometime in June. Pleasestay tuned to our website for more information about all of these federal actions and whatyou can do to impact them.In the meantime, take a look at this issue of the RIPorter, where we raise questionsand opportunities related to partnerships, discuss new field monitoring techniques, andinclude an excerpt from an excellent essay about roadkill from Eliza Murphy. Happy Sum-mer Solstice Reading!
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