RIPorter 14.3

Autumn Equinox 2009. Volume 14 No. 3

Visit us online:

wildlandscpr.org

Inside…

A Look Down the Trail, by BethanieWalder. Page 2 The Political Economy of WatershedRestoration, by Josh Hurd.Pages 3-5DePaving the Way: by Bethanie Walder.Pages 6-7

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Odes to Roads: The Spirit of Restoration,Part Two, by Thomas R. Petersen.Pages 8-9Legal Notes, by Mike Anderson.Pages 10-11Get with the Program: Restoration and Transportation Program Updates.Pages 12-13Field Notes, The Economic Impacts ofthe 2008 Legacy Roads & TrailsRemediation Initiative in Idaho andMontana, by The Wilderness Society.Pages 14-15Biblio Notes: A Review of the Impacts ofORVs on Soil, by Adam Switalski andAllison Jones. Pages 16-18Regional Reports & Updates. Pages 19-21Around the Ofce, Membership Info.Pages 22-23

The Political Economy of Watershed Restoration

By Josh Hurd

Protecting water quality through restoring watersheds has always made good economic sense. Now, it’s become politically feasible as well. Photo above by Adam Switalski, at right by Dan Funsch.

The Road-RIPorter, Autumn Equinox 2009

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Wildlands CPR revives and protects wild places by promoting watershed restoration that improves sh and wildlife habitat, provides clean water, and enhances community economies. We focus on reclaiming ecologically damaging, unneeded roads and stopping off-road vehicle abuse on public lands.

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

Director

Bethanie Walder

Development Director

Tom Petersen

Science Coordinator

Adam Switalski

Legal and Agency Liaison

Sarah Peters

Montana State ORV Coordinator

Adam Rissien

Restoration CampaignCoordinator

Sue Gunn

Program Associate

Cathrine L. Walters

Journal Editor

Dan Funsch

Interns & Volunteers

Adam Bender, Heather McAdams, Greg Peters,Stuart Smith

Board of Directors

Amy Atwood, Jim Furnish,William Geer, Chris Kassar, Rebecca Lloyd, Crystal Mario, Cara Nelson, Brett Paben

A Watershed Speech

“Our shared vision must begin with a complete commitment to restoration. Restoration,for me, means managing forest lands rst and foremost to protect our water resources whilemaking our forests far more resilient to climate change.”

— US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.With these words, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack set out a new vision fornational forest management — one that harkens back to the foundation of the ForestService more than 100 years ago, with a primary focus on protecting water resources.While his speech did stray into the more familiar topics of hazardous fuel reduc-tion, re danger, insects, and other “timber management” issues, it was refreshing that inthis era of climate change he chose water and watershed health to set the context of hisremarks. It seems that it really may be a new vision for the agency.Roads, it turns out, are one of the biggest contributors to water quality problemson our national forests. Vilsack wasn’t afraid to mention this, nor was the person whointroduced him, Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA).As part of his introduction, Dicks touted some of the initial successes of the ForestService’s Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (see many previous

RIPorters

).Legacy Roads has provided $90 million in the last two years to protect and restore cleandrinking water and endangered sheries habitat by xing culverts and performing othercritical maintenance on needed roads, while decommissioning unneeded roads. WhileLegacy Roads continues, the agency is beginning to look at their road system in a differ-ent way, acknowledging both its oversized capacity and the profound ecological effectsthe system has, especially in light of the multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. Evenformer FS Chief Gail Kimbell acknowledged the need to “rightsize” the forest road systemin testimony provided to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees this spring.And we must note that Vilsack did explicitly state that, “In many of our forests,restoration will also include efforts to improve or decommission roads, to replace andimprove culverts, and to rehabilitate streams and wetlands.” So there it is, in black andwhite – road decommissioning will be part of the future of national forest management.The agency is on the verge of moving in a new direction. They’ve been there beforeand then fallen back into their same old ruts. But by taking the bull by the horns atthe beginning of his tenure, Vilsack has the potential to push the Forest Service into anagency focused on watershed restoration at its core. Speeches alone won’t make thathappen. He must pressure new FS Chief Tom Tidwell to translate vision into reality byproviding the structure and capacity to build a new Forest Service for the 21

st

Century —one that focuses on restoring watershed health and water quality, especially in light ofclimate change.We can only hope that there’s a brand new beginning for the Forest Service that im-mediately builds from the words Vilsack used at the end of his speech:“But I return again to the simple act that we Americans often take for granted everyday: turning on those water faucets. The clean water that emerges is made possible inlarge part by the stewardship of our working rural land and our forests in particular. Myhope, and I trust you share it, is that together we can foster a greater appreciation inthis country for our forests and that all Americans, regardless of where they live, see thequality of their lives, and the quality of their forests as inseparable.”

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W

atershed restoration provides much more to society than justclear streams, clean drinking water, healthy aquatic and terres-trial wildlife, and thriving forests. It also constitutes an increas-ingly important part of rural and urban economies. Restoration employsthousands of Americans, many from declining extraction-based sectors ofthe economy, in well-paying jobs. It often increases long-term communityvitality and quality of life. Watershed restoration presents a rare “win-win”situation to conservation and business communities. As such, an expan-sion of the ecological restoration sector of the economy is in the nation’sbest interest.Unfortunately, relatively little research has been done on the water-shed restoration sector of the economy. Important questions remain un-answered. What does the public think about watershed restoration? Whofunds most current restoration projects? What policy changes are neededto expand the restoration economy? Wildlands CPR undertook an ambi-tious yearlong research project to help provide some answers, culminatingin the publication of six reports:1. Perceptions of Watershed Restoration;2. Economic Benets of Watershed Restoration;3. Characteristics of Watershed Restoration Funding;4. Innovative Financial Mechanisms to Fund Watershed Restoration;5. Business and Regulatory Environments of Watershed Restoration;and6. Possibilities of Forming an Ecological Restoration Trade Associa-tion.These reports are an important rst step in building up knowledgeabout various aspects of the watershed restoration economy. This execu-tive summary discusses the ndings of each of the six reports, and con-cludes with a summary of the most important recommendations.

What is Watershed Restoration?

Ecological restoration activists, scientists, and practitioners debateabout what actually constitutes proper restoration. The Society for Eco-logical Restoration’s denition is:

Ecological restoration is the process o assisting the recovery o an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.

This leaves much room for interpretation and goes beyond watershedsto include all ecological restoration. For our research, we deemed a projector activity restoration-related if it seemed to t the spirit of the Society forEcological Restoration’s denition, especially as applied to watersheds.Some management activities are controversially labeled as restoration, andwe purposefully avoided these contentious issues. We deemed a projectwatershed-related if the project was designed to affect the terrestrial andaquatic components that impact large or small watersheds. This couldinclude, for example, projects to restore free-owing rivers through damremoval; projects to reduce stream sedimentation through road removal;in-stream restoration activities; mining reclamation that would reduce or

The Political Economy of Watershed Restoration

By Josh Hurd

Editor’s Note:

This is an Executive Summary from Wildlands CPR’s report.For a copy of the full report, or each of the six individual reports, go to:www.wildlandscpr.org/resources.

As the rst major U.S. city to undertake acomprehensive watershed restoration effort, Seattlefocused on the Cedar Creek watershed, from whichmuch of the city’s drinking water ows. Photo by Adam Switalski.

prevent acid mine-drainage; etc. We did notinclude projects that dealt exclusively with for-est stand manipulation to address forest struc-ture or fuel hazard reduction, as these projectsdo not typically consider watershed benets astheir primary purpose.In addition, urban resource managementand watershed restoration may be integrally re-lated. For example, Maryland has a program thattaxes household sewer connections in order topay for sewage treatment plant upgrades. Whilethis project in and of itself may not be watershedrestoration, the project is part of a much largerwatershed-level effort to restore the ChesapeakeBay. One major component of the restorationprogram in the Chesapeake is pollution preven-tion, to ensure that the water entering the bayis as clean as possible. Thus we deemed theMaryland subprogram as a watershed restora-tion activity because its ultimate purpose was toenhance the watershed.