WILD BILL | column by bill schneider

Beyond the Roadless Rule

By Bill Schneider, 9-28-06

As I said two weeks ago, you gotta feel for Forest Service employees. In addition to the frustration of being pawns in the political chess game played out in the Beltway, they must feel like tennis balls at Wimbledon.

For decades, they worked hard to build 32,000 miles of roads and took more than half of our 155 national forests off any inventory of roadless land. Then, at the end of the Clinton Era, they were handed the Roadless Rule and started working on ways to protect the remaining roadless lands. Then, at the beginning of the Bush Era, they were told to ignore the Roadless Rule and flash back to road-building business as usual. Now, the courts have reinstated the Clinton Way.

Must be a lot of cases of whiplash in the ranks of the Forest Service.

And we're a long way from checkmate. The FS will likely appeal the California U.S. District Court decision and at least one timber company has already filed a notice of appeal, so we could return to the Bush Way in the near future.

I say, let's get out of the courthouse and beyond the Roadless Rule. We have work to do! Here are a few thoughts on what needs to be done.

For starters, I see a lot of confusion about what the Roadless Rule really is and what it really does. It's merely a safety net prohibiting road building in 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless national forest land until we decide the long-term use for these lands. It does not affect travel plans or motorized use. It says nothing about mining, even though most recent news reports indicated it stopped mining. It seriously limits but doesn't prohibit logging, but only on the inventoried roadless lands. Most national forest land remains open to logging. It doesn't even ban all road building because of exceptions such as roads for fire suppression and wildlife habitat enhancement. Opponents to the Roadless Rule often claim in hampers fire suppression, but this is only political misspeak. The rule does nothing to increase the likelihood large wildfires.

The Roadless Rule is called a "rule" because it's merely administrative policy. Even if the greens continue to prevail in court, we need to keep in mind that rules change all the time. Even though this one is bigger and firmer and certainly harder to change than most such rules, it can still change with the whim of the next administrator. Our treasured roadless lands deserve congressional (translate: more official, more permanent) protection.

I like the way John Gatchell, conservation director of the Montana Wilderness Assn, recently puts it: "The roadless rule is the easiest possible commitment for the FS to keep because they don't even have enough money to maintain existing roads, let alone build new ones." He's saying, and I agree, that roads are no longer the real issue. In Montana, for example, Governor Brian Schweitzer traveled around to ask county commissioners how many new roads they wanted on their national forests, and nobody wanted more roads. Even the FS isn't keen on building more roads. So, let's forget roads and get on to the real issues.

Getting long-term protection for our roadless lands, especially protection from motorized recreation, is the real issue. Even though bulldozers aren't out on our forests building roads, thousands of ATVs are. ATVs gradually grind up a single-track trail and widen it into a road. Then, when the time comes to protect roadless lands, the area is no longer roadless.

ATVers have a right to use public lands, too, just like hikers, but the FS need to get control of motorized use instead of just allowing it almost everywhere and then going into denial about the huge impact, both social and environmental A good place for the FS to start would be giving up the fantasy that motorized and nonmotorized users can peacefully coexist on the same single-track trails. The social conflict is irresolvable. Instead, the FS should establish special sacrifice areas set aside for motorized use and prohibit ATVs on roadless lands.

Incidentally, trails open to ATVs shouldn’t even be called trails. If the FS allows four-wheeled, motorized vehicles to use them, they should be called roads. Since we're talking about roadless lands, then no ATVs should be allowed in any roadless area because they require roads.

Instead of continuing endless litigation, it seems so much better for the FS and stakeholders on both sides of the debate to sit down and try to work out compromises that result in a blend of sacrifice areas devoted to motorized use and long-term protection for the rest of our wild lands. Then, take it to Congress. Our senators and representatives have a hard time rejecting consensus agreements between normally dueling constituents. They don't lose votes on those deals.

Earth to Idaho. On the same day a federal judge was ordering the Bush administration not to do anything counter to the Clinton Era Roadless Rule, Idaho Governor Jim Risch, standing side-by-side with USDA undersecretary Mark Rey (the man largely responsible for shelving the Roadless Rule in the first place), held a press conference in Boise to say they favored allowing logging on 7 million acres of Idaho's 9.3 million acres of roadless land. Meanwhile, the governors of Montana, Oregon and Washington have petitioned the federal government to protect all or almost all roadless lands in their states. Come on, Idaho, let's wake up and join the team. People want to protect our remaining roadless lands. These are national forests!

With not nearly enough money to maintain even the existing roads on national forests, we're ending up many gradually deteriorating roads. How about an active program to convert them to trails? Abandoned roads make great trails, and the demand for trails has never been higher.

Told you. We have lots to do. The Roadless Rule is not the end of the game. It's only the beginning. [End of article]

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 9-28-06

Bill:

One quick clarification. Best estimates are that there are currently 440,000 miles of roads on America's National Forests, making the Forest Service the largest road-building agency on the planet. Speaking of the planet, that's enough roads to circle the earth at the equator 18 times. You're claim of 32,000 miles is the amount of miles of roads just on National Forests in Montana.

Comment By Mike Lommler, 9-28-06

I'm glad you devoted a column to this topic, Bill. The legal back-and-forth about the rule is a joke. People want these roadless areas preserved. Congress should start with this fact and, after taking a great deal of input from motor recreationists, figure out which areas (I'm thinking of areas that clearly wouldn't qualify as wilderness, for a start) would be OK to cede to motorized use. But we should bear in mind just how many excellent ATV travelways already exist on our national forests. There are a lot of old logging roads out there. A lot.

Governor Risch sounds like a real gem. Doesn't anyone realize that timber prices are already depressed? I fail to see how demand for timber from 7 million acres of land will ever materialize, and the roads needed to log in such a large expanse would, I'm sure, be absurdly expensive. It sounds like an excellent gameplan for financial disaster, which would, of course, end up on the tax-payers' tab.

Comment By Ira, 9-29-06

Mike is correct that Congress could (for once) show a little leadership and decide the proper land designation for these lands. They could also include a rider in the approps bill to prohibit road construction in roadless areas. They will do neither.

Nonetheless, the construction of roads into roadless areas has slowed to a trickle because there is no money, no purchaser credit program, and no stomach to take on the controversy for good old meat and potatoes commercial logging projects targeting that "primo timber" or the pumpkins that the loggers dutifully supplied to the sawmills so that people could live in houses. Instead we see the token incursion into a roadless area as part of a so-called "forest health" project, usually near a city or other utilities.

Whether or not the Bush rule or the Clinton rule survives the judicial gymnastics over the long term, I think the trend I described above will contine.

Comment By bearbait, 9-29-06

Myths, or lies, told over and over become truth. The primary, most wanted, best log for today's sawmill is from 4" to 12" on the small end, and no more than 22" on the butt end. There are now less than 20 sawmills west of the Mississippi that can cut a log over 30" on the butt end, and they are dinosauers. Home construction products and methods were changed to ensure the end of large diameter log availability did not interrupt the construction industry. It is a small log economy in 2006. No "pumpkins" need apply.

Thinning and logging planted trees on public land that followed clear cuts of old are not in the cards due to insane public land policy. Now it just burns when the frequent fires leave the roadless areas and burn onto the roaded lands and private land. The shame is that stocking levels were purposely high to make sure lands were fully stocked, and without thinning, the land becomes overstocked, prone to insect infestation and poor health, and ultimately fire. That is insane public policy.

In the meantime, large private ownerships are thinned, clearcut and planted, and the public kept out, thus roads and trails are not ruined by overuse of mountain bikes, atvs, pack trains, etc. And, the wildlife does just fine, and probably much better than it fares on public lands.

Roads are permanent cuts into the geology, and abandoning them is an imperfect, if not destructive, action. They have drainage requirements that need maintenance, and if that does not happen, the road fails which means it slides into a canyon or stream. Better that we gate them, tank trap them, and write serious tickets with high fines for illegal entry. They are useful to man and animals as transit corridors. They can grow in with trees, brush, grass, and still be a good thing. They are not when they fall into the creek due to lack of maintenance.

For the last 30 years, the USFS has been a social engineering task of government, and if any worthwhile work ever got done in that time, it was one of the monkey at the typewriter things. That outfit is about getting along with each other in the work place and smiling for the camera. Now that they produce neglible income for Uncle, and have to beg for their budget, there is no constituency on Capitol Hill to go to bat for them. This game of lawsuit...ping....decision....pong.....appeal..ping..decision...pong....suit...ping...decision...pong.....bores Congress. That body can't get anything done when they are passionate about, let alone bored. I guess we will just have to live with it. bear bait.

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