Environmental group praises roadless policies

Nationally, 58.5 million acres of national forest are inventoried roadless. Meanwhile, an estimated 380,000 miles of roads crisscross the nation's 193 million acres of national forest lands in 44 states.

The Wilderness Society celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Roadless Area Conservation policy Tuesday, hailing the rule's resiliency in spite of what it sees as the Bush administration's assaults and touting the areas as essential to Americans looking to escape encroaching development.

"When people come to Idaho, it's to experience what our nation was like before it got developed and roaded," said Holly Endersby, an Idaho hunter, angler, horse packer and grandmother. "These opportunities only exist because of the protection that roadless areas provide. I hope my grandchildren will get to travel in wild country like I have."

Endersby participated in a teleconference headed by Mike Dombeck, who was Forest Service chief when the rule was enacted. Dombeck said only 3 percent of the land in the United States is more than 17,000 feet from the nearest road and that open space in the nation is being gobbled up at the rate of 10,000 acres a day.

Rather than to continue to fight the roadless rule, Dombeck said, "It's time to look to the future. It's time to focus our energies on other areas."

By the numbers
In the 1.3 million-acre Custer National Forest surrounding Billings, 8 percent (89,000 acres) of the Inventoried Roadless Area allows road construction or reconstruction, mainly along the Beartooth Front; 4 percent or 42,000 acres allows no road building, mainly in parts of the Ashland District and Pryor Mountains; and 1 percent or 14,000 acres is recommended for wilderness, most of it in the Pryor Mountains with a portion along the Beartooth Front west of Red Lodge.

In Montana, 6.39 million acres (6.8 percent of the state's total landmass) are inventoried roadless with 3.44 million acres in 15 wilderness areas. In Wyoming, 3.2 million acres are inventoried roadless (5 percent of the state's land base) with almost all of it - 3.1 million acres - in wilderness.

Nationally, 58.5 million acres of national forest are inventoried roadless. Meanwhile, an estimated 380,000 miles of roads crisscross the nation's 193 million acres of national forest lands in 44 states.

Some history
In 1998, Dombeck proposed the temporary moratorium on road construction in roadless areas in the national forest system. He took action after seeing a "massive deteriorating road system" that was uneconomical and contentious to build. A fisheries biologist by training, Dombeck said the road system also was "bleeding sediment into streams," deteriorating water quality for fish and humans.

In 1999, the Forest Service adopted an 18-month moratorium on road building. After a 14-month outreach for public involvement that resulted in 1.7 million comments, the Roadless Area Conservation rule was adopted in 2001 at the end of the Clinton administration. It has been challenged in court ever since.

Aside from the Bush administration, motorized recreationists have led the fight against roadless designation and how the rule is interpreted.

Earlier this month, motorized users in California won an appeal to the Forest Service over a route-designation plan that would have closed more than 14 miles of historic motorized trails in a designated roadless area.

"This decision clearly supports BRC's continuing legal viewpoint that the 2001 Clinton Roadless Rule allows for motorized trails to be designated in roadless areas," Don Amador of the BlueRibbon Coalition said in a press release. "As the route designation process continues on other forests it will be important for local user groups to highlight important OHV routes that already exist in roadless areas so they may be included as meaningful options in the travel management plan."

An economic issue
But Amy Roberts, director of government affairs for the Outdoor Industry Association trade group, said protection of roadless areas helps the economy.

"The human-powered outdoor recreation industry supports the roadless rule," she said.

Roberts said the association's studies show outdoor recreation generates $730 billion annually for the U.S. economy and provides 6.5 million jobs.

"It is fundamentally based ... on high-quality places to play," Roberts said.

For the Forest Service, recreation is second only to timber for revenue generation for individual forests.

Wildfires eat budget
Dombeck said it makes sense to protect roadless areas even though the threat of wildfire in the West has risen considerably. He said many wildfires are human caused and that roads give people greater access to start fires.

Wildfires also have taken a larger and larger chunk out of the Forest Service's budget, reducing the amount formerly spent on road maintenance. Over the past 18 years, the wlldland fire management portion of the Forest Service budget has increased from 13 percent to 45 percent of the Forest Service's entire budget. Yet President Bush's 2008 $4.13 billion budget request for the Forest Service is a $64.25 million decrease from 2007. Included in those cuts is $173,761 less for wildland fire management.

Congress did, however, appropriate $39.4 million for watershed restoration on forest lands, part of which will go to road maintenance, such as the installation of culverts, as well as to road removal and remediation. How that money will be spent in individual forests is not yet decided.

Contact Brett French at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.