Roads and Access

Issue Statement: How do we balance the rights of citizens to access their national forests with our responsibilities to protect and manage the soil and water resources, wildlife populations and habitat, aesthetics, forest health, and desired vegetative conditions?

Background Information: System roads are the primary means of national forest access, however, they are also a source of many concerns. These concerns predominantly center around the environmental effects of roads (which will be addressed in other issues, such as riparian, threatened and endangered species, etc.)

Some people would like to see the motorized access to the national forests increased, especially during hunting seasons for big game, for other recreational uses, or to meet forest management needs. Other people, however, feel that road construction should be limited and some existing roads obliterated. Other comments were made that new roads should not be constructed for the purposes of logging or for OHV use. The amount of motorized access will need to be balanced with wildlife habitat needs, the need to provide both motorized and non-motorized recreational opportunities, the need to protect the soil and water resources, and the need to have management access.

The revised forest plans will need to identify what, if any, are the appropriate road density standards and seasonal restrictions needed to meet the desired conditions established in the forest plan.

Forest Service Natural Resource Agenda -- www.fs.fed.us/news/agenda/roads.html

"Almost all visitors to the national forests use forest roads. Roads not only make our Nation's wildlands accessible, but also shape the wildland experience for most forest visitors by determining where they will go and what they will see. Even wilderness areas on our national forests would be generally inaccessible without roads leading to trailheads."

Changing Forest Road Uses

"Much of the existing forest access was built over the last 50 years for timber harvest and log removal. In the decades after World War II, logging traffic tripled, peaking in 1990. But when timber harvests on the national forests declined in the 1990's, logging traffic plunged to 1950 levels. Logging now accounts for only one-half of 1 percent of all forest road use. By contrast, recreational forest road use has soared to 13 times its 1950 rate, dwarfing logging traffic. Driving for pleasure is the single largest recreational use on Forest Service managed lands, constituting 35.8 percent of all recreation in 1996. In summer, recreational drivers on the national forests account for 13.6 million vehicle-miles per day. The outlook is for recreational road use to grow by an additional 64 percent by the year 2045."

Forest Road Issues

"Few natural resource issues in recent years have attracted as much public scrutiny as the management of the forest road system. Though less costly to build and maintain than most public highways, forest roads can have adverse impacts on watersheds, especially if poorly maintained. Few marks that we leave on the land are more lasting than the roads we build. Yet roads are needed for the goods and services that Americans expect from their national forests. Managers today must wrestle with several complicated forest road issues:

· "Funding shortfalls. Roads that were originally built to accommodate logging trucks are increasingly carrying people seeking outdoor recreation opportunities. A $10.5 billion reconstruction backlog exists for the most highly traveled roads. Sixty percent of all forest roads are currently not maintained to the public safety and environmental standards for which they were built.

· "Environmental damage. Poorly maintained roads can promote erosion and landslides, degrading riparian and wetland habitat through sedimentation and changes in streamflow and water temperature. Roads can also block fish and wildlife passage, modifying animal behavior and preventing healthy regeneration.

· "Substandard roads. Many roads on the national forests do not meet current standards for safety and environmental protection. A complete inventory of substandard roads is needed to identify unneeded roads for decommissioning.

· "Roadless areas. Building a road in a roadless area has an irreversible impact. Of the 62 million acres of national forest land classified as roadless in the 1970's, 22 million acres have been designated as wilderness, 6 million are recommended for wilderness, and the remaining 34 million are designated for other uses. Only 9 million acres in roadless areas are designated as suitable for timber harvest, and about 1 million of these have been entered for timber harvest. There is strong public concern that no new roads should be built in the remaining roadless areas."

A New Forest Road Agenda

"Clearly, we need a new approach to managing forest roads. We need sufficient funding to restore necessary roads to a safe, environmentally sound condition and to close and stabilize unnecessary roads. We need to protect and manage cautiously the relatively few remaining roadless lands. Our new forest road emphasis in the agenda will improve access for all forest road users while protecting healthy ecosystems through four primary actions:

"Actions

· Determine the best way to provide all Americans with access to the national forests.

· Accelerate the pace of decommissioning unneeded substandard roads that damage the environment.

· Selectively upgrade forest roads.

· Seek additional funding sources for the transportation system."

Vehicles Per Day on Forest Service Roads

1950

1990

1996

Timber Harvest

14,000

42,000

15,000

Recreation

137,000

1,315,000

1,706,000

Forest Service Road Policy -- Where are We?

" There are few more irreparable marks we can leave on the land than to build a road... Our overriding objective is to work with local people to provide a forest road system that best serves the management objectives and public uses of national forests and grasslands while protecting the health of our watersheds."

-- Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, 1998

Interim Rule - Administration of the Forest Development Transportation System, Temporary Suspension of Road Construction and Reconstruction in Unroaded Areas, March 1, 1999 -- www.fs.fed.us/news/roads/rule.htm

"This final interim rule temporarily suspends decisionmaking regarding road construction and reconstruction in many unroaded areas within the National Forest System. Its intended effect is to retain resource management options in those unroaded areas subject to suspension from the potentially adverse effects associated with road construction, while the Forest Service develops a revised road management policy. The interim rule also will provide time to refocus attention on the larger issues of public use, demand, expectations, and funding surrounding the National Forest Transportation System. The temporary suspension of road construction and reconstruction will expire upon the adoption of a revised road management policy or 18 months from the effective date of this final interim rule, whichever is sooner. "

Environmental Assessment for above Interim Rule -- www.fs.fed.us/news/roads/ea.htm

"On January 28, 1998, the Forest Service announced, in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), its intent to revise regulations concerning management of the National Forest Transportation System. Simultaneously, the Forest Service published a proposed interim rule, to temporarily suspend permanent and temporary road construction and reconstruction in certain unroaded areas of National Forest System (NFS) lands. The purpose of the proposed interim rule is to maintain the environmental status quo, rather than allowing irreversible or irretrievable commitments of natural resources for an 18-month period while the Forest Service develops new analytical tools to evaluate road construction and reconstruction roads and a revised road management policy. The proposed temporary suspension is effective 15 days from the date of publication of the final interim rule and will remain in effect until adoption of the revised road management policy or 18 months, whichever occurs first. The Forest Service will notify the public in the Federal Register of the adoption of the analytical tools."

"This is not a decision to adjust land management plans or authorize specific projects. After the agency has preserved options during the 18-month suspension, it will examine specific proposals for action in the suspended areas. At the time the Forest Service elects to move forward with project proposals, it will consider whether or not an EIS is necessary to evaluate environmental impacts. Thus, ground-disturbing impacts that may result from specific proposals are outside the scope of the propose of this interim rule, which is intended to maintain the environmental status quo."

"Management activities that can be accomplished without permanent or temporary construction or reconstruction (e.g., timber harvest by helicopter or from existing roads) would be unaffected. Routine road maintenance would continue. The estimates used in this environmental assessment (EA) are representative of an 18-month period. They are to be used for purposes of this analysis only and cannot be used, with precision or certainty, regarding effects on any specific national forest."

Draft Roads Analysis Procedure, Feb 28, 1999 -- www.rsl.psw.fs.fed.us/roads/index.htm

"Roads Analysis is an important part of roads policy reform in the USDA Forest Service. The Roads Analysis procedure, prepared by a team of Forest Service scientists and managers, is designed to help National Forest managers bring their road systems into balance with current social, economic, and environmental needs. The science-based Roads Analysis procedure, which has been under development for 12 months, does not change land allocations or make land management decisions, but rather provides critical analytical information for managers to consider as they evaluate and plan the future of their road systems. This draft of the procedure incorporates technical review comments received on previous drafts, and lessons learned from successful field tests of the procedure that were conducted on six National Forests (Tongass, Willamette, Boise, Black Hills Mark Twain, and Ocala) in 1998. The draft that now appears on the Forest Service roads web page will be further revised following scientific peer review by professional societies and individual scientists within and outside the Forest Service."

Draft Synthesis of Scientific Information, March 8, 1999 -- www.fs.fed.us/news/roads

"Roads can be viewed as critical components of the human use of forested systems. Without roads, developing the economic activity that has proved vital to the quality of modern life would have been difficult, and roads remain central to many forest uses today. Roads provide access for people to study, enjoy, or contemplate natural ecosystems. Building and maintaining roads has become controversial, however, because of concerns about their short- and long-term effects on the environment and the value that society now places on roadless wilderness (Cole and Landres 1996, Williams 1998). Partly as a result of these factors, opposition to road building in forested lands has increased, as has pressure to retire roads in some natural landscapes."

"Decisions about road location--and building, maintaining, or decommissioning them-- are complex because of the many tradeoffs involved. The statement by Chomitz and Gray (1996, p 487) that "Rural roads promote economic development, but they also facilitate deforestation," exemplifies recent experiences in tropical forests. And a tradeoff exists between access to roads for recreation and research with the potential effects of that access on biodiversity. Roads have been evaluated from physical, biological, and socioeconomic points of view, often under only one set of criteria in isolation from others. Such an approach is useful for identifying issues, but it can lead to conflict and flawed policy because it may play one set of values against another. For example, a road that is justified only by economic criteria at the expense of ecological ones--or vice versa-- is likely to be questioned by advocates of the missing criteria. A unified approach to analyzing building, maintaining, or decommissioning roads is needed to allocate resources wisely."

"Effects of Roads need to be evaluated in the context of this document.

· Conversion of land use to roads from a variety of other uses:

· Causes soil and air pollution from dust, salt, lead, noise, chemical spills, emission of gases.

· Changes aquatic and terrestrial systems both upstream and downstream from the road.

· Changes the number, distribution, and composition of plant and animal populations and communities.

· Increases disturbances from disease, fire, landslides, non-native species, and so on.

· Facilitates economic activity, access, management, conservation, and use of resources. For more details, see Scheidt (1967), Forman et al. 1997."