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Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony
June 22, 2000, Thursday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 4014 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY June 22, 2000 THOMAS CRIMMINS PRIVATE TRAILS CONSULTANT COEUR D ALENE
HOUSE resources FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH FOREST SERVICE
RULEMAKING
BODY:
June 22, 2000 Statement of Thomas
Crimmins Trails Consultant, Coeur d'Alene, ED Presented to the Subcommittee on
Forests and Forest Health, Committee on Resources United States House of
Representatives Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to
share some of my concerns about the current Rulemaking and planning efforts of
the US Forest Service. My name is Thomas Crimmins and I am a private Trails
Consultant from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I am here on behalf of the BlueRibbon
Coalition, a nationwide organization representing 600,000 motorized
recreationists, equestrians and resource users. Prior to becoming a consultant,
I spent 32 years with the US Forest Service in the Pacific Southwest Region.
When I left the agency, I was the Regional Trail Coordinator and had
responsibility for trails program oversight and direction and administration of
the annual $5million Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) grant program from the state of
California. During my tenure with the Forest Service, I served in a variety of
positions including a period of time on the Land Management Planning staff on
the Mendocino National Forest. I have been involved in development of a number
of Environmental Impact Statements. I currently serve as an advisor to the
National OHV Conservation Council and as a Board Member for the Blue Ribbon
Coalition. In these capacities, I am actively 'working to review and understand
the implications of the Road Management Strategy, the Roadless
Area Conservation Rule and the Proposed revision to the Planning Rules.
I must admit that I am concerned with the direction that all these actions are
taking but I am extremely concerned and frustrated with the fact that these
actions are being implemented simultaneously and on an extraordinarily fast
track. Rule Interrelationships When all of the current rulemaking processes are
looked at together, a disturbing trend becomes painfully evident. The planning
rule, which will set the overriding guidance for management of the National
Forests, supports a philosophy of Ecological Superiority, where ecology takes
precedents over man and everything else. All decisions made will first consider
the ecological situation and then if possible consider the effects on mankind.
The direction to return the forests to "pre- European" conditions clearly
illustrates this principle. The rule establishes the concept of clecological
sustainability" rather than the principle of sustainable production of goods and
services within the context of a healthy environment, as required in the
Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act. The planning rule requires that actions must
not "impair the functioning of ecological processes" Section 219.2 (a)(1) .
While it might be argued that ecological processes continue to function in all
environments, even with man's involvement, it is clear from the context of the
rule that the intent is to require the maintenance of natural ecological
process. This will have a far-reaching effect on the future of our national
forests. The planning rule also takes much of the planning process away from the
local land managers, and therefore away from local control, and gives it to a
higher authority. The requirement for establishment of Committees of Scientists
to set the guidelines for the planning process and for review of the end product
severely dilutes the emphasis on local control and local decisions. The rule
further concentrates the planning authority at higher administrative levels by
allowing "topics of general interest to be decided at national, regional and /or
national forest level depending on the scope of the topic or concern. This will
allow a Chief who wishes to usurp local planning efforts the opportunity to
declare an issue as a national concern thereby gaining authority over the
decision. The next rulemaking process that must be evaluated, keeping in mind
the overriding direction of Ecological Superiority, is the Road Management Rule.
The emphasis in this rule is to reduce the miles of road on the forests by an
active process of "road decommissioning'. Another, although more subtle,
emphasis is the improvement of the quality of the roads that will remain. The
rationale for these changes are to reduce the negative environmental effects of
existing roads and to bring the road maintenance costs in fine with the current
budgets. Everyone can support reducing the adverse environmental effects of
roads. However, they may certainly disagree on the method used to achieve the
result. Road closure or "decommissioning" is only one of the possible actions.
Road reconstruction or relocation should also be considered. Closure can be an
effective tool, particularly in areas where multiple roads provide access to the
same site or area. The budget argument looses some of its credibility when one
considers that the roads slated for closure or decommissioning are the lower
standard backcountry roads that consume very little of the current road budget.
In addition, the direction to improve or upgrade the remaining roads could
easily increase the maintenance cost per mile for these roads and thereby
increase the overall budget needs. With adoption of the Planning Rule and the
Road Management Strategy, the Roadless Area Conservation
efforts take on a whole new dimension. The primary problem is not with the
identification of the existing Inventoried Roadless Areas
because they have been well documented in the multiple Roadless
Area Review and Evaluation QURE) processes that have been completed to
date. The main problem will come with the establishment of the 44unroaded" areas
that will occur at some later date. Once these "unroaded " areas are identified,
the ability of local managers to actively manage the areas will be severely
constrained by the mandate for Ecological Superiority in the planning rule. It
is a vicious circle leading to the ultimate abandonment of the national forests
to the forces of nature. Long-Term Effects When you look at the combined effect
of these three rule making processes, it is obvious that the publics ability to
access and use the national forests for recreational activities will be
significantly reduced. In addition the entire range of experiences that can be
enjoyed by those using motorized vehicles will be shifted toward the more
developed or urbanized range and away from the undeveloped or backcountry type
of experiences. This will have a profound effect on the public since national
forests are one of the few areas that a person can enjoy the backcountry
experience. We have plenty of paved roads, developed sites or visitor centers. A
significant recreational value of the national forests is the ability to easily
explore the primitive backcountry environment with a motorized vehicle.
Recreation use figures have shown that the use of Wilderness has been declining
and now constitutes only about 2% of the total use. The need and desire for
motorized access to the forests continues to grow. Adoption of these rules will
significantly reduce the public's ability to access the forest. In addition to
the significant loss of recreational opportunities, there will also be a
reduction in the production goods and services available from the national
forests. Access is a critical element in the effective management of forestland.
The loss of access that will occur with the adoption of these rules will
significantly limit the ability protect forest health and reduce uncontrolled
wildfires. Chief Dombeck and Undersecretary Lyons have, on numerous occasions
stated that the Roadless Area Conservation effort is being
undertaken to reduce or resolve the controversy and litigation surrounding the
existing Inventoried Roadless Areas. This is the same argument
that was used to justify the first RARE process. The Forest Service would
identify the areas, analyze the Wilderness suitability, make recommendations and
move on. We all know how that worked out. Even though a thorough analysis was
conducted, and Wilderness recommendations were made, radical environmental
groups were not satisfied and pressed for designation of all areas as
Wilderness. I would suggest that this process will have precisely the same
result. It will increase the controversy and litigation surrounding the existing
Inventoried Roadless Areas as managers attempt to manage these
areas within the constraints of the Planning Rule. In addition, it will add
additional controversy as these same radical environmental groups attempt to use
the Planning Rule and the Road Management Strategy to further reduce management
activities on the forests and to create additional unroaded areas that can later
be considered for Wilderness designation. Groups such as the BlueRibbon
Coalition and others will be forced to enter into litigation to protect the
publics right to access their public lands. The level of controversy and
litigation will increase rather than decline. I also have a number of other
concerns with these actions that are being taken by the administration that I
would like to share with the Committee. Volume of Material One of my first
concerns is with the sheer volume of material that is being presented for review
and analysis. The groups that I am involved with must monitor national actions
that include, not only the Forest Service proposals but must also track actions
such as the National Park Service proposal to ban snowmobiles in the National
Parks, the development of a National ORV Strategy by the Forest Service and the
Bureau of Land Management and the potential effects of the numerous National
Monument designations by this administration. In addition, we must remain
actively involved in a number of Forest Plan revisions and other local planning
efforts. it is virtually impossible to adequately review and comment on all the
documents even though we are fully aware that they will significantly affect our
future activities on public lands. Short Timeframes The second concern I have is
with the short timeframes that are being allowed for comment and even more
importantly the compressed timefrarnes for comment analysis and document
preparation. When I was working for the Forest Service, the EIS process could
easily take from 18 to 24 months and in some cases, particularly controversial
matters, even longer. These short timefrarnes can only reduce the level and
extent of the analysis that can be completed. A particular case in point is the
Roadless Area Conservation effort. Following a scoping process
that resulted in a significant volume of input, the Forest Service simply
summarized the comments. In most cases, the DEIS did not respond to the many
issues that were raised during the process as required. The other thing that
amazes me is that, even with thousands of comments being submitted, the DEIS was
released to the public exactly as previously scheduled. This would certainly
indicate that the comments submitted received little, if any, in depth analysis.
Concurrent Development The third concern, and probably most important, is the
fact that all of these documents are being prepared simultaneously. Each
document depends on decisions made in the others and should be analyzed in the
context of those other documents. The problem is, the other documents have not
been completed so we really don't know what they say. Simple changes in one
could have a far- reaching impact on the effects of subsequent decisions. An
example of this lies with the definition of a road. The initial Road Management
Strategy and the Roadless Ares Conservation DEIS define a road as " a motor
vehicle travel way over 50 inches, unless classified and managed as a trail."
Because trails, even motorized trails, are exempted from the proposed definition
of a road and because motorized recreation is not precluded in Roadless
areas under the current DEIS, I would anticipate that the radical
environmentalists would be pressing to change the definition of a road. If the
definition is changed in the final version of the Road Management Strategy, it
could have a significant impact on OHV use under the existing Roadless
Area Conservation proposal. However until the decisions are made, we
will never know. Another example is the strong direction in the Road Management
Strategy to reduce or decommission roads. This direction could easily be used to
force a manager to close and eliminate some specific routes. Once this is done
it could then be possible to connect larger areas of the forest together to meet
the thousand- acre requirement for identification as an unroaded area under the
Roadless Area Conservation rules. This again could have a
significant impact on the future of our recreational activities. There is
nothing wrong with tiering one planning document off of another. It is done all
the time. However, if you are to adequately analyze the effects of the
subsequent action, you must know what the overriding requirements are. In this
case, the overriding requirements have not been finalized so any analysis is, by
nature, inadequate, Ability to get Additional Information Another concern I have
is the inability to get some background information with regard to the
rulemaking processes. On June 15, 1999 I filed a Freedom of Information Act
request for documents related to the development of the Proposed Planning Rule
with the Secretary of Agriculture. The request was forwarded to the Forest
Service and they provided the information they had on November 30, 1999.
However, some of the information requested was correspondence from
Undersecretary James Lyons. I have received the standard acknowledgement letter
but no other response. Mr. Lyons has chosen to blatantly ignore my request for
the information. Numerous letters have been sent to his FOIA officer requesting
assistance. They have been forwarded to his office but have had no effect..
These actions have hampered my ability to evaluate the some of the underlying
background of the rulemaking Summary In summary, I thank you for the opportunity
to present these issues and I encourage you to take whatever action is necessary
to bring sanity back into the planning process. -The process needs to be slowed
down so that we can have an effective deliberative process. -The decisions must
be made in a reasonable and sequential order. -The decisions must seek a balance
between serving the public need and protecting the environment. The national
forests belong to all the people and should be managed to provide for the needs
of the people. We need to bring the Forest Service back to it's motto of "Caring
for the Land AND Serving the People" not Serving the Environment at the Expense
of the People. Proper management as has occurred in the past can meet the needs
of the people, maintain healthy forests and protect the environment.
LOAD-DATE: June 30, 2000, Friday
