Glenn brought up another talking point from the Roadless discussion- the four Chiefs’ letter didn’t address it, but I have seen it in other letters and stories and the FS will probably see it in form letters.
Again, it seems to me that we need to be clear whether we are talking about removing the Rule or updating it. Because if we are updating, we could clarify the kinds of roads and whether they would be open to the public. It seems to me after listening to folks for all these years that most people just want continued access to the roads and trails they already have.. note the lawsuit on the PSICC. The cry is always “don’t shut off our access” not “we need more.” It’s more “maintain the roads you already have” than “let’s get more roads.”
So.. if you had specific carve-outs for specific kinds of roads… like temp roads for fuel treatments within 1/2 mile of communities or in areas within a CWPP (believe me I have probably spent 1000 hours talking with people about this alone.. different maps of WUI and so on) or a road to access a power line for maintenance that would be closed to the public and funded by the power company..what evidence do we have that these kinds of carve-outs lead to more ignitions? Do we have any specific cases where the changes in the Colorado Rule led to ignitions?
If recreationists don’t want more permanent roads, and timber companies don’t, and the Forest Service certainly doesn’t, who would want them?
Now there could indeed be illegal use of temp roads for fuel treatment projects, but if they are ripped afterwards? Would that be a question of illegal use, or improper gating, or ???
My point is that this is another “talking point that sounds plausible” but, as in so many cases, if you bring the question down to specifics, it opens up an entirely different set of questions for discussion.
1. Are we talking update or removal of 2001? If update, describe worries and add text to reduce them
2. Even if the 2001 Rule were removed, what kinds of roads do people really want (that aren’t the same as Colorado or Idaho)?
3. If a middle path is chosen, with temp roads and more or less private administrative (gated) roads are we worried about illegal use of any roads?
4. All projects require site-specific NEPA. As I recall, I was selecting trees on Chiloquin District and unbeknownst to me, someone was blocking roads at the same time. In that country, I was able to drive around the blockage, due to the lay of the land and the vegetation. That isn’t always the case.. would the site-specific NEPA be the place to ensure that the roads would be effectively closed?
Again, it seems that some talking points are about “bad things that might happen.” It seems to me that we have info, with the State Rules, on what actually did happen with exceptions. Certainly both kinds of information should be noted and considered. Which is not an argument to rescind the Rule, but that’s why I think it’s important to start with… “I want to keep, update, or get rid of.”
Finally, it seems that many people were interested in the State Rules to the point of litigating them. But once they were in place, the drama completely decreased. No one was particularly interested in the projects (other than a certain set of coal mines and some ENGOs).
The main premise I see that I whole heartedly disagree with is, “why close the roads”? I’m talking more from a Travel Management perspective, but Roadless set the stage to limit the scope of the “TAP”, constricting the population (statistically) for analysis for Travel Management.
You have several types of users but I’ll stick to the main two classes; the ones who will follow the rules (95%), and those who will do whatever they want anyway (5%). Then you have the fire/fuels/fuelwood discussion on why roads are needed. Gate them? Pfoot; that’s a challenge to that 5% to get around, over or through it! Even I despise a gated road, it’s an “in your face” example of big government, but I am cheerfully part of the 95%, usually….🤠
I was driving an elderly lady to view some timber she wanted to harvest and ended up coming across a gate closing off access. She was “madder than an old wet hen” – and I’ve come to appreciate how mad that really is. 🤣. Anyway, I turned around, hooked a chain and dragged the gate a couple hundred feet. Problem solved!
Jim, hopefully that wasn’t a federal gate you removed.?
No, but I would have done the same thing to a FS gate, if it had blocked access…. Patrick is correct, “new roads” are not the issue, existing roads are. And you are so correct Sharon, unintended consequences.
I worked for a Forest Sup who really didn’t understand Travel Management and let his staff basically roll over the District Rangers. The Sup also had an issue with telling the truth – to FS employees and the public. His Decision was remanded (thankfully) and the next one was a little bit better. There, you had an EA with bogus information and an incompetent decision maker – what a combo!
All folks want is the ability to travel back roads; not all, that’s were the sticky part resides for analysis! The “it’s all mine and you can’t play with it” is another of those unintended consequences you speak of….
Generally Sharon is right, recreationists just want to maintain the level of access we already have. But there are some circumstances where it would be really beneficial to have the ability to build new roads, or at least officially designate user created roads that already exist.
For brand new roads, the main situation I can think of is building connector routes between road networks. There are tons of FS road networks that are only a short distance apart but have no connecting roads between them, so you have to drive all the way out to a main highway to get from one to the other. It would make recreation, especially long overlanding trips, a lot more convenient if they could be connected, but if there’s a roadless area between them that’s not currently possible.
The other situation is dispersed campsite access spurs. Recently the Leadville ranger district converted several popular road corridors to designated dispersed camping. As part of that process they officially added a bunch of existing campsite access spurs to the MVUM as system roads, but they had to arbitrarily exclude some and cut others short because they crossed a short distance into a roadless area. So the Roadless Rule can prevent the FS from officially designating even existing roads, let alone build new ones.
And of course there are hundreds or maybe thousands of roads in roadless areas that predated the Roadless Rule but were never inventoried before it was adopted and have since been forced to be closed because of it. Recreationists would love to see those reopened as well, since many used to access popular destinations.
Patrick, thanks for this! Who would have thunk that people could previously access dispersed camping sites.. but can’t now, because the District wanted the “roads” to get to them to be system roads.. it sounds like an “unintended consequence.” I hope you are writing a comment letter.
I commented at earlier stages of the project but they did that in the final decision, and I was under the impression they really had no choice because of the Roadless Rule. It wasn’t something worth filing an objection over since it was only a few sites on one or two roads. It just illustrated for me how silly the Roadless Rule is.
We are also suing over two roads in the Pikes Peak Ranger District that were closed in the travel plan simply because they were adjacent to a roadless area and not even inside it. The Forest Service really treats roadless areas as if they were Wilderness and tries to create buffer zones around them, which is just one more way they harm recreation access.
Oh and I definitely mentioned that situation in my comment on the roadless rule recision. I’m also hoping the FS would consider repealing the state specific rules along with the national rule, since they still have most of the same problems from an access standpoint.
That’s interesting, I’m not sure every forest would close roads adjacent to a Roadless Area for that reason. It seems like something like folks would throw in as an additional justification “and besides, it’s adjacent to a roadless area.” I’d be interested in others’ forest experiences.
The full rationale was this:
“These routes (the last segment of NFSR 323 and NFSR 324.B) were assessed as low benefit and low risk on the TAR. This ranking, when considered with the remote and dead-end (in and out) nature of these segments, led to the determination that the segments would not to be a priority recreation experience for public access. In addition, these segments either run parallel to or is cut out of the Rampart East Roadless Area, which would limit any other road access to these spurs. In contrast, the first segment of NFSR 323 was determined to be a priority and was maintained as a road (rather than converted to a trail) in order to maintain a public motorized loop opportunity with NFSR 324. Decommissioning roads does not preclude administrative access for emergency situations, future vegetation or fuels projects (through temporary roads), or future adjustment of public access proposed through special use or other authorities.”
So basically they decided that the fact that these roads were dead-ends next to a roadless area meant they inherently had little value, even though our comments and objections repeatedly pointed out they were extremely popular for dispersed camping, scenic overlook access, and one also provided access to a hiking trail. Plenty of other dead-end routes were rated high value, so that reasoning was only applied to these two roads. Reading between the lines the proximity to the roadless area was the main reason they were closed.
There was also a broader pattern in the travel plan of closing most of the roads adjacent to that roadless area, following the Wilderness Society’s comments asking them to eliminate most motorized access on the east side of Rampart Range Road and treat that whole area in and around the roadless area as non-motorized only zone. Because the PSI forest plan is so old, it doesn’t do that, but we’ve seen that a lot with newer forest plans, which basically always zone roadless areas as semi-primitive non-motorized. So even if the roadless rule allowed motorized trails, individual forests almost never do because they treat them the same as wilderness by default. The PSI travel plan followed that same pattern, creating new de facto non-motorized zones around roadless areas even though that was not required by the Forest Plan.
Thanks, Patrick! This is very helpful.
Patrick, I was just talking to someone else who suggested “Let’s take a look at all the IRAs and determine if any warrant Wilderness consideration. If some do, see if Congress is interested in designating them”.. well Congress probably never would, but perhaps the idea of developing specific “pre Wilderness” acres and “everything but perm roads” acres is an idea with clear direction to not manage the “everything” Roadless as pre-Wilderness.
Historical note.. I may still have the table we prepared during Colorado Roadless that showed some ENGOs wanted more restrictions than Wilderness..
I think the real problem is having any kind of administratively created “pre-wilderness” at all.
It’s interesting to consider this stuff in light of the whole history of wilderness. Originally wilderness was a purely administrative designation with the concept of “primitive areas”. Those didn’t really make anyone happy since wilderness groups wanted permanence and user groups didn’t want agencies to be able to arbitrarily create primitive areas and kick them out of areas they were already using. So Congress created a compromise in the Wilderness Act making Wilderness a permanent thing that only Congress could designate.
But then it turned out Wilderness designations remained super controversial, mainly because Wilderness groups kept wanting to create new Wilderness areas in places there were existing incompatible uses like roads, so Congress was rarely able to reach enough of a consensus to designate new Wilderness. So ever since administrative agencies and environmental groups have been trying to circumvent the plain text of the Wilderness Act and find new ways to administratively designate wilderness despite Congress telling them not to.
The Roadless Rule was one of the major ways they did that, and I know Wyoming even challenged it on that basis. The district court originally struck it down as illegal administrative wilderness designation, but then the appeals court reversed that because the Roadless rule only had something like 90% of the same restrictions as Wilderness and not 100%. As long as the FS didn’t duplicate ALL of the restrictions which attend wilderness, the courts were apparently fine with administrative pseudo-wilderness designations, which strikes me as completely ignoring the intent of the Wilderness Act.
Personally I think the only solution to this mess is to honor the original compromise established in the Wilderness Act, and get rid of all administrative pseudo-wilderness designations. If environmental groups want new Wilderness, that can only really be created at this point by kicking out existing users, so they should have to meet the high bar of persuading Congress to do that. At least Congress has still been willing to compromise when they designate new Wilderness areas by cherry-stemming roads and grandfathering in existing uses like heliskiing and such.
Patrick,
Your thoughts are well centered. Since the 2001 rule, congressional attempts have been made for compromise when it comes down to ACEC, WSA, &c, across BLM administered property. Maybe not so much as far as USFS where it seems that it always boils down to a winner take all mentality.
This is the latest as concerns the Congress and DOI https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr1472/BILLS-119hr1472ih.pdf
In the past these attempts haven’t gained much traction but naught for the lack of trying to come to terms with what you, perhaps, are writing.
Yeah that actually looks fairly reasonable as Wilderness bills go, and actually offers something to motorized users with a designated motorized recreation area and mandates to reopen roads in released WSAs.
As I said, when Congress designates Wilderness, it actually does a decent job of working out compromises that benefit all users. The real problem is when the land management agencies refuse to honor the intent of compromises that Congress created.
For example the 2019 Dingel Act created a bunch of new Wilderness areas in the San Rafael Swell in Utah and was careful to cherry stem or pin boundaries to existing roads. The BLM has done two travel management plans in that area since. In the first travel plan under the Trump 1 admin, the BLM correctly treated the Dingel Act as a mandate to keep those boundary and cherry stem roads open. In the second under the Biden admin, the BLM completely ignored the Dingel Act and closed a bunch of boundary and cherry stem roads, creating a de facto buffer zone around the wilderness even though Congress directly prohibited that.
I’ve seen the same thing with Forest Service Wilderness areas in Colorado, where tons of roads that were cherry stemmed in the original wilderness bills back in the 80s have since been closed in travel planning and converted to non-motorized trails. One that really infuriates me is the South Colony Lakes road in Westcliffe, which I’ve gotten to drive a few times with administrative permission supporting a trail work crew. It was cherry stemmed by Congress but later closed and converted to an admin road. There is absolutely no reason that road should be closed except that the FS wanted to favor hikers and create a de facto expansion of the Wilderness into an area Congress had deliberately excluded.
So yeah, Congress can create all the compromises it wants in Wilderness areas, but if the agencies refuse to honor them, they’re basically useless. Every time Congress attempts to rein in agencies’ ability to administratively create new Wilderness, the agencies seem to find a way around it and continue business as usual.
Thank you. I took the liberty of sending this link, and your response to Congresswoman Hageman. Hopefully the selection of words in her proposal is tight enough to stand on its own.
Man Patrick, you hit all the chords in your response! I can’t add to it except for the absolute nightmare we as administrators had to deal with. I always figured I was hired to get something done, in the realm of managing my little corner of the FS. The environmental groups always were uber passionate in their claims, leveraging and Appealing. Roadless, or quasiWilderness just added more hoops the jump through for land managers. I personally was around for RARE and RARE II, but I don’t think they shook the trees like the Clinton Rule!
It’s was/is just another club for environmentalists used to clobber Agencies. Wilderness, as you mentioned, is another animal; I defend(ed) it with a passion to keep that integrity to a much higher level! I’m right there with ya on your perspective!
“Every time Congress attempts to rein in agencies’ ability to administratively create new Wilderness, the agencies seem to find a way around it and continue business as usual.”
Maybe you could share what you see as the specific “rein in” language for the examples you cite.
Jon,
The Congressional attempts to rein in administrative wilderness designations are the Wilderness Act itself requiring Congress to designate Wilderness, plus every time Congress designates new Wilderness areas with specific boundaries and prohibitions on creating buffer zones or precluding other uses in adjacent areas outside the wilderness because they can be seen or heard inside the Wilderness. Every time an agency closes a cherry stemmed road or boundary road, every time it manages land adjacent to a Wilderness area as some form of “recommended wilderness”, “lands with wilderness characteristics”, “roadless area”, or “semi-primitive non-motorized” ROS zone, it is ignoring the direct intent of Congress and creating de facto administrative expansions of the Wilderness area contrary to Congressional directives.
Regarding the Wilderness Act itself, the legislative history makes it clear it was intended to prohibit all forms of administrative Wilderness designation. Here is something I wrote in my objections to the recommended wilderness areas in the GMUG forest plan that explains it:
The Wilderness Act of 1964 makes it quite clear that new Wilderness areas are supposed to be designated by Congress, not created by administrative agencies. Indeed, the creation of new de facto wilderness areas by administrative agencies was precisely what the Wilderness Act was intended to prevent. As the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming explained in State of Wyoming v. United States Department of Agriculture, No. 01-CV-86-B, at *1 (D. Wyo. July 14, 2003) (reversed on other grounds):
“The Wilderness Act declared it the policy of Congress to “secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” 16 U.S.C. § 1131 (a). To effectuate this policy, Congress established the National Wilderness Preservation System (“NWPS”), which would be composed of congressionally designated “wilderness areas.” Id. The Wilderness Act also immediately designated certain areas as wilderness, Id. § 1132(a), and provided the procedure for future designation of wilderness areas, id. § 1132(b). In establishing the NWPS, Congress unambiguously provided that “no Federal lands shall be designated as `wilderness areas’ except as provided for in [the Wilderness Act] or by a subsequent Act.” Id. § 1131(a).
Therefore, Congress has the sole power to create and set aside federally designated wilderness areas pursuant to the Wilderness Act. Parker v. United States, 309 F. Supp. 593, 597 (D. Colo. 1970), aff’d, 448 F.2d 793 (10th Cir. 1971). In fact, the primary purpose of the Wilderness Act was to provide:
“[a] statutory framework for the preservation of wilderness [that] would permit long-range planning and assure that no further administrator could arbitrarily or capriciously either abolish wilderness areas that should be retained or make wholesale designations of additional areas in which use would be limited.”
Id. (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 88-1538). To this end, the Wilderness Act removed the Secretary of Agriculture’s and the Forest Service’s discretion to establish de facto administrative wilderness areas, a practice the executive branch had engaged in for over forty years. Parker,309 F. Supp. at 597, aff’d,448 F.2d at 797. Instead, the Wilderness Act places the ultimate responsibility for wilderness designation on Congress. Id.16 U.S.C. § 1131 (a). In this regard, the Wilderness Act functions as a “proceed slowly order” until Congress — through the democratic process rather than by administrative fiat — can strike the proper balance between multiple uses and preservation. Parker,448 F.2d at 795. This statutory framework necessarily acts as a limitation on agency action. Id. at 797.”
The quote from the Congressional Record in the case above is particularly relevant, as it clearly establishes that the intent of Congress in passing the Wilderness Act was to “assure that no future administrator could arbitrarily or capriciously either abolish wilderness areas that should be retained or make wholesale designation of additional areas in which use would be limited.” H.R. Rep. No. 1538, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1964 U.S. Code Cong. Ad. News 3615, 3616-17. In other words, Congress intended to entirely remove both the designation and abolition of wilderness-type areas from the purview of administrative agencies like the Forest Service. Such designations and their equivalents were intended to be under the sole jurisdiction of Congress itself.
Please update the policy. Do not eliminate it. I worked on both RARE I and RARE II. Lots of great effort by so many. Yes, times have changed, and all things need to be contemporary. But first, comply with Management 101. Take some time; develop a vision to solve the issue (that means you have to describe what the issue is, not just say, “dump it, I don’t like it”); ask some leading questions from a diverse group of learned people; develop a strategy; deploy. Yes, I know you all know this. Yet, lately, we just come up with a goofy notion in a cave setting; look at a shining rock to see our reflection, and without any further thought or discussion, “eliminate it.” I do not know what an updated roadless rule policy means. Maybe it will say, we either have designated wilderness or not. Everything else is for a range of other uses. But we thought it through. That’s all I wish for. Slow down and make a good choice. Otherwise, for the rest of this decade and next, we simply will pick up the pieces. Restoration is really expensive. The productivity of the land and those who use it has already been bruised badly. Enough. Slow down. Lay down the hammer.
Very respectfully,