NEPA

The popularity of categorical exclusions

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WildEarth Guardians noticed that the Forest Service is approving more and more vegetation management projects using categorical exclusions from NEPA procedures:  “a category of actions which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment.”  They decided to do a little research, and found someone to report on it.

Rissien used Forest Service postings to tally all the logging and/or burning projects proposed for the past quarter – January through March – where forest managers had applied a “categorical exclusion” to avoid the public process normally required by law.

For just those three months, 58 national forests– that’s three-quarters of the forests in the West – proposed 175 projects that would affect around 4 million acres.

Rissien found, during the past quarter, USFS Region 4 – which covers southern Idaho, Nevada and Utah – proposed four projects that exceeded 100,000 acres each. One was 900,000 acres alone.

USFS Region 1, which includes Montana, northern Idaho and North Dakota, proposed 30 projects with CE’s last quarter, totaling more than 215,000 acres.

Logging projects intended to reduce insect or disease infestation or reduce hazardous fuels can be as large as 3,000 acres with some limitations. One CE created by the Forest Service for “timber stand and/or wildlife habitat improvement” has no acreage limit. Rissien found the Forest Service uses that for a majority of projects, and doesn’t even give a reason for others.

(There is also the “road maintenance” CE that has been the subject of litigation, including EPIC v. Carlson, here.)

There are some things to question in the article, but the slant of the article is not so much that what the Forest Service is doing is illegal, but that it is being done without much public information or awareness.  The article also points out that the Forest Service just seems to be following its marching orders from the president.  Tracking through the links gets you to this letter from the acting deputy chief, which says:

Consistent with this direction, Regional Foresters are to ensure that the Agency meet minimum statutory timeframes for completion of National Environmental Policy Act documentation and consultation with regulatory agencies. Categorical exclusions to complete this work should be the first choice and used whenever possible. I encourage you to explore creative methods and set clear expectations to realize this priority effort.

There’s a few points to make here.  I’m not aware of any “minimum statutory timeframes” for NEPA or consultation (the consulting agencies do have a deadline for providing a biological opinion).  I would translate “explore creative methods” into “take legal risks.”  Artificial deadlines aren’t creative, but they also result in legal risks.  Last is the implication that the use of categorical exclusions somehow avoids the need for an administrative record that shows that the use of the categorical exclusion isn’t arbitrary – that it fits the requirements of the category and does not have any extraordinary circumstances that could result in significant effects.  The lack of public review or an administrative objection process may save time, and it forces an opponent to sue, but it increases the risk of losing the case on an issue that could have been resolved before the decision.  (But if it gets points on the board during the game, does it matter what happens after?)  WEG said, “But we have to take their word for it since there is no supporting analysis we can review.”  If that’s what is really happening, it would eventually be a problem for the Forest Service in court.

Texas congressional delegation wants federal oil & gas leasing to fire up in the state

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From the Forest Service scoping notice:

The National Forests and Grasslands in Texas (NFGT) is initiating the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS). The EIS will analyze and disclose the effects of identifying areas as available or unavailable for new oil and gas leasing. The proposed action identifies the following elements: What lands will be made available for future oil and gas leasing; what stipulations will be applied to lands available for future oil and gas leasing, and if there would be any plan amendments to the 1996 NFGT Revised Land and Resource Management Plan (Forest Plan).

The Forest Service withdrew its consent to lease NFGT lands from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for oil and gas development in 2016. The reason for the withdrawal of consent was due to stakeholder concerns, including insufficient public notification, insufficient opportunity for public involvement, and insufficient environmental analysis. There is a need to analyze the impacts of new oil and gas development technologies on surface and subsurface water and geologic resources; air resources; fish and wildlife resources; fragile and rare ecosystems; threatened and endangered species; and invasive plant management. There is also a need to examine changed conditions since the Forest Plan was published.

These leasing availability decisions are forest plan decisions that were most recently made in 1996.  The action proposed by the Forest Service would result in changes in the stipulations and would therefore require a forest plan amendment.  The changes would shift about 11,000 acres from “controlled surface use” to “no surface occupancy,” and remove timing limitations from about 35,000 acres.

A letter from five Republican members of the delegation disagrees with the premise that the 1996 analysis was inadequate, and is unhappy with the pace of the amendment process.

The published timeline anticipated a Draft EIS in the winter of 2019 with the Final EIS expected in the fall of 2020. We are concerned that this timeline is no longer achievable given current pace of progress.

We request that USFS end the informal comment period, issue a Draft EIS this spring and ultimately approve the Final EIS that reinstates BLM’s ability to offer public competitive leases of National Forest and Grasslands in Texas for oil and gas leases before the end of 2020. While USFS is required by law to respond to eligible comments received within the public comment window (CFR218.12), the Forest Supervisor also has the authority to declare the available science sound, conclude the public comment period, and proceed with the issuance of the scoping comments and alternative development workshops as the next steps ahead of a Draft EIS (CFR219.2.3, 219.3) (sic).

That last sentence got my attention as the kind of congressional attention to Forest Service decision-making that might cause them to cut a legal corner here or there (especially when there is an election coming).  I also noticed the absence of any reference to the new requirements for amendments, and maybe the delay could have something to do with this becoming evident to them as a result of scoping.  36 CFR §219.13(b)(6):

For an amendment to a plan developed or revised under a prior planning regulation, if species of conservation concern (SCC) have not been identified for the plan area and if scoping or NEPA effects analysis for the proposed amendment reveals substantial adverse impacts to a specific species, or if the proposed amendment would substantially lessen protections for a specific species, the responsible official must determine whether such species is a potential SCC, and if so, apply section §219.9(b) with respect to that species as if it were an SCC.

I found nothing in the EIS for the 1996 revision about effects of oil & gas development on at-risk wildlife species.  You’d think the new information since 1996 might have something to do with effects on climate change, too.

Let’s Discuss: Page Limits For NEPA Documents

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I have been sucked into the “let’s comment on the CEQ NEPA regs” vortex. I’m of two minds about the page limit idea, so I thought I’d open it up for discussion.

Viewpoint 1. NEPA docs are long to bullet-proof them for litigation. Sure, there are cultural agency/NEPA team differences. Perhaps there are cultural reasons to overwrite (associated with importance of your professional area) but no one wants them to be long and impenetrable, or to spend more funding or time than necessary. Therefore, a page limit is pointless. CEQ’s story is that “if only agencies would be more focused and not blather on” but agency NEPA people continue to see things differently. After observing this for the last fifteen years or so, I think that they are continuing to talk past each other.

Viewpoint 2.If agencies really held to the page limits, then possibly projects would go to court sooner and work would be transferred from NEPA folks to OGC, DOJ, plaintiffs and the courts. Then we could have court-based iterative NEPA. It would either dragging on interminably (as in the North Fork Coal litigation, the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce of federal lands) or possibly, might goes to court, judge says to add a, b and c, agency adds a, b, and c, and everyone goes home. Pretty much it would depend on the pocketbooks and tenacity of the plaintiffs, which it pretty much does now, but there would be no expectation of “perfect” at the first go-round in court for anyone involved.

I’d call this the focused court-based NEPA strategy. Strategically, this might move the extra work to the courts-creating pressure among those with more power (judges and attorneys vs. NEPA practitioners) to find a different approach.

Of course, my realistic viewpoint is that agencies would ignore or make lots of exceptions for page limits, even if the proposed NEPA regulation isn’t thrown out in court or settled behind closed doors. Nevertheless, I know TSW readers come from a variety of experiences and perspectives and would appreciate what you all might add to this discussion.

If you have any specific comments on the rest of the reg, that would also be potentially helpful. Also, I’m requesting photos of piles of FS environmental documents for future use.

BLM Great Basin fuel break EIS

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The BLM has released its final decision to implement 11,000 miles of fuel breaks in six states.  The figure is in miles because the fuel breaks would be constructed along roads and right-of-ways.  Given our discussion of the Forest Service trend towards large landscape “condition based” management decisions, this language from an article quoting the BLM piqued my curiosity (my emphasis added):

According to Jennifer Jones, a spokeswoman for the BLM, the program will help streamline the implementation process by reducing or eliminating the need for environmental analysis. Once the plan is finalized and funding available, said Jones, “offices will be able to use it immediately and for many years to come.”

The timeline for implementation and the location of fuel breaks will depend on what offices develop plans and apply for funding.

The BLM’s notice of availability added:

… these potential treatment areas cover approximately 38 million acres within the project area boundary.

The goal of these Programmatic EISs is to significantly minimize the subsequent National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) work required to approve on-the-ground projects.

(A second EIS will address “fuel reduction and restoration” over the same area.)

These statements sound like the more conventional approach to programmatic NEPA analysis (such as has been done for the use of herbicides).  They are intended to provide context for subsequent site-specific analysis that will produce overall savings in planning efficiency.  They make no pretense that this large scale analysis would necessarily be a substitute for site-specific analysis as some Forest Service proposals have stated. This kind of “merely programmatic” analysis has sometimes been given more leeway by the courts because a subsequent site-specific analysis would follow that would address site-specific issues and effects that have not been addressed.

The BLM decided also to do an EIS, unlike some of the Forest Service efforts that used an EA.  This analysis of effects of fuel breaks is also probably more site-specific than area-wide, “condition-based” Forest Service proposals because they know where the candidate corridors are, and they know the area of BLM lands where no action would be taken (away from these corridors).   (The scientific validity of fuel breaks is also discussed.)

Poster Child for Proposed NEPA Regs? The White River’s Berlaimont Estates Road Access Project

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We’ve discussed the proposed NEPA regulations already here. They’re having two hearings on them, one in Denver today, and one in DC. Here is a basic story about what’s going on.

If you read the Presidential candidates’ list of things to do, it includes building massive green infrastructure (including on federal land) as quickly as possible. After all, it’s a crisis. Now many NEPA folks have never thought “emergency” and “EIS’s” go together very well. So you think that updating the regulations might receive broader support, as pointed out by Hudson Miller in this op-ed.

It should not require 13 years and the 16,000 pages that assessed the expansion of I-70 within its current alignment in central Denver.

Bruce Finley, of the Denver Post, selected an inholding road project on the White River (11 years? so maybe 13 is not so bad for the I70 expansion?) to illustrate his story on the proposed rule.

The showdown over President Donald Trump’s proposed trimming of environmental reviews for roads, bridges and pipelines under the nation’s foundational look-before-you-leap law hits Denver this week — just as that law guides a precedent-setting decision in western Colorado’s booming Vail Valley.

A Czech entrepreneur has requested a paved road through the White River National Forest, on protected habitat for rapidly declining elk, to allow the development of gated luxury estates on his 680-acre “inholding” of pristine high-country aspen meadows.

His push for a road to enable development on this inholding — private land surrounded by public forest — became so controversial that the U.S. Forest Service launched a years-long review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, to consider possible harm.

For 50 years, the NEPA law has served as an environmental Magna Carta, obligating Americans to anticipate impacts before embarking on any major development projects involving the federal government, whether through funding, permitting or the work itself. It forces about 170 detailed environmental impact studies across the nation each year, and 10,000 lesser assessments, federal records show.

But White House officials, with support from the fossil-fuel industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are moving ahead with a revamp of how NEPA reviews are done and, on Tuesday, they’re holding a hearing at the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional headquarters in Denver. This overhaul stands out as the most ambitious step in Trump’s deregulatory agenda to help speed up development and infrastructure work by rolling back clean air and water protections.

The environmental review in western Colorado that has encompassed nearly a decade has led to careful vetting of the effort by Florida-based Czech entrepreneur Petr Lukes and co-owner Jana Sobotova to construct Berlaimont Estates, featuring 19 homes each built on a parcel of land 35 acres or larger. The project hinges on building a 26-foot-wide access road that rises 2,000 feet through forest.

Lukes declined an interview request from The Denver Post.

For the landowners, the fact-gathering, investigation and analysis of likely environmental impacts began with a process called scoping in 2009. The initial proposal was put on hold to work with Eagle County officials before intensifying NEPA reviews began in 2016.

“I don’t think we would have wanted any less thorough of an environmental review,” said Andy Hensler, a Colorado-based consultant that the property owners hired to navigate the process. “The review is important. And we have learned a lot through the process. We are looking at modifications, things we could do to lessen our impact.”

U.S. Forest Service supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams hasn’t revealed a decision yet, but emphasized in an interview that he’s bound by federal case law saying his agency must provide adequate access for owners of inholdings. An environmental impact statement, 400 pages long, is nearly done along with a draft final decision.

Strong opposition

Colorado opposition has been fierce, with thousands of residents petitioning the Forest Service to reject the road, pointing to the plummeting elk, the potential for recreational overload in a forest that is already the most visited in the nation, and a potentially costly precedent for catering to inholdings owners.

Elk herds across a broad area around the Vail Valley have decreased by 40% over 20 years and suburban-style development now covers much of the valley bottom.

State wildlife officials warned of problems as the review began in 2016. Gov. Jared Polis, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Joe Neguse, all Democrats, last summer weighed in, urging close attention in a letter to Fitzwilliams, noting the road would mean changing a forest management plan to open up an area that’s been closed from November through May to help elk survive.

The year-round road and development also could threaten sensitive species, the leaders said, including lynx, cutthroat trout, sage grouse, brewer’s sparrows and delicate rare plants.

As an observer of many years of the Village at Wolf Creek, which I used to call the “Reasonable Access for Unreasonable People” project, it doesn’t seem precedent-setting at all if Supervisor Fitzwilliams decides to approve access.

Trump Administration takes on BLM planning

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An internal BLM document (linked below) may be the first step in revising the agency’s planning regulations (Planning 3.0?).  The proposal to remove NEPA requirements for land management plans is getting some attention.

The BLM may propose a land use planning rule that will “remove NEPA requirements from the planning regulations,” referring to the National Environmental Policy Act, according to the document on possible changes to such rules that was shared with states and former BLM officials.

The U.S. Forest Service similarly attempted to exempt national forest plans from NEPA during the George W. Bush administration, but a federal court struck down that effort in Citizens for Better Forestry v. USDA in 2007 because it violated NEPA and other federal laws.

“If the BLM proceed with this proposal, it will certainly be challenged, and I suspect that, like the FS [Forest Service], the BLM will lose,” Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said.

But it looks good to try, I guess. Current BLM regulations require an EIS for its plans, and the Forest Service explicitly required an EIS for forest plan revisions in its 2012 Planning Rule after its earlier rules were struck down for trying to avoid NEPA compliance.  This effort by BLM is in addition to the recent proposed changes in the CEQ NEPA regulations discussed here.

Here’s a little background on BLM planning requirements:

Dec. 12, 2016 BLM publishes its Planning 2.0 Rule, which updates land use planning procedures.

Feb. 7, 2017 The House of Representatives passes a resolution to repeal the rule under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

March 7, 2017 The Senate passes a resolution to repeal the rule under the CRA.

March 28, 2017 President Trump signs the resolution disapproving the rule. Under the CRA, BLM may not promulgate a rule that is “substantially the same.”

(Maybe we’ll get to see lawsuits about what “substantially the same” means.)

Nez Perce-Clearwater plan revision alternatives

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On a recent thread about getting land management decision “right,” I criticized an agency strategy of not identifying a preferred alternative in a draft EIS , using an example from BLM travel planning.  I said I was seeing more or this in land management planning, and here is an example from the Nez Perce-Clearwater forest plan revision.

A preferred alternative is not identified in the DEIS. Any individual component of any alternative analyzed in the DEIS may be combined into a preferred alternative. A preferred alternative will be identified with the release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement and Draft Record of Decision in 2021.

The link is to the DEIS Executive Summary, and here is their range of alternatives:

Four action alternatives were developed based on internal and external input, including collaboration on alternative development. All alternatives analyzed in the draft environmental impact statement met a minimum bar of being ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable per the 2012 planning rule. Furthermore, each alternative contributes to rural prosperity and other Department of Agriculture Strategic Goals. Alternative themes and the thought process behind their development are described below:

Alternative W

Resources and land allocation on the Nez Perce-Clearwater are not mutually exclusive. It may be possible to have high levels of timber harvest; sustain rural economies; recover fish and wildlife species listed within the Endangered Species Act; provide clean air and clean water; and provide habitat for viable populations of wildlife species all at the same time. For instance, areas evaluated for recommended wilderness are independent from most areas that provide for timber harvest due to the Idaho Roadless Rule. As such, it is possible to recommend all or nearly all Idaho Roadless Rule areas for recommended wilderness and have a very high level of timber outputs. Alternative W is a “have it most” alternative. The intent is to couple items that may otherwise be viewed as being mutually exclusive. This alternative has higher levels of recommended wilderness coupled with a higher timber output and a faster rate of movement towards forest vegetation desired conditions. Forest vegetation desired conditions would be minimally met within thirty years. Areas not selected as recommended wilderness allow for motorized use, including within Idaho Roadless Rule areas. Wild and Scenic Rivers found suitable stem from a collaborative approach that looks at rivers outside the wilderness.

Alternative X

Alternative X responds to a number of state and local plans, which call for few or no areas of recommended wilderness fewer or no suitable wild and scenic rivers and higher timber outputs. In this alternative zero areas are recommended as wilderness. The Comprehensive Water Plan is used as a surrogate to continue to protect key tributaries to the North and South Fork Clearwater Rivers while not pursuing Wild and Scenic River Suitable status on any river. Forest vegetation would be within the lower bound of the desired conditions within twenty years. Alternative X has the highest timber output, including a departure from the Sustained Yield Limit (SYL) for a period of two decades at 241-261 million board feet annually.

Alternative Y

Alternative Y provides for intermediate level of recommended wilderness and moves towards forest vegetative desired conditions in fifty years. Historic snowmobiling areas in the Great Burn are removed from consideration as recommended wilderness resulting in a boundary change, but within the areas moving forward as recommended wilderness we do not authorize any uses that may preclude designation as wilderness in the future. This alternative also looks at the major rivers not designated in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act as suitable for inclusion in the Wild and Scenic River system. The major rivers not designated include the North Fork Clearwater and South Fork Clearwater.

Alternative Z

Alternative Z responds to requests to have an alternative in which natural processes dominate over anthropogenic influence. In this alternative a proposal for recommended wilderness that was brought forward by a group of national and state wilderness advocacy groups was mostly carried forward. Additionally, rivers were viewed as part of a larger system and major tributaries to the Nez PerceClearwater’s largest rivers will be analyzed as being suitable for inclusion in the wild and scenic rivers system. Areas in Idaho Roadless Rule Areas will not be opened up for additional motorized use and most current motorized use would not be impacted. Reliance on natural process would warrant a slower movement towards forest vegetation desired conditions within an anticipated one-hundred-years or longer. Timber outputs would also be lower and near a lower threshold needed to provide for economic sustainability and sustain rural economies. Additional plan components related to snag guidelines, live tree retention, fisher habitat, and elk security are included that limit uncertainty regarding how and where these features will be located on the landscape.

According to the forest supervisor in this article, “Emphasized in this planning process is the alternatives were put together as building blocks, Probert said, so pieces could potentially be mixed and matched to provide better combinations.”

My question is does it facilitate public comments, or more generally facilitate the process, to not identify a preferred alternative? This range of alternatives seems reasonable.  It is based primarily on varying how “designated areas” would be identified and recommended (wilderness and wild and scenic rivers) and managed (inventoried roadless areas, including addressing motorized and mechanized recreation), and how actively or passively the vegetation would be managed.  I’ve suggested something along these lines, and maybe if all the alternatives are truly reasonable and focused on the most relevant issues, it would be possible for an agency to not have a preferred alternative.   But is it a problem that the final preferred alternative doesn’t look much like any of the alternatives offered for public comments?  Still, I’m skeptical that the Nez Perce-Clearwater doesn’t care, and if they do, the law requires that they tell the public.

Failed planning for power lines on the Coconino

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(Modoc National Forest photo)

The Coconino National Forest Plan was revised in 2018.  They have just announced that a proposed powerline requires a forest plan amendment because, “The proposed power line and associated roads would not comply with the following forest plan guidance after all reasonable stipulations to minimize impacts are applied: ‘Management activities and permitted uses should be designed and implemented to maintain or move toward the desired SIOs.'” “SIOs” are “Scenic Integrity Objectives, which are forest plan components.  It also appears to conflict with several plan guidelines for special uses (though the letter doesn’t directly acknowledge that).  Nobody saw this coming during the recent plan revision?  Did the forest plan include things that really weren’t that important?  (Scenery doesn’t seem to often rise to the level of litigation.)  Is this just more “energy dominance” from the Trump administration?  The scoping letter doesn’t attempt to answer these kinds of questions.

This article includes a link to the scoping documents.  From the map, it looks like the power lines are needed as a shortcut, and is often the case, conservation lands are the easiest target.  All of the action alternatives would violate the forest plan.  A compliant alternative seems like an obvious omission.  (And there is a requirement for special use permits that locations off of the national forest be not feasible.)  While the Forest discusses burying  the line, it’s not clear that they are considering an alternative that would bury all of it in areas where it is not consistent with the scenery objectives, or whether doing so would meet them.  Of course we can’t actually tell exactly where it would violate those objectives because the scoping letter doesn’t distinguish between the areas where the objectives are “high” or “moderate,” but maybe it’s the entire route.  While the amendment would be “project specific,” meaning it wouldn’t affect future projects, does that make any sense if the landscape would no longer meet the objectives in the forest plan?  ( Some of the scenery management science is not intuitive to me.)  At least they included the amendment in scoping for the project (some have popped that out at the last minute).

This summary dismissal of the forest plan unfortunately suggests a lack of respect given to forest plans and the effort put into them.  I don’t know anything about the scenery here, or who looks at it, but if it was important enough to put into a forest plan a couple of years ago, it seems like it should be important enough to take a little more seriously now.

Condition-based project in Georgia

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We’ve discussed “condition-based” NEPA analysis and its legal implications – mostly thinking about timber management.  Here’s the Foothills Landscape Project, affecting 157,000 acres on the Chatahoochee-Oconee National Forest.  It raises the usual concerns about  NEPA sufficiency (it’s an EA, which was a key factor in the Tongass case injunction).  Here’s how it works, according to the EA:

The locations and timing of treatments would continue to be selected and prioritized using a systematic process that evaluates restoration needs, determines appropriate treatments to address those needs (through use of decision matrices) and balances implementation of those activities with operational feasibility, agency capacity, and social considerations, to the extent possible.

But apparently no further consideration of environmental impacts.  Here’s a statement that caught my eye, because the whole point of NEPA (as stated in many court opinions) is to analyze effects before you take action, whereas it sure looks like their intent is to act and then see what the effects are:

If, as a result of monitoring, the effects of activities require management or maintenance treatments that fall outside of the treatment toolbox options assessed within this EA and the forthcoming decision, additional analyses could be warranted.

I’ve also got NFMA concerns if what they are doing is establishing new long-term management direction (which should be in a forest plan) without going through the forest planning process.  How are “project design” requirements different from forest plan standards?

But what was new to me was the application to developed recreation sites, as described here:

On the recreation side, the project looks to make strides to improve the visitors’ experiences by enhancing existing trails and campsites that are used heavily while closing those that are not rarely used and no longer sustainable.
“We don’t have any specific proposals in any specific campground, but we are going to look at the conditions in areas that make sense … “We don’t have a lot of hard proposals, but basically we just want to make investments in areas that have high resource protection and high visitors’ satisfaction,” Grambley said. “We’re proposing reroutes to properly layout trails because we realize that a lot of our trails go straight up a ridgeline and we don’t want that because it causes erosion and it’s not fun to hike quite honestly. So we want to make the trails more sustainable and more-friendly layouts.”

These sound like the kinds of priorities that a forest plan should establish.  But when we want to implement them?  Just trust us to know what “makes sense.”

 

Winter motorized recreation planning – behind the curve again?

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credit

The trend continues – technology makes it easier for more people to get farther into the less trammeled  parts of public lands.  Good planning would project future changes in technology over the life of a plan and – plan for it.  I haven’t researched this question directly, but my impression is that winter travel planning (required by Forest Service regulations) mostly responds to the current state of technology.  I’ve even seen statements like, “we don’t need to worry about closing these areas,” or at least “we don’t need to worry about people complaining if we close these areas,” because people can’t get to them.  What happens when that is no longer true?  NEPA requires consideration of new information relevant to environmental impacts, which may lead to changing a decision.

“Snowbikes” – I imagine there are some national forests that ought to be thinking about going back to the drawing board on their winter travel management plans (and maybe forest plans).  Especially where there are snow-dependent species like lynx and wolverine that are listed under ESA (where new information must be consulted on) or at risk of being listed (and regulatory mechanisms are a consideration).

“After Polaris bought Timbersled in 2015, that’s when things took off,”

“The snowbike market is in its infancy right now, but it’s exploding,”

“It’s a riot,”  “You can make your own line wherever you want to go.”

 

“They’re so agile,”  “You’re able to get into places you never would get into with a snowmobile.”

“It’s just like riding a dirt bike in the woods,”

“For those who have never ridden a snow bike, the best analogy I can think of is this; it is like riding a Jet Ski on sand dunes. There is a freedom unlike anything else I have ever done.”