Update: it appears that the Framework has been updated; now has examples.
Received a note that the official FS planning blog is now up with improved capabilities.
Here is the link.
21st Century Problems, 21st Century Tactics, OR The Timber Wars Are So Over
In lodgepole country.. this quote from Andrew King
“This facility is not a power plant,” King said. “It’s all about forest health, and energy is the byproduct.”
Discussions of a biomass energy plant in Vail in this article.
Another interesting story about the Ocala.. are these the kind of 21st Century National Forest issues that were pretty much unimagined when NFMA was passed?
Reading these two stories made me think 1) are forests across the country so different and dealing with such different issues that planning requirements will always poorly fit someone, and 2) to what extent are we still stuck in a veg-o-centric view of what the issues and problems are; have we really thought about planning for social and economic problems and needs of the future?
Framework for New Planning Rule Posted on Forest Service Blog
The concepts for the new framework are posted here.
Here are the questions:
Please take a moment to provide us with your thoughts on:
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Whether the concepts are clear.
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What you like about them.
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If there are any major gaps or flaws in the approach.
We encourage posting whether on this blog or the official one or both..we’ll probably highlight and link here the ones we think most interesting on the official blog.
Should Restoration be the Forest Service Mission?
The first “substantive principle” in last year’s Federal Register notice for a new Forest Service planning rule is restoration. How did we get here? Should we get out? Before we adopt the restoration idea as a central theme of the rule, we need to be aware of the pitfalls.
The idea of restoration started with site-based approaches on well-defined areas such as a minesite or a wetland. In the 1990s, a need was recognized to expand the scope of restoration ecology to embrace broader scales and tackle landscape-scale problems. The term “Forest Landscape Restoration” was a term first coined in 2000 by a group of forest restoration experts that met in Segovia Spain. Internationally, several organizations such as the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration have formed to address the worldwide loss of half of the Earth’s forests over the last 200 years.
There is currently a wealth of information about the emerging field of ecological restoration. The non-profit Society for Ecological Restoration publishes a Restoration Ecology journal that helps explain restoration processes and descriptions of techniques. The Society also works with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to publish an Ecological Restoration journal about current projects and techniques, and essays about the restoration idea.
Largely due to concerns about fuels and increases in large fires, the Forest Service started thinking about restoring fire regimes affected by a century of fire suppression. Along with concerns about invasive species, declining road maintenance budgets, and climate change, in 2005, the Forest Service chartered a team to look at the evolving science of landscape restoration, and developed an Ecosystem Restoration Framework. The framework made the following recommendations:
- adopt a national policy regarding ecosystem restoration, including defining ecosystem restoration as “the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed;”
- increase the productivity of the agency’s restoration efforts through improved integration of various programs spanning all Deputy areas;
- use national, forest, and project planning to engage Forest Service resources, partners, and stakeholders in identifying and implementing restoration needs and priorities;
- use budget and performance incentives to increase accomplishment of ecosystem restoration objectives.
Based on these recommendations, an interim directive was initially written last year and updated in March. This directive, Forest Service Manual id-2020 , says that ecological restoration is a “foundational policy” for all program areas for the National Forest System. It defines ecological restoration as:
Ecological restoration. The process of assisting the recovery of resilience and adaptive capacity of ecosystems that have been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. Restoration focuses on establishing the composition, structure, pattern, and ecological processes necessary to make terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems sustainable, resilient, and healthy under current and future conditions.
As a signal of the intent of the Administration, the Secretary of Agriculture spoke prominently about ecological restoration in his August 2009 speech in Seattle about the Forest Service.
Then, the restoration idea quickly got more attention when the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program was established in the 2009 Omnibus Public Lands Management Act. Now restoration needs were tied to money, and not surprisingly, needs were identified nearly everywhere.
Restoration is now being offered as a central theme of a new Forest Service planning rule. But there are several problems.
First, the Forest Service may have troubles reconciling the idea that there are “degraded” ecosystems which must be restored, with its 100-plus year history of managing these lands. Are agency leaders willing to admit that past forest management policies were wrong? Are these past policies continuing today? How can they be changed?
I remember talking to a representative of the timber industry at a regional roundtable meeting on the planning rule in Rapid City, South Dakota. He told me that there are many “managed” forests that aren’t in need of restoration because of past forest management practices. He described those instances where timber management has been used to thin forests and reduce fuels.
Second, for some forest types, there isn’t a clear idea about what restoration might look like. For instance, in lodgepole pine, trees will eventually burn or die from insects. The presence of large fires or insect outbreaks does not mean that the system is out of balance.
The idea of restoration leads to several value-laden questions: restoring to what? restoring for what purpose? what do you do once things are restored? Earlier posts on this blog have discussed the confusion with the Forest Service multiple-use mission, and the wicked problem that Forest Planning attempts to solve. In describing the social problem posed by the idea of restoration, Eric Higgs from the University of Alberta notes that restoration efforts rest in the notion of redemption, where we heal ourselves culturally and perhaps spiritually by healing nature. Because nature and ecosystems are historically and culturally contingent ideas, Higgs suggests that there is no one single, fixed, correct restoration for any particular site, although structure, composition, and function criteria may provide tight guidelines for success of a project.
Third, shouldn’t the idea of “maintenance” of ecosystems at least get equal billing? A regional watershed program manager recently told me that “maintenance” is a well thought out priority for land management, as captured in the mantra for the Northwest Forest Plan: “Save the best, restore the rest”. Maintenance means your first priority is to make sure that ecosystems that are already functioning well stay that way. Maintenance gets to the core of what the agency does on the landscape – all the mitigation measures (i.e soil and water BMPs) that we supposedly implement for our projects and for third party authorizations, to ensure that we “do no harm”. Even if it’s important to fix what’s broken, it’s also important to not break anything else.
The problem with a restoration only focus is that it could potentially reward bad behavior (you made a mess, now you get money to clean it up) rather than reinforcing good behavior (you implemented BMPs, monitored to see that they were effective, and nothing went wrong).
Fourth, there are the purported “myths” about restoration ecology. In a 2005 article by Robert Hilderbrand, Adams Watts, and April Randle, the authors describe five problems with the restoration idea. First, there is a problem with the typical assumption that ecosystems develop in a predictable fashion toward a specified, static, end-point or climax. Many Forest Service planners these days are enamored by the “desired future condition” description as the central part of a Forest Plan. But when systems are “reset” they usually don’t end at the same point, and the idea that you can restore a “carbon copy” of an ecosystem is the first myth.
There is also the problem with the idea that restoration of the physical structure will result in the same biological response. The authors point out the “field of dreams” myth – that if you build it, they will come. It’s not apparent that you will get the same distribution of species when you create the previous habitat.
Other myths include the idea that you can “fast-forward” succession and ecosystem-development, that you can develop a “cookbook” of practices that can be used to restore landscapes, and the “sisyphus complex” that nature can be controlled. We may describe detailed and specific desired conditions in a Forest Plan, but can we really control the outcomes?
The authors are clearly in the adaptive management camp, and they explain that to get beyond the myths, projects need decision points along the way for possible interventions with contingency plans if things aren’t proceeding appropriately.
In previous attempts to develop a planning rule, the Forest Service has committed to the idea of “sustainability” as the guiding star for management of National Forests. This idea flows from the legal mandate under the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act. The idea of ecosystem services is an extension of the multiple use mission. Perhaps restoration is a part of this mission, because the ecosystem must be functioning in order to provide the services. But restoration may not be the full story, and perhaps it’s not the best way to describe the important work that must be done.
Harnessing the Power of the Many: Is the Forest Service Effectively Using the Internet?
Last weekend, I was recreating with family and got quizzed on a specific hazard tree removal project. Why did they leave the slash? Couldn’t they cut it up for firewood? Don’t they know how bad it looks near a major trailhead?
I certainly don’t know what the answers were, though I had ideas. Then when I got home, I noticed this essay from Bob Berwyn about another project. This is definitely worth a read, as Bob writes about his observations and questions about this project and its design. It’s true that Bob knows more than an average passerby; but it seems like we should be encouraging public interest and questions as a learning experience- even an approach to science (or conservation) education.
It’s great that people are interested in projects, but I have to wonder if in this day and age we could have some simple “how this project was designed and why” that could be linked to Google Earth.
Like the trailheads are on the Fourteeners website here. In general, the Fourteeners website tells you everything you want to know about those trails. You can also scan the trip reports to find out the latest conditions.
I wonder what it would take to start something like this for FS recreation or all lands recreation? Just think- you could find out that campgrounds and dispersed sites were full without driving around. You could find out that the roads or trail is still closed with snow. We could harness the power of the people who are out there (many, many more people than employees) simply by providing a place for them to leave comments.
The Park Service has visitor observation of trail conditions for Rocky Mountain National Park, so it is possible for feds to do such things (although it is kludgier than 14ers.com, in my view).
What if the Forest Service could harness the power of the internet to 1) tell the story of our projects, 2) keep visitors apprised of recreation conditions, and 3) to do some kinds of monitoring (OHVs off trails, regeneration, ?).
Do people have examples of forests and districts who have done some creative work in this arena? Please share.
A Good Word for Politics
From a piece by John Andrews in today’s Denver Post.
Hecklers, on guard. On this Independence Day, in a stormy election year when Americans are out of sorts, I’m fool enough to mount a soapbox and orate upon the proposition that “politics” should be an honored word, not a dirty word, in our vocabulary.
Politics deserves its bad name, you scoff. It’s a hustle wherein we are lied to and led on, defrauded and dumped on. H.L. Mencken nailed it, you say, when he groused that an election is but an advance auction of stolen goods. Will Rogers was right that just as “con” is the opposite of “pro,” so Congress is the opposite of progress. Fie upon the politicians, the parties, and all their tribe.
I concede your indictment — up to a point. But before you let fly with the rotten vegetables, remember that the Greek derivation of politics, 2,500 years and counting, simply denotes those things concerning the community, or city, and its individual members, or citizens. Can we write off those things? Not unless we’re prepared to live in solitude as hermits or in servitude as slaves. I’ll take my chances with politics, messy as it is.
Like any human endeavor, politics can be done in a noble or a base way. July 4 commemorates the noblest political moment of all — our nation’s birth in genius, blood and fire. But the Fourth also looks forward, reminding us how timeless our political challenges are across the centuries, powdered wigs and parchments aside.
Prove it to yourself today by reading quickly through the Declaration of Independence. The framers, after a lofty opening argument on “laws of nature” and “self-evident truths,” enumerate specific grievances like hammer-blows to pound home the case for change. They deliver (speaking of indictments) a 27-count rap sheet convicting king and parliament of intolerable misrule.
This piece is worth a read in its entirety, although the examples are mostly Colorado politics.
Often in natural resource or environmental disputes, we read opinions that infer that politics is inherently bad and that “science” is a better decision tool. You have probably seen the raised eyebrow and sneering tone, as in “that decision was political.”
There are varying degrees of this; one thing they have in common is an apparent lack of reading in the field of science and technology studies. In this field, people study how to use science in policy; yet many of their findings are not listened to or acknowledged by people attempting to make the science-first case. Yes, irony abounds here.
On this Fourth of July, let’s reflect on how we all (whether we like to admit to it or not) are continuing the Nation’s work of politics.
House Oil and Gas Proposal Contains NFMA Forest Plan Viability Provision
Language that supplements the species provisions of NFMA is included in the discussion draft of a comprehensive oil and gas bill being reviewed by the House Natural Resources Committee. The latest discussion draft of H.R. 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act (CLEAR Act) was unveiled by chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.V) last year and discussed at a hearing on Wednesday. The proposal is getting a lot of attention and may be moving quickly because of its reforms of both onshore and offshore oil and gas management in light of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Section 228 of the draft relates specifically to Forest Service planning, and regulations that would be issued under this section are deemed to be NFMA regulations. It says that the Secretary of Agriculture or Interior in cooperation with State fish and wildlife agencies “shall plan for and manage planning areas under the Secretary’s respective jurisdiction in order to maintain sustainable populations of native species and desired non-native species within each planning area” consistent with (a) FLPMA, (b) NFMA, and (c) all other applicable laws. The definition of “sustainable populations” is similar to the 1982 planning rule viability language: “The term ‘sustainable populations’ means a population of a species that has a high likelihood of persisting well-distributed through its range within a planning area based on the best available scientific information, including information obtained through the monitoring program . . ., regarding its habitat and ecological conditions, abundance and distribution.” The Secretary would certify that each Forest Plan would comply with this provision. If there are factors affecting wildlife sustainability that are outside of the Agency’s control, the Secretary would certify that to the maximum extent practicable any project does not increase the likelihood of extirpation from the area covered by the Forest Plan.
The draft language would also require the monitoring of “focal species” to determine their population status and trend. The Forest Plan monitoring program would provide for both monitoring of habitats as well as population surveys. Focal species are defined as species whose “population status and trends are believed to provide useful information regarding the effects of management activities, or other factors, on the diversity of ecological systems to which they belong, and to validate the monitoring of habitats and ecological conditions.” This focal species concept is similar to what was used in the 2000 planning rule.
The language also requires coordination with state and local governments, other Federal agencies, and NGOs to maintain sustainable populations, develop strategies to address the impacts of climate change on species, establish linkages between habitats and discrete populations, and reintroduce extirpated species where appropriate.
The Forest Service’s Fatal Flaw?
Guest Post by Bethanie Walder, Wildlands CPR. (as requested by Martin Nie)
Oedipus Rex, Macbeth, Willy Loman, Tony Soprano, and … the Forest Service? A diverse group with a common theme – tragic or fatal flaws. From ancient literature to modern times, people have written about, read about and dissected the concept of the fatal flaw. High school and college classes abound with papers about tragic heroes, fatal flaws, and what can be learned from them. While it’s been a long time since I’ve taken such a class, and my metaphorical synapses are a little rusty, it seems to me that the Forest Service may have a fatal flaw when it comes to implementing their new restoration vision: accountability.
One word may be too simplistic to describe the whole problem – which is really an issue of infrastructure-deficiency. Basically, the Forest Service has no staff, program, or office dedicated to implementing restoration at either the policy or on-the-ground levels, yet they have adopted restoration as their new vision for the 21st Century. The problem is, you can’t have a 21st Century vision without a commensurate infrastructure to enable you to implement that vision. To adapt a well known metaphor, “if all the Forest Service has is a chainsaw, then every restoration opportunity will be a tree.” The infrastructure and accountability issue is deep-seated and emblematic of how hard it is for the Forest Service to adapt to changing conditions – both politically and on-the-ground. To get a sense of whether this really is a tragic flaw, here are a few quick internet definitions of the concept (emphasis added in all definitions below):
“A tragic flaw is a literary term that refers to a personality trait of a main character that leads to his or her downfall. In other words, a character with a tragic flaw is in need of some kind of attitude adjustment.”
“The tragic hero is a longstanding literary concept, a character with a Fatal Flaw like Pride who is doomed to fail in search of their Tragic Dream despite their best efforts or good intentions.”
While many people within the agency really do have the best of intentions when it comes to restoration, I am concerned that the Forest Service, without an “attitude adjustment,” is doomed to fail.
For more than a century, the Forest Service has operated largely as a provider of natural resources like timber, oil, gas, grazing, and even recreation. But supplying timber is what the agency is most known for. They’ve created an infrastructure that enables them to do this – though environmental accountability has long been a problem. In 2009, however, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack outlined a new vision for the Forest Service: restoration. While creative agency staff have been implementing restoration projects for years, Vilsack defined a new guiding restoration vision with an emphasis on clean water.
The new vision however, still encompasses plenty of resource extraction. The agency’s proposed Fiscal Year 2011 budget combines three major budgetary programs (timber, fisheries and wildlife, vegetation and watersheds) into one large pool to promote and hasten restoration activities on national forests. The proposed Integrated Resource Restoration Program or “IRR” (see RIPorter 15:1) would funnel nearly $700 million into a single funding bucket for “restoration.” The result is likely to be that every new timber sale will be a “restoration sale.” Again, if allyou have is a chainsaw, then every problem is most certainly a tree.
Accountability for how this funding would be spent, and whether or not it would result in real watershed restoration on-the-ground, is nowhere to be found. Similarly, the budget has no recommendations for the type of infrastructure changes (as opposed to simply changing funding mechanisms) that would enable them to implement such a program effectively and with accountability.
But this lack of accountability and capacity is not solely related to the IRR. The agency as a whole does NOT currently have the infrastructure needed to implement a robust, comprehensive, effective and viable restoration effort, yet they are asking for an enormous pot of funding to be dedicated to “restoration.” Their tragic flaw, therefore, may be their failure to create a new infrastructure to develop, promote, direct and implement their watershed restoration plans. While only the Forest Service can determine the exact infrastructure needed, we have some preliminary recommendations. For example, we think they should develop a national Watershed Restoration Program, led by a national Director of Watershed Restoration, with regional Restoration Directors, and we have proposed this to the agency. These staff should be trained in hydrology and/or aquatic/fisheries ecology, and they should be tasked with developing and implementing clear, science-based, ecoregion-specific restoration agendas for the agency that put resource needs over economic returns.
Lest this seem somewhat trivial, here’s a first-hand example of why Wildlands CPR thinks it so important for the Forest Service to create a proper structure to achieve their vision. The agency has received $180 million over the last three years to implement Legacy Roads and Trails specifically to restore and protect clean drinking water and other aquatic and fisheries resources impacted by roads. Many fisheries, hydrology, and soils staff we’ve spoken with love this initiative, and it provides an incredible opportunity to move towards Vilsack’s vision. But because of their infrastructure, Legacy Roads and Trails, a potentially brilliant watershed restoration effort, is largely run by engineers. That’s not bad in and of itself (there are some enlightened engineers working on it), but quite frankly, most engineers love roads and have been trained to construct things. Few people like to remove their creations, yet road reclamation is a key purpose of Legacy Roads and Trails.
Initially, not recognizing their tragic flaw, we pushed the agency both to implement Legacy Roads and Trails immediately based on pressing needs, and to undertake a long-overdue national analysis of their road system to determine which roads they still need, and which they can reclaim or close. Way back in 2001, the Forest Service adopted a long-term roads policy that provided guidance for identifying a smaller, more affordable, and less ecologically damaging “minimum road system” that would meet recreational and resource management needs. Their 2001 policy envisioned the reclamation of 80-120,000 miles of system roads. To date, they have largely failed to identify that minimum system, even though doing so would provide the blueprint for how to spend Legacy Roads and Trails money.
But engineers are basically in charge of Legacy Roads and Trails, and thus in charge of implementing the minimum roads system, albeit with help from recreation and watershed staff. In March I asked some of the lead engineers in DC about their plans for this minimum road system. I was dismayed, but not surprised, to learn that they only thought they would have to get rid of about 25,000 miles to achieve it. This reflects the tragic flaw. When I asked the Chief about this and how to provide the accountability needed to ensure that a truly ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system is identified, he said that it wouldn’t just be the responsibility of the engineers, they would engage other departments. But how? And who has final authority? Where does the buck stop? Why isn’t there someone, a national Watershed Restoration Director for example, who is responsible for ensuring that the final decisions are appropriately balanced?
And this is only for identifying a minimum road system. What happens when you scale that up to $700 million a year or more with the proposed IRR? With no watershed restoration program, no Director of Restoration, and no accountability, it seems impossible for the agency to implement a new restoration vision effectively, or even at all. Unless, that is, they get an attitude adjustment – or as the case may be, an infrastructure adjustment.
Without a new watershed restoration program, the IRR, Legacy Roads and Trails, and any other new restoration efforts are likely to be mere variations on an old theme, as the resource extraction mentality and structure of the agency butts up against their theoretical 21st Century vision. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The agency can make an attitude adjustment, they can create the necessary infrastructure and accountability, and they can implement the restoration vision that Secretary Vilsack and others have laid out. In typical tragedies, the “hero” is incapable of overcoming their flaw, and thus they fail. But this isn’t a story, it’s real life, and it doesn’t have to be a tragedy.
This essay originally appeared at http://www.wildlandscpr.org/article/forest-services-fatal-flaw
Senator Byrd on Public Service
Words to live by for all public servants (and those in the policy business) from the late Senator Byrd.
“In the real world, exemplary personal conduct can sometimes achieve much more than any political agenda. Comity, courtesy, charitable treatment of even our political opposites, combine with a concerted effort to not just occupy our offices, but to bring honor to them, will do more to inspire our people and restore their faith in us, their leaders, than millions of dollars of 30 second spots or glitzy puff pieces concocted by spinmeisters.”
Dreaming about Reforming Public Land Laws
It has been 40 years since public land laws have been systematically reviewed by a land law commission, the longest period ever separating their use. Much of the gridlock in how public lands are managed can be traced back to statutory language.
Lawyers and policy-makers met at the University of Colorado Law Center in early June to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Public Land Law Review Commission’s Report “One Third of the Nation’s Land“, and to reflect on the need for a new Commission and a new report to address the challenges for public lands in the 21st century.
The 1970 report led to the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). According to Charles Wilkinson, FLPMA was a textbook example of Congress taking the long view – carefully studying the problem through a commission, and then crafting a bill which addressed those concerns. He noted that the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) was very different – it went through Congress in less than a year because of a timber cutting crisis.
The speakers at the conference generally concluded that today’s political environment makes it difficult to repeat a 1970-type commission. Congress is too polarized. We may be too impatient to repeat the process that took six years from 1964 to 1970. There may not be a political sponsor like Wayne Aspinall, the Congressman from Colorado who pushed for the formation of the Commission as part of a 1964 compromise legislative package which enabled the package of the Wilderness Act. In addition, the problems today with public land management may not be grabbing the attention of the public, more concerned with the economy and other pressing matters.
Much has changed since 1970.
Norman James, a Phoenix attorney, observed that the review commission did not anticipate that wildlife preservation would often dominate public land management after the passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. He gave an example of the dominant role played by management of the Mexican spotted owl in Arizona and New Mexico, which led to dramatic reductions in timber sale volumes, essentially destroying the region’s forest products industry.
Todd True, an attorney with Earthjustice, noted that the commission hinted about “fish and wildlife values”, although the idea that public lands play a critical role in fish and wildlife protection may not have been fully developed or its implications well understood in 1970.
Undersecretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman, the keynote speaker at the conference who oversees the Forest Service, explained that 110 million acres of National Forest System land are in need of restoration. Historically there has been 5 million acres a year of fire, but we could be approaching 10 million acres a year of fire. Fire is a threat to water quality. Sherman also said that there are 17 million acres across the West dying from bark beetles. In Colorado, he said that 10,000 trees a day will fall down over the next 10 years. Sherman said that he wants to emphasize an “all lands” approach, working across sister agencies, other federal agencies, state agencies, and private landowners. He wants to focus more on water, thinking about ecosystem services, and responding to climate change.
Rebecca Watson, former Department of Interior assistant secretary in charge of the BLM and MMS under the Bush administration, explained that the 1970 report was written before the shock of the 1973 Arab Embargo hit our country and underscored the depth of our dependence on imported oil. Like today, however, the report was written in the wake of a terrible offshore oil spill that came to dominate the management of the Outer Continental Shore.
BYU law school dean Jim Rasband said that the February 2010 leak of an Interior Department memorandum listing potential candidates for national monument proclamations reignited a debate about the Antiquities Act and the president’s power to proclaim monuments without notice or any form of public participation. His presentation asked if there should be an ethical dimension to the political “trophy hunting” of monument designation, or do “only losers care about process?”
Indiana law professor Rob Fischman observed that the two major issues facing public land planning are funding and climate change, two topics with little or no treatment in the 1970 Report. Climate change has undermined historic benchmarks for ecosystem management. Climate change is now the principal rationale for better federal interagency coordination. Regarding funding decisions, Fischman said that current laws are good at managing between conflicting uses, but not good at managing between competing uses.
Adjunct Colorado law professor Joe Feller explained that public lands livestock grazing provides a difficult challenge to the application of any theory of, or prescription for, public land planning and management. On the mostly arid or semi-arid lands of the West, grazing’s adverse impacts are manifold and its administrative costs often exceed its economic benefit. Former Interior solicitor Bill Myers countered by mentioning the environmental ethic of Western ranchers, and the dangers of the loss of ranches adjacent to National Forests to subdivision and development.
Utah environmentalist Scott Groene concluded that federal land management agencies have not been effectively addressing recreation-related problems, including impacts of motorized recreation activities. Blue Ribbon Coalition president Greg Mumm said that motorized recreation is extremely popular, and one in five Americans 16 and older participate in some form of off-highway vehicle recreation each year. Moreover, virtually every public land user is motorized at some point – it’s more a question of if or when they park their vehicles.
Summaries of the presentations are posted here on the University of Colorado Natural Resource Law Center website.