The 2001 rule was issued in the last days of the Clinton Administration. It protected all 58.5 million acres of National Forest roadless areas, including about 4.4 million acres in Colorado, from road construction and logging, with only a few exceptions.

This is fantastic news for Colorado’s wildlife, water quality, and recreation. The Court’s ruling will help to protect places like the HD Mountains near Bayfield and Bull Mountain near Carbondale, from oil and gas development, and will spare hundreds of thousands of acres in Colorado the threat of logging.

Unfortunately, permanent protection for National Forest roadless areas is still up in the air. The Judge’s decision will certainly be appealed, and other lawsuits may challenge roadless-area protection. In short, the battle to protect National Forest roadless areas is far from over, although Colorado’s wildlife and people retain a much larger landscape that is safe from development.

On the other hand, beetle kill has reminded us of an issue that we all need to continue to take seriously, that of wildfire risk surrounding homes and community infrastructure. It is only a matter of time until our forests, whether living or dead, burn. However, reducing fuels immediately surrounding these important resources can effectively reduce risk of loss and is far more cost-effective than fire-fighting campaigns. As a result, today more than ever, we need to be diligent in ensuring that limited federal and state resources are directed where they can provide the greatest benefit, and not squandered on timber sales in the backcountry, harming forests while having little effect on fire risk or community safety.

For example, we negotiated a settlement with the Forest Service, regarding the Sierra Madre Project, in Routt National Forest, near the Wyoming border. The project wraps around the north and northwest sides of the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, in an area of considerable beetle-induced mortality. Our settlement greatly reduced the intensity of the proposed logging in areas within a corridor eligible for Wild and Scenic River designation.

Similarly, we are working on numerous other fuel-reduction projects, including the Lower Blue Wildland-Urban Interface project in Summit County. While it has good elements, such overaggressive proposals go beyond legitimate fuel reduction, and could threaten water quality and wildlife habitat.

Finally, we came to an agreement with the Forest Service to drop some harvest areas, re-route roads, and prohibit logging surrounding rare fen wetlands at the Ward Lake Project on the Grand Mesa. As with many other projects, this one underscored the tendency of the Forest Service to satisfy the interests of the timber industry, under the guise of forest health and community safety.

On the down side, our efforts to stop the largest logging project in Colorado in decades – the 1,600-acre County Line Timber Sale, along the Continental Divide Trail in Conejos County – have been unsuccessful so far. Despite an outpouring of opposition rallied through alerts, on-the-ground organizing, and field tours, Colorado Wild and a coalition of private land owners and other conservation groups were forced to file a lawsuit to stop this project from going forward. On December 6, 2006, we lost our initial lawsuit, but have filed an appeal to keep this abuse of public lands from ever becoming a reality.

The Forest Service falsely claims that timber sales, such as the County Line, are necessary to retard beetle kill, yet the agency’s own scientists and many others (see: http://www.cfri.colostate.edu/docs/cfri_insect.pdf) have determined that logging is useless in controlling the spread of bark beetles, once an outbreak has started. Colorado Wild will continue to scrutinize logging projects of all varieties and take whatever steps necessary to steer projects away from the backcountry, into areas surrounding homes and communities.

The Forest Service’s response to concerns raised by the Town of Bayfield, La Plata County, conservation groups, the vast majority of citizens commenting on the proposal, recreation groups, the Environmental Protection Agency, and even loggers were by and large written off or ignored altogether.  The forest conservation community hasn’t appealed a single other postfire salvage logging proposal in Colorado as the Forest Service reasonably heeded environmental and fiscal concerns.  Yet they refused to do so with Missionary Ridge.  Subsequently, Colorado Wild filed a 55 page appeal (241 kB) challenging approval of the Missionary Ridge salvage logging.

Durango, Bayfield and Ignacio all rely on the area for their water supply.  Despite consensus among a half dozen scientific studies that show roads are, by orders of magnitude, the major contributor to erosion, sedimentation, and water quality impacts, the Final IS ignores the presence, reconstruction, and maintenance of up to 76 miles of roads and 3 miles of “temporary” road construction.  Adding insult to injury, the Forest Service unscrupulously concludes that benefits to the timber industry outweigh impacts to Durango’s recreation and tourism based economy.

In March, the Pike San-Isabel National Forest (NF) proposed logging on 17,500 acres of the Hayman Fire area southwest of Denver, including on slopes up to 35% and road construction on slopes up to 50% that would likely cause more soil erosion than that already occurring from the fire.  Under the original proposalm, logging equipment would likely harm emerging regrowth, and expensive, taxpayer funded erosion control work may even have to be repeated on 11,800 acres.  Following Colorado Wild's extensive comments on the proposal however, the Forest Service greatly reduced the size of this timber sale.  While still a very large timber sale by Colorado standards, the final approval eliminated much of the impacts to expensive taxpayer funded seeding treatments as well as logging and road construction on steeper slopes.  Subsequently, Colorado Wild and partner organizations chose not to appeal this sale.

Colorado Wild Working to Steer Fuels Reduction Efforts Near Homes Where They
May Actually Help Protect Them, Yet Bogus Forest Health Projects Proliferating Statewide

In August 2004, the Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest approved the James Creek Fuel Reduction Project near Ward and Jamestown northwest of Boulder.  While in a good location for a fuels reduction project with many homes in the area, the proposal had major problems.  Tree thinning would be so intense that the remaining trees would likely blow down, increasing fuel loading in contradiction to the Forest Service’s fuel reduction goal.  Slash piles – non-merchantable timber left over from logging – would be huge (up to one-quarter acre in size and 20 feet high), and then burned, causing considerable soil damage.  Roads, some barely locatable now, would be greatly upgraded and left open afterwards, engendering an increase in illegal motorized trespass on private land – already a big problem in the area.  In addition, twelve miles of temporary road would have been built, and might not have been successfully closed.  Working with dozens of local residents for over a year, Colorado Wild tried to get the Forest Service to improve on the project’s bad elements.  While the Forest Service made a few favorable changes, they were not sufficient to adequately address these concerns.  On October 19, Colorado Wild therefore appealed the project alongside 16 local residents, with scores more in support.  We won our appeal based on the precedent set with the Missionary Ridge timber sale – the requirement that each National Forest track the impacts of logging and other management activities on wildlife.

The Forest Service in summer 2003 proposed the Vail Valley Project encompassing a large area west of Vail Pass down to Avon on both sides of I-70.  This too is a good location, yet burning proposed on steep slopes, along with thinning and control line construction needed for prescribed burn safety measures in up to four roadless areas, raise environmental concerns.  The Forest Service has also proposed to thin stands of trees near outbreaks of Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) to make the remaining trees more resistant to them, even though it makes far more sense to focus limited resources on some dead trees and thin live stands near residences.  Colorado Wild submitted detailed comments in November 2004 on the project, continue to monitor it, and may appeal should many ecologically damaging components not be eliminated.

Similarly, the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest seeks to address a MPB infestation in the Williams Fork drainage with the Crimson Vegetation Management Project.  Like Vail Valley, much of the proposal is impractical.  By the time units could get thinned, MPB will likely have already attacked, while some thinning is also unwisely proposed on steep slopes.

The White River National Forest has revived the Upper Blue Stewardship fuels reduction project near Frisco.  Following Colorado Wild and ski industry appeals in 2001, the Forest Supervisor pulled the project pending Forest Plan completion.  While they improved the project somewhat, damaging components remain, such as intrusion into a roadless area.  Following discussion with local county officials, Colorado Wild filed detailed comments in summer 2003.

And this is just a small sampling of all the projects proposed statewide!

 

Projects Under the Mis-Named "Healthy" Forests Restoration Act Beginning

On Dec. 3, 2003, President Bush signed Congressman Scott McInnis' (R-3rd, CO) legislation in great part implementing the Bush Administration’s “Healthy Forests Initiative.”  The euphemistically titled Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 is based on the counterfeit contention that conservation groups hold up thinning projects thus bringing more severe forest fires (pg. 1, Spring 2002, and pg. 2, Fall 2002 Newsletters).  Instead of focusing limited resources where they can do the most good – near homes and communities – the bill’s breadth includes almost every acre of non-wilderness National Forest, BLM, and other public lands.  Click here for a brief analysis of the bill.

The Forest Service has proposed the first project under the HFRA – the huge Rock Creek Project near Gore Pass on the Routt NF.  Under the HFRA, the Forest Service need only consider its proposed action, no action, and one other alternative proposed by the public if it meets the Forest Service’s purpose and need statement.  Colorado Wild submitted such an alternative, yet designed to aggressively address a mountain pine beetle infestation, this project could include logging of 13,000 acres with 18 miles of new road construction.

To supposedly reduce fire risk to homes and watersheds, the HFRA relies on scaling back environmental analysis, protection, and public participation requirements – safeguards that only partially curtail Forest Service and logging industry indiscretion.  It abolishes requirements for thorough analysis indispensable in identifying sound courses of action for what really amount to experiments designed to minimize “catastrophic” fires away from homes.  Outrageously, even were citizens able to appeal and then sue over ill-conceived projects within the inordinately short time frame allotted under the bill, judges would be forced to give deference to all Forest Service claims regardless of their merit.  The legislation fails to ensure any Forest Service fuels reduction will focus on areas that genuinely need treatment to protect homes from wildfire, or even help return more natural conditions to the forests.  Rather, it promotes logging of old growth and other sensitive areas to pay for costly fuels reduction.  It contains provisions having nothing to do with ‘Healthy Forests’, but rather promoting logging of forests with even the threat of insects or diseases – natural organisms present in every forest.  In short, a more honest title would be ¨The Subsidized Timber Industry Act¨.

With the summer of 2002’s fire season, western Republicans resolved to scapegoat environmental groups – as well as the legal and regulatory tools we use to protect wilderness quality lands – for hampering efforts to reduce a build-up of forest fire fuels.  Yet an August 2001 General Accounting Office (GAO) report (210kB) concluded that of 1,671 fuels reduction projects in 2001, only one percent had been appealed.  With the environmental community citing this study, and the media widely reporting it, the Bush Administration’s Forest Service in a single afternoon produced a sham four-page report (516kB!) concluding that environmentalists had blocked 48 percent of 326 projects through appeals and litigation.  Despite requests from Democratic Congressmen, the Forest Service refused to produce a list of project names or other details to justify its findings.  Nonetheless, Congressman Scott McInnis and other western Republicans continue to in part scapegoat environmentalists for the summer’s fires, even though they really result from a century of logging, grazing, and fire suppression, possibly global warming, and certainly the worst drought in 100 years.