Published in
Natural Resources Policy Under the Bush Administration: An Environmental Law & Policy Symposium. Volume XIV.
Roadless Reflections
by
Gloria Flora
To road
or not to road, that is the question... and millions of Americans voice their
opinions when road building is proposed in the currently unroaded areas of our
national forests. The interesting fact is that most Americans are very much in
favor of keeping roadless areas just as they are.[1]
In
2000, the GOP polling firm American
Viewpoint reported that 76% of respondents supported a proposal to stop
development of roadless areas (54% strongly) and 19% opposed the proposal (15%
strongly).[2]
Eleven state polls in 2003 conclude that an average of 74% of residents support
leaving roadless areas undeveloped.[3]
Those polls included three states from the Intermountain West (
Obviously, the issue of roadless areas in our national
forests is a powerful one. But even more obviously preservation of these areas
is important to most Americans.
Intense public interest in the Forest Service Roadless
Area Conservation Rule bodes well for the future of our national natural
resource heritage. During initial scoping for that rule, there were six hundred
public meetings and over a half a million official comments supporting the
initiative.[4] That kind
of interest in any issue is a sure indication that the United States Forest
Service (USFS) is doing its job: engaging the public in the discussion of vital
issues in contemporary land stewardship.
Claims that the definitive action to protect roadless
areas was a political stunt are simply untrue. The most contentious and
aggravating issue throughout my 23-year career with the USFS was, and continues
to be, access. Questions of travel
management and roading have been at the forefront of public land management
debates for over three decades.[5] Travel Plans resulted in more agency
employees hung in effigy than any other.
Lawsuits and appeals over timber sales planned in roadless areas were
decadal affairs that usually resulted in a loss for the Forest Service, both in
the court of law and the court of public opinion.[6]
By 2000, it was more than past time to address roadless
areas in a comprehensive manner.
Regardless of personal opinion, most Forest Service employees quietly
rejoiced that finally, the question of what to do, or not do, with roadless
areas would be resolved.
Under the Clinton Administration, widespread public involvement demonstrated
that the arguments for and against roading in roadless areas have been made
repeatedly for years; there wasn’t any real new information. Despite that, the Bush administration decided
to re-open the comment period in July of 2001.[7]
They were inundated with over 700,000 comments, again, the majority of which
favored protecting roadless areas.[8]
Roadless Area History
Protecting a portion of undeveloped public land has long
been a national priority.[9]
Starting in the 1920’s, the first wildland
inventories in the U.S. Forest Service were conducted by Aldo Leopold and
Arthur Carhart.[10]
Those surveys lead to designation of Primitive Areas.[11] Primitive Areas were the first lands
protected under the Wilderness Act of 1964.[12] The Wilderness Act also directed that further
inventories be conducted in what came to be known as the Roadless Area Review
and Evaluation (RARE I).[13] The first RARE I inventories were publicized
in 1973.[14] A flurry of lawsuits and administrative
direction from the White House put that attempt to inventory existing roadless
areas on ice and a revised and streamlined process was initiated.[15]
In 1976, the Forest Service began another inventory of
roadless areas: RARE II.[16] Theoretically, RARE II was completed in 1979,
but actually, the Forest Service just stopped the inventory without finishing
it. It was taking too long and roadless areas were being roaded faster than
they could keep the inventories updated.[17] In addition, the Forest Planning process as
directed under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 was finally
stumbling into existence.[18] Pursuant to NFMA, the Forest Service
determined that roadless inventory and
management would be done on a forest-by-forest basis through Forest Plans.[19]
Despite direction that roadless areas should not be
roaded until thorough assessments are completed, there are now 2.8 million
fewer acres of roadless land than reported by RARE II.[20] Much of the roading “just sort of happened”
and was neither recorded nor mapped.[21] The rate and methods by which unroaded lands
were being converted were not sustainable.[22] That is why when the roadless initiative was
announced by the Clinton Administration, much of the Forest Service
panicked. The Service was unsure what
areas of the national forests actually remained unroaded and few maps existed
that reflected roadless areas under current definitions.
By 1999, budget issues, the realization of the true
magnitude and condition of the USFS road system, and the irrefutable science on
the negative impact of roads on water quality, fisheries, and wildlife
culminated, finally, in a realistic perspective; the question of how to manage
a road system and roadless lands was over-ripe.[23]
More Roads than You Can
Shake a Stick At
The Forest Service has over 380,000 miles of road that they know about.[24]
“Two-track,” or user-created, roads multiply every year, entering any area
allowed by the terrain. Maintenance rising only to the level of making roads
safely passable in dry weather, was limited to about 12% of the road system on
any district or forest, and most such roads required annual attention.[25] Lack of road maintenance exacerbates erosion,
sedimentation of streams, management complexity, driving hazards, and
liability. The backlog of road maintenance
needs now exceeds $8.4 billion and environmental damage grows yearly.[26]
Roadless areas cover 58 million acres, or roughly one
third of our national forest system land.[27] Another 19% is protected through special
designations such as Wilderness.[28]
The rest is roaded, logged, mined, and otherwise available for the extraction
of natural resources, whether renewable or non-renewable.[29]
Roads totaling nearly nine times the miles in our interstate system lace these
lands.[30]
Millions of these acres have lost their biodiversity and native species, due in
large part to mislocated roads or poorly executed
traditional uses.[31]
Despite the overwhelming evidence that our national
lands have not been managed sustainably, there are still those who fight
vigorously to maintain business as usual. Those folks are in future shock,
defined by Alvin Toffler as "the shattering stress and disorientation that
we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a
time.”[32]
That’s why movement toward more sustainable practices seems so radical. In 1960, our knowledge of the world doubled
about every seven years.[33] Now, that knowledge is estimated to be
doubling every 18 months.[34]
Knowing what we know now, we can no longer deny that most activities conducted
on public lands are not sustainable.
In lay terms, we’re consuming our grandchildren’s share
of resources from our national treasure chest of natural capital. Such a
practice cannot continue. If we were using roaded areas in a sustainable manner
and restoring them as we went along, we could be enjoying a steady flow of
resources from those developed lands.[35]
We’ve dismissed restoration as too costly, yet have never stopped to calculate
the ever-accruing social and environmental costs of not restoring
degraded habitats.
But There’s Something There
I Need
The argument that not developing roadless areas denies
people access to resources is weak. If
the areas were reasonably simple to access and contained critical resources,
those resources would already have been extracted. We've had well over a hundred years to build
roads into currently unroaded areas.[36] Most of these remote areas have no roads in
them for very good reasons:
(1) the resources desired for extraction have little
market value,
(2) the cost of retrieving them is too great, and/or
(3) the cost to mitigate the impacts on co-existent
sensitive resources exceed the net value
of the extractable resources.[37]
Prices for natural resource products have not kept pace
with other commodities.[38] Costs of extraction, although lowered by
technological advances, are still insufficient to offset some natural values.[39]
Simply looking at short-term economics without considering the triple bottom
line, which includes social and environmental costs and benefits, gives a false
impression of true trade-offs.
Arguments that roadless areas are an important source of
timber are based on the fact that a number of forests scheduled harvest in
those areas.[40] It was
political necessity, not the quality or accessibility of the timber that drove
those harvest plans. The 2000 Committee
of Scientists Report, laying the groundwork for new planning regulations,, as
well as other investigative reports have confirmed what many Forest Service
employees have known for quite some time: older Forest Plans were built using a
timber optimization computer model, not a sustainable resource allocation
model.[41]
During the forest planning process, political and
industry forces pushed for higher annual timber volumes.[42] After decades of unsustainable timber
harvest, the only places where it could even be suggested that more timber was
available were in those blank, roadless spots on the map where there were
little data on trees or anything else.[43]
The Forest Service knew that there would be significant limitations and very
high costs associated with creating roads in those unroaded areas.[44]
But taxpayers have always subsidized commodity and amenity activities on
national forest lands[45].
If the timber harvests were sold cheaply enough, roads could be built.
To add perspective, note that national forests provide
only 4% of the country’s wood fiber production, less than 5% of our beef, and
0.4% of oil and gas.[46] One can hardly claim that our nation’s gross
domestic product or our marketplaces require incursions into roadless areas to
stay afloat.
Science tells us that intact, large tracts of unroaded
forests are less susceptible to disease, insect attacks and catastrophic fires.[47]
Four different studies in the last eight years conclude that fires are
generally less severe in unroaded areas and the risk of fire ignition is lower
than in roaded areas.[48] In the Roadless Area Draft Environmental
Impact Statement, the Forest Service concluded that 12% of roaded forests are
at high fire risk, compared to less than 3% of unroaded areas.[49]
Another spurious argument is that roading allows better
access for fighting fires. Most roads are not located to provide access for
safe and effective fire-fighting.[50]
Roads in canyon bottoms are particularly hazardous and unsuitable for launching
an attack on a fire.[51]
In addition, more fires start in roaded areas than unroaded, primarily due to
the greater presence of humans and motorized vehicles.[52] Given drought patterns and ninety years of
fire suppression, fire behavior and intensities call for a different approach
than driving a crew around with hand tools.[53] Now firefighting, including initial attack,
is done largely from the air.[54]
A New Modus Operandi
People frequently complain that the Forest Service doesn't operate like a
business.[55] True
enough. It is not a business; rather, it is a trust and asset management
company, but prudent practices are still necessary. With hundreds of thousands
of miles of road in existence and over an eight billion-dollar backlog of road
maintenance, what sense does it make to build more roads? Until we can close
unneeded roads and maintain necessary ones, both of which fragment habitat and
dump sediment into streams, we shouldn't be building more.
As our roadless areas diminish, ecosystem and human
demands are increasing.[56]
We must retain some unroaded lands to conserve biodiversity and to allow future
generations options for the use and conservation of resources. Biodiversity is
critical to the recovery of land and the health of the environment.[57]
Past actions in roaded areas prove that we are not very good at retaining
biodiversity once we are granted motorized access. As our population increases demand for
undeveloped land and all the attendant natural benefits will likewise increase.
Current trade policies and tax incentives favor major
corporations (coupled with price controls, subsidies, mergers and
deregulation).[58] Prices
for raw materials are kept absurdly low.[59]
Small towns aren't going to make it without help. One serious weakness in the
Roadless Area Conservation Rule, as well as in other well-intended
environmental protection actions, is that there are no transition policies or
programs to help small towns and resource dependent communities adjust their
practices and businesses to operate under a new paradigm. There is no policy to deal with future shock.
The primary reason for this lack of a transition strategy is that corporations
don't gain directly. Therefore, the problem doesn't register on the political
scale. It's easier to lobby for status quo (follow the money to multi-national
corporations) than to lobby for innovative new programs that emphasize
restoration, value-added on-site manufacturing and true sustainability (follow
the money to communities and small businesses).
We, as a nation, have to take definitive action to support small farmers,
ranchers, loggers, renewable energy entrepreneurs and small sustainable
businesses in general, if we want to diversify and maintain resource-dependent
communities. That doesn’t mean that we should simply continue unsustainable
practices, spreading them out over roadless areas once we’ve exhausted the
roaded zones. Community health can be accomplished by reinvesting in our
capital assets – our natural resources. There is a tremendous amount of work to
be done. And there is a great skill bank
in resource-dependent communities to perform the kind of work necessary to
restore watersheds and forest health. Putting the two together means current
jobs and an investment in our natural capital for the future. Honorable work
for a trust management agency and completely viable for the richest nation in
the world... there's no excuse for inaction.
The
Roadless Initiative is just one example of a public land management agency
finally admitting that we cannot continue doing what we’ve been doing and
expect conditions to improve, or even expect them to stay the same. The long-term health of our public lands and
communities, and indeed the nation, is dependent on public lands being managed
in a truly sustainable manner.
Gloria Flora served in the USFS for
23 years, most recently as
[1] Voters Say “Yes” to National Forest
Protection, Northwest Trails Archive
and Restoration Project, at http://members.efn.org/~ntarp/news/poll.htm
(last visited
[2] Dick Carter, The Wild Uintas and the Roadless Initiative,
High Uintas
Preservation council (Feb. 2000), at
http://www.hupc.org/Archive/newsletters/Feb.%202000/roadless_intiative_lynx_400.htm (last visited
[3] Voters Say “Yes” to National Forest Protection, Northwest Trails Archive and Restoration Project, at http://members.efn.org/~ntarp/news/poll.htm (last visited Apr.13, 2004) (noting that California, New Mexico, Colorado, Tennessee, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon conducted polls regarding roadless areas).
[4] United States Forest Service, 3 Forest Service
Roadless Area Conservation Rule Final Environmental Impact Statement: Agency
Response to Public Comments 40 (2000), available at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/rule/zRULE_Facts_1-5-01.htm
(last visited
[5] Hal Rothman, Bandelier:
Administrative History, Ch. 7 ¶¶ 1-6 (1988), at http://www.nps.gov/band/adhi/adhi7.htm
(last visited
[6] See, e.g., Thomas v. Peterson, 589 F.Supp. 1139 (D. Idaho 1984), aff’d in part, reversed in part and remanded by 753 F.2d 754 (9th Cir. 1985), appeal after remand 841 F.2d 332 (9th Cir. 1988) (holding that the National Environmental Policy Act required Forest Service to prepare an environmental impact on approving timber roads in roadless areas); see also, Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain v. U.S. Forest Service, 137 F.3d 1372 (9th Cir. 1998) (noting that Forest Service failed to comply with NFMA when considering Timber sales in the Cuddy Mountain Roadless Area).
[7] United States Forest Service, Advance Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking: Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Request for Comment
66 (
[8] United States Forest Service, Advanced Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking: Roadless Area Conservation Rule, Executive Summary i (
[9] Land
and Water Conservation: History and
Background, The Complete Guide
to Environmental Careers in the 21st
Century, at
http://www.eco.org/Guide/Chap11/history.html (last visited
[10] Programs: Mapping and analysis support for
the California Wild Heritage Campaign, Sierra
Biodiversity Institute ¶ 8, at http://www.sierrabiodiversity.org/programs.html
(last modified
[11] Wilderness.net, Timeline for Management of Public Lands in the United States (2004), at http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=legistimeline (“The Forest Service issues the L-20 regulation to protect some of its “primitive” areas from commercial development until management plans are developed”).
[12] Wilderness Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-577, 78 Stat. 890 (1964).
[13]
[14] See 148
Cong. Rec. S 3162-02 (
[15] See, e.g., Wyoming Outdoor Council v. Butz, 484 F.2d 1244 (10th Cir.1973) (enjoining RARE I pending completion of an Environmental Impact Statement and compliance with NEPA).
[16] United States Forest Service, RARE II: Final Environmental Statement – Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (Jan. 1979), available at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/data/pdfdocs/rare2.pdf.
[17] During the decade of the 70’s timber harvest increased three-fold.
[18] 16 U.S.C. §1604(a) (2004); 36 C.F.R. § 219.2. (2004) (describing the planning process).
[19] CITE
[20] United States Forest Service, Roadless Area Conservation Final Rule: Questions and Answers, 5-6 (2001) at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/rule/qa/rule_qa.PDF.
[21] See, Kootenai Tribe of
[22] Press
Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, Protection of
(
[23] In 1999, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman announced an eighteen month moratorium on new road construction in unroaded areas in most national forests, allowing the Forest Service to develop a long-term road policy for the National Forest Transportation System. "Because a road is one of the most indelible marks man can leave on the landscape, it is our responsibility to safeguard the often irreplaceable ecological value of unroaded areas until a permanent policy can protect our last great open spaces, our water and wildlife, and the economic health of forest communities.” Press Release, United States Forest Service, Forest Service Limits New Road Construction in Most National Forests (Feb. 11, 1999), available at http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/road_mgt/nr-11feb99.shtml (last visited Apr. 12, 2004).
[24] United
States Forest Service, Overview, Road Management Website, at http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/road_mgt/overview.shtml
(last visited
[25]
[26]
[27] Special
Areas; Roadless Area Conservation 66 Fed. Reg. 3244-01, 3245-01 (
[28] United
States Forest Service, Acreages of landcover types within Inventoried Roadless Areas and
Wilderness Areas grouped by mega-region, Roadless
Area Conservation at
http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/feis/data/gis/far/far210_table_far13.htm
(last visited
[29] See, e.g., National Wilderness Preservation System, 16 U.S.C. § 1133 (2004) (stating that the US mining laws and all laws pertaining to mineral leasing shall extend to those national forest lands designated as "wilderness areas"; subject, however, to reasonable regulations governing ingress and egress as may be prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture consistent with the use of the land for mineral location and development and exploration, drilling, and production).
[30] 40 Years of the US Interstate Highway System: An Analysis, The Public Purpose at www.publicpurpose.com/freeway1.htm (last visited Apr. 12, 2004) (noting we now have 42,700 miles of operational interstate highway); United States Forest Service, Overview, Road Management Website at http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/road_mgt/overview.shtml (last visited Apr. 12, 2004) (noting that The Forest Service has over 380,000 miles of road that they know about).
[31] See World Wildlife Fund & Conservation Biology Inst., Importance of Roadless Areas in Biodiversity Conservation: A Scientific Perspective 9–10 (June 2002) (showing that certain populations of endangered species avoid roads, and many can not be found in roaded areas), available at http://www.consbio.org/cbi/applied_research/roadless/roadless_pdf.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2004).
[32] Alvin Toffler, Future Shock 4 (1970).
[33] Peter Russell, Waking Up in Time 19 (1998) (applying Georges Anderla’s theory on the rate of increase for collective human knowledge).
[34]
[35] This is after all the objective of the maintenance of the National Forest Wilderness. Wilderness – Primitive Areas: Objectives, 36 C.F.R. §293.2 (2003) (“National Forest Wilderness resources shall be managed to promote, perpetuate, and where necessary, restore the wilderness character of the land . . .”).
[36] United States Forest Service, Roadless Area Conservation Final Rule: Questions and Answers, 2-3 (2001) (stating that the Forest Service began work on roadless initiatives in 1972, so that prior to the regulation road construction and mining generally was unregulated), available at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/rule/qa/rule_qa.PDF.
[37]
[38] See, e.g., Neal Gilbertsen
& Dan Robinson, Natural Res.:
[39] Chad Hanson, Ending Logging on Natural Forests: The Facts in the Year 2000, Earth Island J., Fall 2000, at E2, available at http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/fall2000/eia_fall2000jmp.
[40] See, e.g., Slide Ridge Timber Sale
Environmental Impact Statement, 66 Fed. Reg. 58710-01 (
[41] K. Norman Johnson, James Agee et al., Sustaining the People’s Lands: Recommendations for Stewardship of the National Forests and Grasslands into the Next Century, 97 Journal of Forestry, 6, 7 (May 1999) (discussing the need to adopt a broad concept of sustainability for resource management).
[42] National Polls Show Support for Roadless Area Protection, Northwest Trails Archive and Restoration Project, Feb. 14, 2004, available at http://members.efn.org/~ntarp/news/poll.htm (discussing the politicians, timber and mining interests opposing the Forest Service initiative to stop new road construction in currently roadless areas of forest).
[43] Stop Demagoguing –
Roadless Initiative was Overdue, Great
Falls Tribune,
[44] What Do Scientists Say About Roadless Areas?, World Wildlife Fund, available at http://www.worldwildlife.org/forestfires/scientists.htm (noting that many of the Forest Service’s existing roads are in disrepair and their road maintenance backlog totals more than $8 billion).
[45] See, e.g., Karen Moskowitz, John Muir Project Reports, John Muir Project, Jan. 1999, at http://www.johnmuirproject.org/documents/NF%20Contributions%20Economic%20Report.pdf (discussing the economic of expenditures from taxpayers and other sources by the Forest Service).
[46] What Do Scientists Say About Roadless Areas?, World Wildlife Fund, available at http://www.worldwildlife.org/forestfires/scientists.htm (arguing that the extensive network of Forest Service roads is justified to serve industries such as timber, oil and gas, although only four percent of the country’s wood fiber production and 0.4 percent of oil and gas comes from the national forest system).
[47]
[48] Scientific Basis for Roadless Area Conservation, World Wildlife Fund and the Conservation Biology Institute, June 2002, available at http://www.worldwildlife.org/forests/forestssection.cfm?sectionid=208&newspaperid=17&contentid=925 (noting that the evidence suggests that fire suppression activities have had a lower impact on roadless areas than on roaded portions of the national forests, and citing data that indicate the lower impact might be attributable to limited access and steep terrain).
[49] Catastrophic Fires, World Wildlife Fund, available at http://www.worldwildlife.org/forestfires/catastrophic.htm (citing the Forest Service’s assessment which shows that 12 percent of roaded national forests are at high risk for fire and in roadless areas, this figure is less than three percent).
[50] Our National Forests: Once They’re Gone, They’re Gone Forever, Save Forests Now.net, available at http://environet.policy.net/forests/national/ (discussing the lower construction standards for logging roads and the difficulties these standards pose for multiple use roads).
[51] The Ten and Eighteen, at http://www.angelfire.com/nv/blm/safety.html (last visited Apr. 11, 2004) (discussing the ten standard fire orders and eighteen watchout situations developed by the wildland fire community, and emphasizing the importance of maintaining good visibility and escape routes); See, Kathy Murphy, 10 & 18 Posters, United States Forest Service, at http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/safety/10_18/10_18_posters.html (discussing posters of 10 standard fire orders and 18 watch out situations common for firefighting).
[52] Catastrophic Fires, World Wildlife Fund, at http://www.worldwildlife.org/forestfires/catastrophic.htm
(last visited
[53] Fire Management: Fire policy and reports, programs and
priorities, United States Forest
Service, at http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/management/index.html
(last visited
[54] William
B. Scott, Firefighting’s Smoky Horizons, Aviation Week and Space Technology,
[55] Randal
O’ Toole, Run Them Like Businesses: Natural Resource Agencies in an Era of
Federal Limits, The Thoreau
Institute, available at http://www.ti.org/business.html
(last visited
[56] Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation 66 Fed. Reg. 3244-01 (Jan. 12, 2001) (noting that expanding populations, and the pressures they place on natural resources, compelled promulgation of the roadless area conservation rule).
[57] United States Forest Service, National Report on Sustainable Forests: Analyses of the Indicators 11 (Oct. 2003) (discussing the importance of conservation of biological diversity), available at http://www.fs.fed.us/research/sustain/sustain/Analyses%20of%20the%20Indicators.pdf.
[58] CITE
[59] See, e.g., Karyn Moskowitz, Economic Contributions and Expenditures in the National Forests, John Muir Project Report 3, Jan. 1999 (examining the disproportionate value of services provided by ecosystems compared to what the government charges to extract them), available at http://www.johnmuirproject.org.