Conservation Northwest

Roads and wildlife Roads help get us to trailheads, the jumping off places for many adventures. Taylor Ridge in the Kettle River Range. Photo Derrick Knowles Derrick Knowles Columbia Highlands campaign director, derrick@conservationnw.org What comes next Roads to somewhere A lot can be said for the negative consequences to fish and wildlife from the maze of roads that crisscross much of our public lands. This newsletter travels that terrain well with science and rational arguments for keeping some roads open and putting others to rest. But for most Americans, roads are a symbol of freedom (unless, maybe, you're someone stuck in Puget Sound commuter traffic). Roads are the way out of the city and the path to the mountains, parks, and wild areas come weekends and holidays. Nothing beats the feeling of leaving the pavement behind when you hit that gravel on the final stretch to your favorite trail, lake, or campsite. The reality is that we need roads, both the paved highway kind for work, travel, and commerce, and the gravel forest road kind to get to many of the special wild places that make our lives better. Roads to everywhere As those of us who have spent much time exploring the gravel ribbons on a nearby piece of Forest Service ground know, we the taxpayers have done an exceptional job at building roads across our public lands. There are few places left in the US where a person can hike, bike, or pack in horseback and get more than a few miles away from some kind of road. [13.7 miles to be exact! See page 4. - Ed.] In the heyday of road building that ensued after World War II to open up pristine public lands for logging and mining, many roads were built on top of pack trails that had previously provided backcountry access to what was often, effectively, wilderness. While the roads, clear cuts, and mines brought limited prosperity for some, their lasting legacy has been a shrinking of wild lands and fish and wildlife populations that depend on intact ecosystems. Management of vast road systems has Keeping the Northwest wild become a headache for land managers responsible for dealing with washouts dumping sediment into streams, skyrocketing maintenance costs, and increased vandalism and vigilante 4x4 trail building. It is clearly time to move beyond the bender of excessive road building to a more sober approach to road management, a badly needed transition that is underway. Some who see access to any road on public lands as a God-given right will continue to resist any attempts to prioritize the road system to more manageable proportions; yet, the public at large favors a more responsible, economical, and sane network of roads to protect, manage, and enjoy our true American birthright— our national forests, parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife. A better roadmap What would a good roadmap to a saner road system on our national forests and other public lands look like? Major roads that provide access to campgrounds, trailheads, and historic and scenic places would stay open for business. Roads necessary for management activities, from fire prevention and fire fighting to restoration and active management? Open. Wellbuilt roads frequently used to get from point A to point B by locals and tourists out for a scenic drive? Open. On the Colville National Forest, that kind of prioritized list would cover many hundreds of miles of Forest Service roads out on the land. And then there are the hundreds more miles of closed and otherwise neglected roads out there creating the problems caused by the current road excess. A sound sciencebased and fiscally responsible approach would identify additional miles of these roads that make sense to retire—for fish, wildlife, and our stressed federal budget. Where the adventure begins A closed road isn't just a boon for wildlife. A decommissioned road is often where real adventure for backcountry enthusiasts begins. Many Northwest elk hunters are extremely passionate about roads—the closed and gated kinds. That's because such closures provide better escapement habitat for animals like elk and mule deer and help keep out four wheelers that can drive away the very game hunters are pursuing. Effectively gated roads provide some of the most quality hunting grounds around for the growing number of hunters who prefer to invest the sweat equity to get further away from open roads. Equestrians and some mountain bikers also use old road beds to access defacto backcountry for piece and quiet, and in many places closed roads are being reclaimed by horsemen and others as trails. Some decommissioned roads in the right places could even be looked at for conversion for legal use as ORV trails. Given the tangle of roads and related politics we've created, the trick is getting it right so that the roads we have lead to somewhere—somewhere other than a mess of degraded habitat and debt that future generations surely won't thank us for. Spring-Summer 2012 9

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