Access - an issue for all forest users

Most people who live in the Snowy Range area, as well as many visitors to it, have come in part because of the environmental amenities it offers. For many of us, access to the area is an important contributor to our quality of life, a major factor in our choice to live here, often forgoing opportunities for more lucrative lifestyles elsewhere. Any potentially significant change in our access to those resources, as may be the case with the U.S. Forest Service’s West Side Snowy Range Travel Management Notice of Proposed Action to remove as much as one-third of existing access, is something worth paying attention to - maybe even worth taking an active role in the decision-making process, as is provided by Forest Service regulations. The plan could significantly affect forest travel (read “access”) for generations to come.

Trout Unlimited (TU) is a national organization with a mission to preserve, protect, and restore America’s cold water fisheries, often working through its local chapters with private landowners and government land managers to do so. The Platte Valley Chapter of TU has some concerns about the Forest Service proposal we would like to share in hopes they resonate with others who may be willing to work with us and the Forest Service to ensure that our collective concerns are effectively addressed in the formal decision process

We appreciate that Goal #1 of the Forest Plan (to which the proposed project is intended to be responsive) is to promote ecosystem health and conservation using a collaborative approach [emphasis ours]. However, we believe in order for a decision process to be truly collaborative it is needful that all affected parties have an adequate opportunity to bring their experiences to bear on what is being proposed. Only 30 days is being allowed, before spring thaw. Just as it was necessary for Forest Service staff to take the previous two summers verifying nearly 500 miles of routes on the ground, it is necessary that forest users have an opportunity to review proposed changes in travel management “on the ground”, at least in those areas where our use of the forest is most important to us.

We note that the proposed decommissioning of 97 miles of roadways will involve removal of culverts and other drainage features, removal of fill material from wetlands, and restoration of stream channels at road crossings. We see these proposed actions as potentially translating into a list of projects affecting fisheries and access to those fisheries with which we may be able to help provide public input, as well as manpower and supplemental funding, following the model developed in collaboration with the Forest Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in recent years.

We are recommending to the Forest Service that the opportunity for collaboration and comment be extended from 30 to a 90-day period, making it possible for concerned forest users to visit sites proposed for access alteration, suggesting it would be ideal if during the coming summer, members of the public could visit sites of major concern with FS representatives, hear the rationales for the changes they are recommending and “collaboratively” work out solutions agreeable to all or most of the participants. Only if we know the rationale for the changes the FS wants to make, can we effectively agree, disagree, and/or suggest alternatives.

We are hoping this public involvement process will serve as an opportunity for us to engage with other like-minded people in the community, including the Forest Service, to come up with a collaborative solution to these complex issues that has something of a win-win in it for everybody. If you would like to join us in this effort, or if you would just like to develop your own comments but could use some help, please contact us.

Jim States, President

Platte Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited

 

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