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By Mike Gervais
Register Staff
9-5-2009 There are mixed responses to the decision Forest Supervisor Jim Upchurch made with regards to the Inyo National Forest Travel Management Plan.
On one hand, everyone seems pleased with the cooperative effort put forth by the Collaborative Action Team, or CAT.
On the other hand, some organizations are not shy about the fact that they did not get every road they wanted included in the Travel Management Plan.
Alternative 6 was developed by the CAT team, a group of community members that included conservationists, motorized access advocates, local government and concerned citizens.
As designed by the CAT team, Alternative 6 aimed to add 861 miles of unauthorized routes and 134 miles of unauthorized trails to the Travel Management Plan, and convert 161 miles of roads to trails, thereby keeping routes in federal “Roadless Areas” included in the Forest Service system.
The Alternative also excluded 28 miles of routes that the CAT team deemed duplicate routes or inappropriate roads.
Upchurch ultimately adopted Alternative 6, but he decided to make some changes first.
The Forest Service added approximately 10 miles of additional routes to Alternative 6 after receiving comments from residents seeking access to parking spurs and additional campsites.
Upchurch also eliminated 1.5 miles of routes that were located in newly designated wilderness and “incorporated additional mitigation measures to minimize impacts on routes which allowed them to be added to the system in a sustainable manner,” Upchurch told the Inyo County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Essentially, the Forest Service decided that some routes could be added to the Plan if appropriate signage is installed, notifying motorists of sensitive areas, or if work is done on stream crossings to limit sedimentation or disruption of wildlife there.
Work on the mitigation measures can begin as early as November if there are no appeals to Upchurch’s decision. If there is an appeal, the earliest the mitigation work can take place is December.
Upchurch also “modified the network of routes” in the Little Hot Creek area near Mammoth Lakes to “provide additional opportunities while reducing the impact to the habitat for the endangered Owens Tui Chub.
In total, the Forest Service added approximately 10 more miles to Alternative 6, which means 1,007 miles of routes will be added to the system, which already includes 1,360 miles of routes.
There are a total of 663 routes, or 1,670 miles, that will not be added to the system, many of which are in Roadless Areas.
In many cases, the Forest Service classified many routes in the roadless area as “trails,” which leaves them open for any four-wheel drive vehicle and motorcycle.
The Advocates for Access to Public Lands “commends Jim for that effort, but many, many more routes that are heavily used that fall in Roadless Areas will be at least temporarily closed until this is cleared up in the courts,” AAPL President Greg Weirick said Friday.
There is currently a case being disputed in the 9th and 10th Circuit courts of appeals regarding the Roadless Rule.
According to Forest Planner Susan Joyce, those routes that have not been included in the Travel Management Plan will be blocked off, or turned into non-motorized trails. That will be decided later this year.
“We’re at the high-end range as far as the number of routes added to the system,” Upchurch told the Board of Supervisors. “I believe this provides us with a system that is much more manageable.”
Upchurch added that the CAT is responsible for the final decision and should be commended for hours of hard work and effort that went into developing Alternative 6.
“There were a lot of trade-offs back and forth that made sense. This community collaboration was very important to me,” Upchurch said. “There were some contentious moments, but with the amount of work and the mileage they put into those chairs, wow, they really need to be commended. This could be a springboard for other contentious projects.”
While the supervisors recognized that Alternative 6 was not their ideal decision for the Travel Management Plan, they, too, commended the CAT team, which included board members.
First District Supervisor Linda Arcularius said that working with the CAT meetings were an eye-opener for her to see the way the two sides of the issue worked together. She also said she was surprised to see that representatives from the “conservationist” side were also advocating to keep routes open.
Weirick is among those now looking to the future.
“AAPL is very proud to have been involved in this community-based alternative that Jim chose, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Forest to implement the plan,” Weirick said. “The dirt work starts now, and we’re looking for volunteers to help put up signs and do the mitigation on those roads so we can get them open. But despite this great effort, it has its shortcomings, there are still a lot of mining claims that don’t have access.”
Many residents have brought up the question of accessing their mining claims if the road to their claim is not included in the Travel Management Plan.
Upchurch said that anyone who has a valid operation plan for their claim that includes motorized access, will be able to get to their claims.
Second District Supervisor Susan Cash noted that, if a resident has always had access to their claim, they probably would not have included “motorized access” in their operating plan.
Upchurch said that is something each individual claim holder can discuss with the Forest Service to be sure they can access their mines.
The Forest Service will host a number of public meetings and drop-in sessions to discuss the Travel Management Plan. The meetings will be held from 6-8 p.m. in Ridgecrest at the Kerr McGee Center on Monday, Sept. 21; Mammoth at the Minaret Mall on Tuesday, Sept. 22; Bishop at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church on Wednesday, Sept. 23; in Dyer, Nev. at the Dyer Community Center on Thursday, Sept. 24; and at the Mt. Whitney Ranger Station in Lone Pine on Monday, Sept. 28.
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