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Judge: new packing plan is unacceptable |
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Wednesday, 07 November 2007 |
 A pack train saunters through Mono Pass, a popular portal for wilderness visitors of both the two- and four-legged variety. Under a recent court ruling, a judge threw out the Forest Service’s 2005 Environmental Impact Statement regarding packstock, finding it “irrational” for the Forest Service to approve a new packstock plan that allows increases in the level of commercial packing operations. Photo by Keith Rainville By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 11-6-2007
A federal judge has kicked out the newest plan for packing operations in the Eastern Sierra wilderness because the plan would allow for some growth in the commercial packstock operations.
Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte ruled on Oct. 20 that the 2005 Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision (ROD) for packstock operations in the Ansel Adams and John Muir wilderness areas “allows for significantly increased commercial packstock use in some parts of the wilderness, including areas previously recognized by the Forest Service as already heavily damaged from excessive stock use.”
Laporte further ruled that it was “irrational” for the Forest Service to approve a new packstock plan that allows increases in the level of commercial packing operations while the plan does not ensure that previous damage to the wilderness would be corrected and additional resource damage avoided.
The environmental groups that started the litigation over packing and its impacts on the wilderness were pleased by the ruling.
Jim Upchurch, supervisor of theInyo National Forest, said the Forest Service will be reviewing the judge’s ruling and will take some time before deciding on its next course of action.
Upchurch said he welcomed Judge Laporte’s decision to schedule more hearings on the matter in an effort to address the concerns in the lawsuit, and discuss “remedies” to correct past damage and prevent additional harm to the wilderness. No schedule was released concerning when those meetings will take place.
“Ultimately, we would like to resolve any outstanding issues and concerns” outlined by the judge and the environmental groups and “move forward” with the job of protecting the wilderness while allowing for a “viable packing industry,” Upchurch noted.
“It’s a win-win for the wilderness and those who love the High Sierra,” said Gary Guenther, Wilderness Watch’s Eastern Sierra representative and former wilderness ranger in the John Muir Wilderness.
“The Inyo and Sierra national forests have consistently demonstrated an unwillingness to protect the John Muir and Ansel Adams wilderness from excessive use by commercial packtrains. The 2005 plan allowed substantial increases in use, both in clients and stock numbers, that would have resulted in continued serious degradation. This decision should help to preserve these areas for the benefit of present and future generations,” he said in a press release.
“Recreational use is one of the important uses of wilderness,” said Andy Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. “However, this ruling makes it clear that the long-term preservation of an area’s wilderness character is paramount under the Wilderness Act. Where impacts from recreation or any other use damage the wilderness resource, it is the Forest Service's job to act in the interest of the land.”
The impacts caused by commercial packing in the 800,000 acres of the John Muir and Ansel Adams wilderness areas are confined to a fairly small area of the total acreage of the two wilderness areas. The ROD states the total, cumulative impact of packing operations in the two wilderness areas is “negligible.” About 9 percent of the land in the two wilderness areas is available for use by packers, and commercial pack stations account for, at most, 10 percent of all uses in the limited areas in which they operate, the ROD states.
The latest ruling stems from a lawsuit originally filed in 2000 by the Wilderness Watch, High Sierra Hikers Association and Forest Service Employees for Environmental Action.
In 2001, Judge Laporte ruled packstock operations had an adverse impact on the wilderness, and the Forest Service had to complete an Environmental Impact Statement to analyze the impacts of packers on the wilderness areas in which they operate.
That ruling led to the years-long effort to craft the commercial packstock EIS, which was completed in 2005.
In 2004, Judge Laporte’s ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco. The appeals court also found that the Forest Service had violated the Wilderness Act because it did not restore areas damaged by packing operations.
The Record of Decision that was handed down in December of 2005 after the EIS was complete states that the Forest Service thought it had crafted a plan that would protect the wilderness and allow for flexibility in managing commercial packstock operations.
“During our analysis, it became clear that the key to protecting the wilderness character of these (site-specific) areas is to control the timing, frequency and location of commercial pack stock use,” the ROD states. “The overall levels of use were not as critical as how, where and when these uses occur. The destination management approach … is a site-specific strategy that allows us to pinpoint resource concerns and take direct actions to remedy impacts.”
The “flexibility” built into the plan allowed for the Forest Service to decrease or increase pack trips to specific sites based on the condition of those sites.
The ROD notes that the number of trips allocated to each destination also reflects the average trips by each pack station to each specific destination. However, there are some instances where, because of environmental concerns, the “destination quota” for some areas has been lowered, while in other areas the quota has been raised.
In some cases, such as “spot and dunnage” trips, the ROD allows for more trips than will probably be used but the Forest Service wanted to give packers some flexibility to adjust their business and number of trips to a certain area to the demand for such trips.
The most critical component of the ROD is the idea of maintaining existing conditions at the various, designated pack station camps, grazing meadows and other sites, said Wilderness Planner Mary Beth Hennessy when the ROD came out. In essence, the Forest Service is saying to the packers, “here is the condition we want this area to be in,” she noted. If the areas in question “improve over time,” the Forest Service would be able to allow more trips to that particular destination, she said, while areas that are showing signs of negative impacts could see a reduction in the number of trips allowed.
But what the Forest Service saw as “flexibility,” the environmental groups saw as loopholes that would too easily allow more packing, which in turn would create more negative impacts.
“The problem is the plan allows too much use, and too much inappropriate use” by packers in the wilderness, said George Nickas of Wilderness Watch in a interview after the groups appealed the ROD. Instead, to truly protect the wilderness, any packstock plan should include “fewer stock, fewer stock days and smaller group sizes,” he said.
The idea that the Forest Service could adequately monitor all the sites used by packers and consistently shift and adjust the number of people and animals traveling to and using those site in order to maintain or improve conditions was seen by Nickas as virtually impossible to carry out.
Nickas said that local budgets for individual forests, including the Inyo, have been stagnant or dropping for years. “They have no staff, no funding and no field force” to effectively implement the plan, he said. The new plan “requires a tremendous field presence, and it doesn’t exist.”
The heavy reliance on monitoring specific locations and lack of resource to carry out that monitoring means, according to Nickas, “it’s an un-implementable plan … it just isn’t going to work.”
Apparently, Judge Laporte agreed.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 12 December 2007 )
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