NMW Efforts to Protect Superior National Forest Inventoried Roadless Areas
NMW Efforts to Protect Superior National Forest Inventoried
Roadless Areas Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRA) has become a major
priority in recent NMW efforts.
Preserving these areas (66,000+ acres) within Superior National
Forest (SNF) has been a primary goal of NMW comments on SNF plans
and projects and has been a significant factor in two of the current
lawsuits filed by NMW and other organizations against USFS (The
Forest Plan Law suit filed in ’04 and the Echo Trail Project suit
filed in ’07).
The current protection for IRA is a ’01 Administrative Rule,
now under Federal Court protection after having3been terminated by
the Bush administration in ’05.
A campaign is now underway to more permanently protect IRA through
legislation. NMW is actively involved in this campaign. The NMW
Mission emphasizes the preservation and protection of “wilderness
and other wild places.”Wilderness in Northeastern Minnesota is
understood to be the BWCAW.
“Other wild places” is less well understood. The major source
of “other wild places” in NE Minnesota is the 66,000 acres of IRA
located in Superior National Forest (SNF).
The term, “Inventoried Roadless Area” is a USFS designation.
Beginning in the 1920’s, FS inventoried and designated “Primitive
Areas” including much of the current BWCAW. The 1964 Wilderness Act
lead to the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE) to identify
the wilderness potential of National Forest System (NFS) acreages
greater than 5,000 acres. The then BWCA (now BWCAW) was created out
of this evaluation.
The history of IRA since 1964 has been one of progress, proposed but
never successful legislation, a mixture of administrative compliance
and foot dragging, and court challenges.
The National Forest System currently has 144 million acres in
44 states. Of these, 35 million have permanent protection as
Wilderness and 58.5 million have court backed administrative
protection as IRA. The remaining NFS 100 million acres have no such
protection and are characterized by 380,000 miles of roads,
commercial logging, and other activities that may impede sustainable
forest preservation.
IRA have significant value as part of the Nation’s National Forest
System. IRA:
• provide the undeveloped, un-roaded areas for many people who truly
desire to work hard to reach the remote habitat they want for
hiking, hunting, camping, and more,
• Constitute the core acreage for future designation as Wilderness
in the rapidly urbanizing USA
• harbor fish and wildlife whose habitat in many other forest areas
has been fragmented or destroyed, and provide secure and resting
habitat for wildlife species that is often not available elsewhere
on National Forests,
• provide some of the best trout fishing, hunting, hiking, and
family camping in the nation,• safeguard the source of clean
drinking water for 60 million Americans,
• offer opportunities for scientific study and research. More
specific arguments are offered by NMW and colleague organizations
concerning the 66,000 acres of IRA in SNF:
1) Protected roadless areas,
especially those along the periphery of the BWCAW, are critical to
preservation of the BWCAW itself. All along the edge of the
designated wilderness, the BWCAW sees negative impacts such as
illegal motorized incursions, the spread of invasive species, and
noise from traffic outside spilling into the BWCAW.
Protected roadless areas provide a buffer for the BWCAW and
keep these detrimental impacts farther away from the
wildernessitself.
2) Wilderness visitation of the BWCAW
is currently at capacity. The BWCAW is the most heavily visited unit
in the entire 702-unit National Wilderness Preservation System. The
Forest Service views the BWCAW as “at capacity” for visitation, and
no longer participates in efforts to increase the numbers of
visitors to the BWCAW. More wilderness is needed to handle the
demand.
3) Additions to the BWCAW, and
alternative opportunities for a wilderness-like experience, are
needed. Roadless areas provide the primary source of lands on the
Superior to which wilderness status may eventually be granted. Even
if never granted wilderness status, wilderness-like alternatives
should be maintained by protecting roadless areas.
Going back more than 30 years, the Forest Service has refused
to recommend a single acre of the Superior for wilderness; it has
taken the conservation community and Congress to make additions to
the BWCAW over the objections of the agency.
The Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, for example,
has recommended about 90,000 acres of additions to the BWCAW, but
these recommendations have fallen on deaf ears at the Forest
Service.
4) Eastern National Forests,
including both National Forests in Minnesota, have special needs for
roadless area protection. Because of more extensive intrusion and
development, Eastern National Forests have a much tinier proportion
of their lands inventoried as roadless areas than do many western
states.
In Montana, for example, 38% of National Forest land is
classified as roadless areas; in Minnesota, the figure is only 2%.
And the benefits of permanently protecting these smaller proportions
of4National Forests in eastern states clearly outweigh the costs of
lost timber production.
5) The U.S. Forest Service has
persistently tried to undo the conservation rule protections for the
roadless areas. Nationally, the Bush Administration has maneuvered
continuously to eliminate the protections of the Roadless Area
Conservation Rule.
Within SNF, USFS has sought to build roads into and log roadless
areas in such places as the Echo Trail Project Area, an action that
has resulted in current litigation by the environmental community.
Clearly, the roadless areas need permanent protection or they will
be lost as the unique resources they are to current and future
generations.
NMW continues its efforts to protect SNF IRA. We have commented most
recently on the threats to an IRA in the proposed SNF Glacier
Project (NE of Ely along the Fernberg RD and SE along Hwy. #1)
We will similarly scrutinize future projects as they are proposed.
More permanent protection for IRA would be provided through
passage by Congress of S1478, the Roadless Area Conservation Act
sponsored by Senator Cantwell (D-WA) and 18 bipartisan colleagues.
In January, NMW, along with 15 other conservation, hunting, fishing,
and wilderness advocacy organizations, met with Senator Amy
Klobuchar (DFL-MN). The purpose of the St. Paul meeting was to urge
Senator Klobuchar to join her colleagues as a co-sponsor ofS1478.
The meeting was informative but has yet to produce the
desired outcome. NMW has also signed on to several national letters
by coalitions of organizations in support of S1478. NMW urges our
membership to contact Senator Klobuchar and others in support of
S1478.