From the Independent, Daryl Gadbow
MISSOULA (LEE) - On Feb. 7, 2002, the U.S. Forest Service, the timber industry and seven conservation groups negotiated a landmark settlement of a lawsuit challenging the Bitterroot National Forest's Burned Area Recovery plan.
Provisions of the plan included a list of projects the Forest Service agreed to do to restore large areas of the forest burned in the massive wildfires of 2000. The work included stream restoration and fish habitat improvements, culvert replacement for fish passage beneath forest roads, obliteration of some roads and improvements to others to prevent sediment erosion into streams, and reforestation efforts.
In addition, the settlement significantly reduced the scale of salvage logging in burned areas originally proposed by the Forest Service.
As the third anniversary of the settlement approaches on Monday, members of conservation groups involved with the settlement say they are concerned and frustrated with the lack of progress being made on restoration work in the Bitterroot forest.
"The bottom line," says Matthew Koehler of the Native Forest Network, "is that in the last 12 months, little restoration work was completed. This (the settlement) was basically sold as a restoration project, and by far the vast majority of the work is not finished."
Dave Bull, Bitterroot National Forest supervisor, said the agency has responded "the same every year" to criticism about progress on the Burned Area Recovery plan's restoration work.
"The question comes up every year," he said. "Is restoration behind schedule or on schedule? There was no schedule identified (in the settlement). We identified a list of tasks that were important for us to accomplish, and that we would attempt, when we got funding."
Funding has been the stumbling block in completing the restoration work, according to Bull.
The Bitterroot forest received about $30 million earmarked for restoration in 2002, he said. But, he added, $26 million of that was taken away to pay for fighting large fires that erupted around the West that summer.
"It was a similar story in 2003," Bull said.
That year, he said, the Bitterroot received about $7 million for restoration. But because of another severe fire season in the West, $2 million of those funds were transferred to support fire-suppression efforts.
Conservation organizations involved in the settlement recognize that restoration funds were diverted because of other wildfires, Koehler said. But they question why the Forest Service hasn't made it a priority to restore the funding, he said, especially when the Bitterroot forest is spending time and money preparing a major timber sale the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project.
The Native Forest Network pegs the restoration funds taken from the Bitterroot forest in 2002 at more than $16 million.
"They can find $16.9 million to finish the restoration," Koehler said. "Why don't they?"
Koehler said the Native Forest Network used a Freedom of Information Act request to get details last week from the Bitterroot forest about its Burned Area Recovery plan. Bull said the agency simply responded to a request by the group to provide the information.
Based on that information, the Native Forest Network lists the following progress made by the Forest Service on restoration work in the Bitterroot forest's BAR during the past 12 months:
- Best Management Practices, or BMP, road upgrades went from 14 percent completed to 19 percent 95 miles completed of 500 miles. Another 154.95 miles of roads have been partially completed, according to the Forest Service. BMP upgrades are modifications of an existing road's surface and drainage that improve its ability to handle traffic without large increases in sediment delivered to streams.
"Deferring this work means these roads continue to generate polluted runoff and are highly vulnerable to damage from log hauling and other traffic," according to a written statement from the Native Forest Network and Friends of the Bitterroot.
- Road obliteration went from 29 percent completed to 32 percent completed 14.2 miles completed of 45 miles. Road obliteration means the road surface is restored to natural contours near drainages and culverts, and other impediments to drainage are permanently removed, resulting in more natural patterns of runoff and sediment.
"Any delay results in continued erosion and pollution of waters," according to the conservation groups.
- Road "storage" was unchanged from the previous year at 20 percent completed 20.79 miles completed of 102 miles. Road storage means drainage is altered to more natural patterns, but crossing structures are not fully removed, and the road can easily be rebuilt for future use. The work is designed to minimize sediment erosion into streams, but is not as effective as road obliteration, according to the Native Forest Network and Friends of the Bitterroot.
- Culverts replaced for fish passage was unchanged from the previous year at 28 percent nine of 32 culverts replaced. Five more culverts are under contract to be replaced this year, according to Bull.
- Reforestation went from 24 percent completed to 31 percent 10,411 acres of 33,150 acres completed.
- Stream restoration and fish habitat improvements, 100 percent, 16 of 16 miles completed.
- Logging: 11,742 acres logged of 14,700 acres total, 80 percent of total acres, and 40 percent of timber volume in the settlement.
"The culvert work and the road restoration work are critical," said Koehler.
Conservation groups involved in the settlement understood that road restoration work would be completed before logs were hauled from the BAR salvage timber sales, according to Larry Campbell of Friends of the Bitterroot.
However, Campbell said, more than half of the logs in the BAR sales were hauled on roads where restoration work was not completed. The lack of work, he said, may have resulted in the loss of native bull trout in the Rye Creek drainage.
"For me," Campbell said, "the failure to do the restoration means two things. One is the ongoing environmental damage. And the other is damage to trust. These areas need restoration. And as long as it's not done, there's unnecessary damage that's accruing out there."
"The point is," he added, "by putting off restoration, there's avoidable damage going on. The other thing is loss of trust. This is an example not only to groups involved in the settlement, but to other groups around the country" who might be considering settlements with the Forest Service.
"Some of us are wondering," Campbell said, "what are the options besides litigation? We tried the court settlement. Now it's really clear that it didn't work. The trust just isn't there."
At this point, according to Campbell, the conservation groups aren't considering a lawsuit against the Forest Service over the Bitterroot Forest Burned Area Recovery plan.
"Mainly, what we want to do," he said, "the only thing we can accomplish, is to hold the Forest Service accountable. They've clearly not satisfied the contractual agreement."
Bull said the Bitterroot is committed to completing its BAR restoration work.
"We anticipate that we will continue to concentrate on road restoration and reforestation over the next decade," Bull said. "But those projects are very costly. As money comes available in the next several years, we have a list of priorities as we work through the list of our commitments. Then we will continue to put money toward finishing the projects on that list."
Restoration priorities for the Bitterroot forest, said Bull, include areas where roads are contributing sediment to watercourses. Those may not necessarily be the result of fires, he said, but are roads the agency has identified as important for forest restoration, especially where native fish are threatened.
But Bull said he expects "funding is going to continue to be a struggle. We keep hearing there is less and less discretionary funding available. We're looking at pretty austere times here in the Forest Service. So it may take a longer time to finish the restoration work."
It's important to note, he added, that the recovery of burned lands has exceeded projections of the Forest Service.
"In our monitoring," Bull said, "we're finding less sediment generated from burned lands, which indicates we're getting good recovery naturally. The land is healing. Another real positive I've seen is recovery of bull trout. There are drainages that had no bull trout before the fires, that burned intensely, and that had restoration activities in them, where we're now finding bull trout. Those kinds of natural recovery that are going on are off-setting some of the negative effects predicted because of the fires."
