The U.S. Forest Service is developing new travel management plans for Montana's Gallatin and Lewis and Clark National Forests. The plans offer an opportunity to protect important habitat and world-class recreational resources by halting intrusions of new roads and trails that continue to dice up the backcountry.
A Rare Opportunity
Conservationists have a rare opportunity to achieve sensible rules to manage backcountry motorized use in the Gallatin and Lewis and Clark National Forests. The U.S. Forest Service has begun drafting new travel plans for both forests and the process will include important opportunity for public comment.
The Gallatin and the Lewis and Clark provide habitat that is vital to elk, grizzlies, bobcats and other important species, and both forests offer recreational opportunities second to none in the National Forest System. The Gallatin wraps around the northwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park. The Lewis and Clark encloses Montana's well-known Rocky Mountain Front
Unfortunately, the Forest Service has allowed dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles to push ever further into the backcountry, often simply accepting routes created illegally by off-road vehicle users.
The Wilderness Society does not oppose all off-road vehicle use on public lands, but strongly believes that it should only be allowed in such places, and in such a manner, that it doesn't harm the landscape, water quality, wildlife or other forms of recreation.
Protecting Wilderness Values
Both the Gallatin and the Lewis and Clark contain areas that fully deserve inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. In the meantime, it is vital that dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles not be allowed to erase the wilderness characteristics of these places.
While site-specific conditions vary across these forests, there are several fundamental principles we will urge the Forest Service to adopt in the travel plans.
- All public lands should be closed to ORV use unless specifically posted as "open." This reverses the too-common situation, in which all lands are open unless posted with closure signs. Closing lands unless posted open removes the incentive for motorized recreationists to tear down and remove signs.
- All ORV use should be restricted to designated routes. Indiscriminate, cross-country travel off of established roads and trails should be stopped.
- All areas an agency has recommended for wilderness designation should be closed to motorized recreation to protect the wilderness characteristics of the candidate area. Routes created solely by constant cross-country travel should not be recognized as trails, and should be obliterated and revegetated, their closures policed and enforced.
Draft travel plans for both forests are expected by the summer of 2003.
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