Wasatch-Cache Forest Plan Revision

Sunday, December 9, 2001 BY JIM STEITZ

Rarely can communities collectively articulate their future landscape and quality of life, as we now can through the Wasatch-Cache National Forest (WCNF) plan revision. The plan will guide Wasatch-Cache management, and dramatically affect Wasatch Front quality of life, for the next 10 to 20 years.

Nobody doubts that Utahns love their Wasatch Mountains with unmatched passion. Our interests are numerous, varied and intense.

Ours is among the nation's most heavily used recreational National Forests. It is also a crucial junction of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem, linking the Wasatch backbone, High Uintas and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The soils and vegetation of the WCNF supply much of our fresh water, the Salt Lake Valley's lifeblood. Multitudes of unique plants and animals call the WCNF home, and their survival is intimately linked to ours.

The Bridgerland Audubon Society, Bear River Watershed Council, Utah State University's Ecological Coalition of Students (ECOS), Ogden Sierra Club, Western Watershed Project and Logan Backcountry Skiers Alliance commend the Forest Service for recognizing this immense value and the damage it has sustained from logging, grazing and motorized recreation, and for aspiring to ecological sustainability as the plan's cornerstone.

We encourage all Wasatch Front citizens to overcome our institutional, cultural and ideological differences to craft a plan that respects the magnificence of the WCNF and its inhabitants, human and otherwise.

ECOS offers the following recommendations to actualize this vision.

• First, we must refrain from logging the WCNF. The High Uintas have been grossly overharvested, and the rest of the WCNF is marginally productive, sustaining a rich habitat assemblage on thin soils and sparse rainfall. Several clear-cuts haven't recovered after 30 years. Such an environment, back yard to a burgeoning human population, is not suitable for wood production. We commend the Forest Service for including a full-protection option, and urge its adoption.
  
  
• Second, we need a balanced array of recreational options. Winter recreationists currently have little respite from snowmobiles. We commend the Forest Service for recognizing these conflicts, but the current proposal does not address them. Historically important cross-country ski destinations are proposed for motorized use. Boundaries are ambiguous and unenforceable, and many areas proposed for non-motorized use are correspondingly unsuitable or even unsafe.
  
  Similarly, recent dramatic rises in Off-road-vehicle use have caused great damage. Forest Service staff helplessly confront countless illegal "ghost" roads, vandalized gates, denuded hillsides and trashed streams. A few users commit most violations, and the ORV community must educate and discipline their own, lest their access to significant WCNF areas be jeopardized.
  
  We commend efforts to retire illegal roads, and urge the delineation of a meaningfully large, contiguous, enforceable non-motorized area. This helps responsible ORV users, our friends and neighbors, avoid unwittingly contributing to the WCNF's ruin.
  
  
• Third, livestock grazing must conform to the WCNF's ecological capacity. The few dozen jobs associated with WCNF grazing are important, but cannot override all other resource concerns, particularly in light of the WCNF's aridity and limited productivity. Hillsides have been stripped and soils pulverized into dust. Stream banks are trampled and bleed silt into our creeks, killing fish and other aquatic life. Sheep overgrazing has turned Uintas trails into braided silt rivers. Vegetation loss harms wildlife such as snowshoe hare and grouse, bringing decline to their predators, such as goshawk, a prominent and sensitive WCNF resident.
  
  Unfortunately, less than 15,000 acres of variation exist among the six contemplated grazing options.
  
  Because the economic benefits of grazing are meager compared with the ecological costs, a range of possibilities and the fundamental tradeoffs of grazing must be pondered, including a full-protection benchmark.
  
  
• Finally, certain lands deserve formal wilderness protection. An appropriate balance designates the WCNF jewels as wilderness, allowing responsible motorized use elsewhere. The Mount Naomi Wilderness in Logan Canyon, unique to this author's community, should encompass the north side of Highway 89, while allowing access up existing major roads.
  
  The Lakes Roadless Area on the High Uintas, the largest unprotected roadless forest in Utah, is a massive, primitive and wild place of vast coniferous forests, sparkling alpine lakes and ascending peaks, and deserves protection. Other roadless areas, given their scarcity, should be otherwise formally protected, heading off national wrangling over the Roadless Rule.
  
  These measures can facilitate a future worth living on the Wasatch Front, with ample recreation and amenities to diverse users. A thoughtful application of multiple use, not every use in every location, can secure the values we cherish.

Ecologically meaningful debate is healthy, but petty disputes must not divide us. At a recent planning hearing in Logan, certain extremist motorized advocates compared conservation advocates to Osama bin Laden and denigrated our intentions. Terrorists, potheads, socialists and tree-huggers are just a few of the terms my friends have publicly encountered. This is neither healthy for our community, nor for the WCNF. Such antagonism must vanish as we advance WCNF protection. We invite all citizens to join the effort; may our children forgive us if we fail.