What's best for the land?

EAGLE COUNTY--Kate Cocchiarella stopped on the Corral Creek hiking trail last Saturday to examine her maps. She looked into the forest and at the creek and back at her map. But she wasn't lost.

"We looked at the maps and looked around us to get an idea of the space and how special it is," she said.

Cocchiarella led one of 10 guided hikes for "Go Roadless Day," organized by the Citizens for Roadless Area Defense to preserve areas in the White River National Forest that may be affected by President Bush's recent repeal of Bill Clinton's land policy, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Starting in 1999, the Clinton Administration turned to scientists, natural resource experts and the public to decide what to do with wilderness land that the U.S. Forest Service considered "roadless."

With more than 90 percent of the public pushing the government to protect roadless land from the construction and reconstruction of roads, the Clinton Administration passed protective regulations in 2001.

Bush's new policy allows the development of almost 60 million roadless acres unless governors petition for the protection of the lands. They have until November 2006.

Cocchiarella took a group of seven people up the old, paved highway, which turned into a dirt road after about two miles of hiking. That road, which is closed to vehicles, divides two major roadless areas, the Corral Creek and the East Vail roadless areas, she said.

"It felt kind of funny walking on a road on a roadless area hike," she said. "But the views were fantastic . . . and the creek was really, really going strong and splashing up and hitting you on the face on the trail. It was great."

The fate of the land

The state of Colorado has put together the Roadless Task Force to receive public input and make recommendations to the governor in August 2006. In addition to receiving letters until June 21, the task force has been hosting input sessions about Colorado's 640,000 roadless acres.

The task force will hear public comments about the White River National Forest June 21, 2006 at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs at 5 p.m. Nominated panelists will speak for about two hours, and then the floor will be open for people to speak for about 45 seconds each.

"It's kind of dismaying that we citizens have to rise in the defense of the land when the scientists, policy makers and managers of this land have all said, 'This is how it should be done,'" said Dave Reed, a member of a group lobbying for roadless protection called the Citizens for Roadless Area Defense.

"The administration in Washington has created this process that's extremely indirect," he said. "It's now up to the citizens to urge the task force to recommend to the governor to petition to the federal government."

But even if the group gets that far, the U.S. Department of Agriculture--which oversees the Forest Service--can accept, reject or even modify the governors' petitions.

Have your say The task force hearing will begin at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Hotel Colorado, 526 Pine St., in Glenwood Springs. Citizens for Roadless Area Defense will be hosting an ice cream social at 4 p.m. in the Mountain Sports Outlet parking lot near the hotel.

A need for roads?

A national, trail-based recreation group called the BlueRibbon Coalition opposes Clinton's Roadless Area Conservation Rule, instead favoring local regulation of the roadless areas, said the Coalition's Public Lands Director Brian Hawthorne.

"It's important these decisions be made at the local level," Hawthorne said. "Folks in Washington do not know what's best (for) the forest areas around Vail."

The Coalition believes the management of the land should follow suggestions made in individual forest plans, which may show needs for roads in some areas, he said.

Although the Coalition's members are "very rarely supporters of building roads," they want the flexibility to be able to build them in certain cases. For example, Hawthorne said, Cedar Mountain in Utah was "wiped out" by a pine beetle outbreak partly because they couldn't build roads to thin the forest.

The Citizens for Roadless Area Defense is concerned that lifting regulations about road construction and reconstruction would open roadless areas up to logging, mining and drilling, Reed said. But Hawthorne said the regulations didn't protect roadless areas from these activities, just from roads which make them easier to execute.

"There's not a hundred percent protection," Hawthorne said. "Even Clinton's rule still allowed logging and mining because it just concerned roads . . . The assumption is if you have the ability to construct roads, you might do those things, but helicopter logging is going on in those roadless areas all the time."



Nikki Katz can be reached at vdeditintern@vaildaily.com



Vail, Colorado