Wildlands CPR Resuscitates Forests While Rescuing Rural Economies

by Karen Gerst and Eric Jones of Flintridge Foundation

Wildlands CPR, a national nonprofit conservation organization based in Missoula, Montana, is leading the charge for a coordinated road removal program in America’s National Forests. Since 1994 it has been building support for road removal as a way to both restore wildland habitat and return family-wage jobs to rural communities. Says Wildlands CPR Restoration Coordinator Marnie Criley, “Removing unused roads re-creates wild place, while providing jobs and saving taxpayer dollars from the costs of long-term maintenance and repairs.”

Many people don’t realize that some 523,000 miles of roads dissect our National Forests. That is more than ten times the number of miles that make up the US interstate highway system, considered the largest public works program in the world. The vast complex of roads that run through federal forestlands was built to access natural resources—timber, coal or other minerals. Thus, historically, roads meant jobs for rural communities. Throughout much of the 20th century, the timber and mining industries provided well paying though often inconsistent jobs, in addition to spawning cottage industries that contributed to the rural economy. Often, because of the economic boon, the ecological damage associated with forest roads—increased sediment in streams, fragmented habitat and heightened risk of landslides—was overlooked. The problem was that once the natural resources were extracted, many of the roads were functionally abandoned.

Unfortunately, these unused forest roads continue to have a devastating impact on wildland ecosystems. Roads split habitat into small sectors, thus making it difficult for some species to survive. Wolves, grizzlies and elk, in particular, need large, intact habitat areas. Eroding road surfaces send sediment into streams, which chokes fish and compromises the purity of drinking water. Roads increase access for off-road vehicles, which disturb wildlife and threaten biodiversity. Unneeded and abandoned roads are also costly to maintain. Expenses multiply when flooding and landslides necessitate mitigation measures. The US Forest Service, which monitors and maintains the sprawling network of used and abandoned roads, currently reports a $10 billion backlog in road maintenance. We, as taxpayers, will foot the bill.

Wildlands CPR studies the economic and ecological benefits of removing damaging forest roads and trains forest activists and former timber workers in road removal techniques, as well as how to restore and revegetate these areas. In its 2003 report, Trading Roads for Jobs, funded in part by a $15,000 grant from the Flintridge Foundation, Wildlands CPR shows that an aggressive road removal program can provide the kind of economic stimulus rural communities desperately need. The study demonstrates that a program targeting 9,300 miles of roads each year for 20 years would support 3,069 jobs and generate more than $600 million in revenue from the manufacture of heavy equipment alone. (These road mile figures are based on the Forest Service’s own estimates of unneeded and removable roads in their long-term transportation plans.)

Wildlands CPR focuses on roads work in Oregon and Washington, as these two states plus northern California are leading the effort to create sustainable jobs through forest restoration work. “While logging has typically been a major component of forest restoration, our goal is to elevate road removal as an equally important part of restoration efforts,” says Wildlands CPR Director Bethanie Walder.

By forging relationships with forest activists, unions, local government officials, Native American tribes and rural county commissioners, the organization has furthered a number of cooperative projects—some focused on the economic benefits, as described above, others on improving the capacity of forest managers and contractors to remove roads. For example, Wildlands CPR collaborated with the National Forest Foundation, National Network of Forest Practitioners, and the Redwood Community Action Agency to sponsor a road reconstruction and removal workshop in Missoula in June 2003. The 30 participants included Forest Service personnel, equipment operators, environmentalists, and members of the Nez Perce Tribe. The first day covered road removal operations in northern California and the Selway-Bitterroot region of Idaho, where there is a $2 million budget for road removal. The second day was a field trip to the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho to see their acclaimed road removal program. Participants were excited to see first-hand the Clearwater’s success in restoring forest habitat—in fact, they spotted wolf tracks in one area where a road had been.

Even urban municipalities are getting involved in road removal. The Cedar River Watershed is one of two watersheds that provide drinking water to the city of Seattle. Due to increased sedimentation, Seattle set aside the entire 90,000 acre Cedar River watershed as an ecological preserve closed to all commercial logging, to prevent installing a multi-million dollar water filtration system that would require yearly operating and maintenance costs. Instead, the city elected to embark on an ambitious, $6 million road removal program, aimed at removing 200 miles of forest roads over the next 20 years and restoring the natural filtering functions of the watershed.

Removing unneeded roads helps protect freshwater supplies and provides refuge for wildlife and reservoirs for plant life. It also provides job opportunities for residents of rural areas. In the words of a heavy equipment operator, a member of the skilled workforce needed to remove and restore forest roads, “It’s good to feel like the good guys again and to be part of the solution.” By focusing on the economic incentives of road removal together with the ecological benefits, Wildlands CPR is helping to restore both communities and our National Forests, ensuring their health for future generations.

For more information about Wildlands CPR, please contact Bethanie Walder, Executive Director, (406) 543-9551, wildlandscpr@wildlandscpr.org.