Wildfire, Forests, and Roadless Protection
in the Southern Rockies

The Greater Southern Rockies encompasses the mountains, plains, and plateau ecosystems of Colorado and southern Wyoming. There remain roughly six million acres of unprotected roadless public lands and forests that sustain biologically diverse ecosystems, core habitat areas, and critical wildlife corridors. These wildlands are under assault by continuing efforts to commercially log, build roads, and drill in these last great places. The region's rapid population growth, with the attendant increase in unplanned development and recreational use, presents another significant management challenge. These threats imperil the wildness and biodiversity of the ecoregion.

SRCA's Wildfire, Forests and Roadless Protection Committee is working to address these problems by:

• Protecting the wildlands character of remaining national forest roadless areas in the Greater Southern Rockies through administrative policies, such as forest planning, and eventually through wilderness designation for deserving lands;
• Preserving the region's roadless areas by selectively challenging ecologically damaging timber sales, growing off-road vehicle use, oil and gas drilling, and other degrading projects; and
• Restoring the natural conditions and processes across the landscape by working to protect and restore viable populations of native species, and to return and perpetuate natural processes such as wildfire, where appropriate.

In order to develop and achieve our vision of a network of protected wildlands we have:

• Researched and mapped all of the remaining unprotected roadless areas in the Southern Rockies;
• Mobilized public support for securing roadless area protections in revisions of forest management plans – most recently for the two million acres of the White River National Forest and in defense of the national Roadless Area Conservation Rule;
• Stopped damaging and ill-conceived roadless area timber sales; and
• Increased the capacity of citizen activists by establishing community forest protection groups in areas where they were absent.
  

Current Issues

Community Protection and Wildfire Restoration
SRCA places the safety of firefighters and residents and the protection of homes and communities above all else as we seek to restore forest fire as a natural and necessary ecological process in the Rocky Mountain West. Wildfire is necessary to maintain the health and viability of forest and grassland ecosystems across the Southern Rockies. We also recognize that after nearly a century of mismanagement of our public lands through overgrazing, aggressive commercial logging, and near-total fire suppression, many forest ecosystems across the region have been significantly impaired and will take time to restore. Because of the importance of this issue, we have undertaken a special Wildland Fire Campaign. In addition to advocating for focusing resources on fuel reduction projects around communities, a critical dimension of our work is advocating for targeted and scientifically justifiable forest restoration, particularly in fire-dependent ecosystems such as the lower-elevation ponderosa pine forests along Colorado's Front Range.

Defending the Roadless Area Conservation Rule
In the Southern Rockies, unprotected roadless areas contain core wildlife habitat and connect large tracts of protected lands, such as national parks and wilderness, providing corridors for wildlife movement and habitat for wide-ranging species, such as the threatened Canada lynx. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, issued in 2001 after the most extensive public participation process in the history of federal rulemaking, sought to protect 59 million acres of these roadless National Forest lands – including 4.4 million acres in Colorado – from road building and commercial logging. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration, whose senior administration officials include former lobbyists for the mining, energy, and timber industries, has set about dismantling this popularly supported rule. Under the leadership of Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist who now oversees the Forest Service, the administration failed to defend the rule from timber industry challenges in court and, in May 2005, issued a new policy that removes the Roadless Rule's protections, replacing it with petition process rule, whereby governors of individual states can request protection – or the elimination of protection – for roadless areas. SRCA has helped to mobilized concerned citizens in Colorado and Wyoming, most recently prompting over 30,000 citizen comments supporting roadless area protections and opposing the Bush rule. We will continue to work with citizen groups to defend the Roadless Rule until it is safe from challenge and to fight off threats to wildlands from timber cutting, mining, road building, and energy development.

For more information, see:
Colorado's Forest Legacy
Roadless Areas on Colorado's National Forests
Roadless News
Citizens for Roadless Area Defense (White River National Forest)

Specific Roadless Area Protection Campaigns

Medicine Bow National Forest Plan Revision Finalized
The Medicine Bow National Forest long-range management plan was released in early 2004. While a mix of good and bad news for conservation, the long-awaited plan represents a significant step in the right direction. SRCA member group, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (www.voiceforthewild.org), developed a citizens' management alternative called the "Keep the Bow WILD" plan that the Forest Service analyzed as one of the possible management options. This alternative gained extensive public support, with nearly 15,000 citizens commenting in favor of the vision. Due to this outpouring of support, the final management plan recommended nearly 30,000 acres be protected as wilderness on the Medicine Bow, including the 17,530-acre Rock Creek Roadless Area, a beautiful, rugged, and biologically diverse area 35 miles northwest of Laramie that locals have been working to protect for over a decade. The final plan also increased protections for rare and imperiled wildlife, fish, and plants, and provided additional protection for nonmotorized recreation areas.

Grand Mesa Uncompahgre Gunnison (GMUG) Forest Plan Revision
The GMUG National Forest (NF) lies in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, making its roadless areas critical to migratory species, predator reintroduction projects, and backcountry recreation opportunities. There are more unprotected roadless acres on the GMUG Forest (about 1.5 million acres) than any other national forest in Colorado. In the 1.2 million-acre Gunnison NF alone, there are an impressive 650,000 roadless acres comprising 49 discrete parcels which are still unprotected. One such parcel is the 65,000-acre Cochetopa Hills area that contains the lowest point on the Colorado Continental Divide, a crucial wildlife migratory corridor. With the 15-year GMUG Forest Plan revision now underway, the upcoming year will be pivotal to securing administrative protections of these remaining wildlands. For more information see:
www.mtns2mesas.org
Western Colorado Congress
High Country Citizens' Alliance.

San Juan National Forest Plan Revision
Revision of the outdated San Juan NF plan re-engaged in January 2005 after being stalled for several years. The Forest Service launched a series of Community Study Group Meetings to involve the cross-section of near-by communities in the discussion of how the forest should be managed. The San Juan plan will address about 550,000 acres of roadless areas, including the 140,000-acre Hermosa Roadless Area and the 40,000-acre HD Mountains, currently the focus of a controversial coal bed methane development proposal. SRCA member group, San Juan Citizens Alliance, is leading the effort to protect these special lands, which include some of the most spectacular old growth ponderosa pine forests in Colorado..