Forest management plan and roadless rules

WORLAND —A citizen-driven collaborative group established to make recommendations on roadless are management on the Bighorn National Forest will meet in Worland Wednesday.

The Shoshone Conservation District in north Big Horn County proposed establishing a roadless area collaborative group to address the inconsistency between the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and the 2005 Bighorn National Forest Revised Land and Resource Management Plan. 

Conservation District board director Keith Grant said the group started under the governor’s Task Force on Forest. According to the Bighorn National Forest website, “The Task Force envisioned the collaborative groups’ reviewing and assessing roadless areas and recommending management actions and to consider specific designations and/or releases where appropriate.”

He said under the task force, the Bighorn Mountain Coalition selected dispersed camping as a topic and the SCD selected the roadless area rule.

“This was such an important topic I was able to get funding from the Federal Natural Resources Policy Account,” Grant said. They received $33,000 from the account, $10,000 from the Wyoming State Forestry, $1,000 from SCD, $5,000 from the U.S. Forest Service and $5,000 from a retired forestry organization.

The funding has been used to hire a consulting firm to facilitate the meetings and develop the report. The firm is Ecosystem Research Group (ERG).

Grant said the group has a deadline of June 2017 to present a report to the governor’s office.

The last meeting the group had a presentation on what the roadless rule does. This meeting, the fourth for the group, will include a presentation on the forest plan, Grant said.

He said then the group can begin work to put the two together and see how “they do or don’t mesh.”

The group has collaborative agencies and members from the four counties in the Bighorn National Forest — Big Horn, Sheridan, Johnson and Washakie. Commissioner Aaron Anderson said they support the collaborative and will assign their member today at their regular meeting. Other collaborators besides county government are Shoshone Conservation District are representatives from wilderness, water, timber, grazing, non-motorized recreation and motorized recreation.

The meeting Wednesday will be at the Worland Community Center starting at 10 a.m. There will be some preliminary business items to attend to including reviewing, amending and approving facilitator’s role, ground rules, decision-making protocol and the agenda.

At 1 p.m. will begin discussions on wildlife interests in the Bighorn National Forest roadless areas and then Bernie Bornong of the Bighorn National Forest will present information on the 2005 forest plan.

Grant said all the group’s meetings are open to the public and there is time at the end for public comment. If time allows, he said they may also take comment right before the lunch break.

Grant said at the end of the meeting the group will also determine what’s the most important project to tackle at the next meeting.

He said they have been trying to rotate the meetings between the four counties, with the first meeting in May in Lovell.

Grant said roadless rule was not in effect when the 2005 forest plan was approved. “We thought we came up with a good plan, and then the roadless rule came back into effect (in 2011). Over half of the vegetation treatment we had in the forest plan is no longer available.”

Grant said about 600 acres in the forest is roadless area of the 1 million-acre forest. In a nutshell, Grant described roadless areas as “defacto wilderness that shuts off roads to those areas, including shutting them off to timber harvest.

Grant said the hope throughout the process is that they are able to come up with some recommendations that will help the forest service ecosystem be more sustainable.

For more information, visit Bighorn National Forest website and click the link at the right for the roadless collaborative group.