Foes Get Tips For Battling Road Closures Chenoweth Warns Moratorium Could Become Permanent

Snowmobilers, off-road motorcyclists, small-time miners and others who use backcountry roads gathered Monday at Cavanaughs Templin’s Resort to strategize ways of keeping those roads open.

Participants came from throughout the West - and a few from the East - to attend sessions on topics such as dealing with bureaucrats and using federal laws to force agencies to reopen closed roads.

They heard horror stories as well as a few success stories and a fair amount of bashing of the Clinton administration over issues such as forest road building and creation of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

“We are in a war,” U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, told the group of about 200.

Road closures threaten “our ability to make an income, our ability to pass the home place on to our children … and our way of life,” she said.

Although Chenoweth said users are winning the war, the conference was organized to address several “emergencies” that could close more areas to motorized activities.

Organizers said the biggest of those threats is a new Forest Service policy to keep roadless areas roadless until the agency can draft a road-building plan. The moratorium is supposed to last 18 months, but Chenoweth warned it could become permanent.

Such steps concern not only people who use engines to get into the woods but also a growing number of mountain-bikers and horse riders, said Clark Collins, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, which sponsored the conference.

“More and more of the American public is realizing that when they start locking up these resources, they’re locking them up not just to logging but to recreation,” said Collins, whose coalition represents off-road-vehicle groups.

In a session called “Recreation Access and Economics,” panelist Elizabeth Arnold said federal grazing restrictions are bringing economic ruin to her rural Nevada county. She warned that once environmentalists have eliminated industries that rely on natural resources, they’ll next go after river rafters, skiers and other “new evils.”

Arnold urged participants to compile a list of all the roads in their counties so they can prove their existence if bureaucrats ever try to close them. The chore requires research at museums and libraries, she said, because federal maps “only show roads they want you to know exist.”

Monday’s meeting was within view of the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, which has a higher road density than any other national forest in the nation - about 11 miles of roads per square mile in the Coeur d’Alene River basin.

In all, the U.S. Forest Service estimates it manages 440,000 miles of roads on 191 million acres nationwide.

Critics say that makes the Forest Service the largest road-building agency in world history and has left the land prone to erosion and other problems. Others say the roads amount to welfare for timber companies, which use the publicly funded roads to reach logging sales.

Industry groups and others fighting road closures say loggers use the roads less often than hunters, fishermen, backpackers and others seeking fun in the woods.

It wasn’t North Idaho’s grid of back-country roads that decided the location of Monday’s meeting, but its congresswoman, said Collins, whose coalition is based in Pocatello, Idaho. Chenoweth chairs the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.

In introducing her to the crowd, Collins called Chenoweth “our hero” and “a champion for multiple-use.”