Too little or too much

SHERIDAN, Wyo. — Few new wilderness areas in the Bighorn National Forest are being considered under a draft management plan, according to environmentalists. But a forest planner says more wilderness would conflict with the U.S. Forest Service’s multiple-use policy.

“The question at hand is there’s only one alternative that considers wilderness,” said Liz Howell, director of the Wyoming Wilderness Association.

That option, known as Alternative C, is one of five contemplated under the Forest Service’s draft environmental impact statement

The Wyoming Outdoor Council, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Western Watershed Project, Bighorn Forest Users Coalition and others signed a protest letter asking the government’s regional forester to revise the entire planning document to include more wilderness options.

Bernie Bornong, planning staff director for the Bighorn Forest, said studying more wilderness areas was considered but determined not to be consistent with “an overall multiple-use mix” for the forest.

Howell and the petitioning groups also questioned the legality of not providing more wilderness alternatives.

“They don’t give the public a chance to decide if they don’t give us a range of alternatives,” she said.

According to the petition letter, “only two wilderness alternatives were considered: 0 acres of new wilderness or 125,569 acres. … It is also evident that Alternative C will not be seriously considered for selection by the USFS and is being viewed by the agency as an ‘extreme end-point’ designed solely to appease conservation-minded citizens.”

The Forest Service is accepting public comment on the plan through Sept. 30.

Bornong pointed out that other alternatives have designated roadless areas.

While Alternative C designates 67 percent of the 1.1-million acre forest as roadless, slightly more than 10 percent of the forest would be deemed new wilderness. Alternative B has the next highest roadless designation, 37 percent, and no new wilderness designation.

Other alternatives decrease to 15 percent roadless.

The numbers are in addition to the already designated Cloud Peak Wilderness of 189,093 acres.

Bornong said the alternatives reflect a range of options to balance recreational and multiple-use needs.

Timber harvesting, one of the main industries in the forest, would not be limited or halted under any of the alternatives because “ecosystem management precepts that have guided National Forest management for at least the past decade begin with the capabilities of the land to provide for multiple resource benefits,” the planning document states.

Howell said that even in the alternatives that do incorporate roadless areas, percentages are well below what the forest had originally classified as roadless.

The percentage of the forest classified as roadless has fallen from 56 percent in 1983 to 34 percent in 2003, but Bornong said that is because of the way roadless areas are now inventoried.

In 1983, four-wheel drive roads were included in roadless areas, but now all roads are considered part of the forest trail system, except for unmaintained roads, he said.

Howell said the current method for inventorying roadless areas is flawed and unclear to the public.