Wildlands CPR. Investing in Communities, Investing in the Land. Summary Report.

Summary of:

Ihara, Daniel, Steven Hackett, and John Manning 2003. Reinvestment in Jobs, Communities and Forests: The Benefits and Costs of a National Program for Road Removal on U.S. Forest Service Lands, A Preliminary Analysis. The Center for Environmental Economic Development. Arcata, CA.

ROADS/ORVS

II. DESCRIPTION

Wildlands CPR commissioned The Center for Environmental Economic Development (CEED) [http://www.ceedweb.org] to analyze the economic benefits and costs of a national program to remove unneeded and harmful roads on Forest Service lands. Their full report, Reinvestment in Jobs, Communities and Forests, reveals how restoring forests to their natural state can create local jobs; improve fishing and hunting opportunities; improve the health of natural systems; and conserve money needed to maintain popular, ecologically sound roads. Wildlands CPR took the findings and produced a summary report, Investing in Communities, Investing in the Land. This report includes national road removal job numbers, economic benefits to our nation's natural and cultural capital, and various case studies. The analysis applies to class 1 & 2 roads only, as these are the main focus of the Forest Service's road-decommissioning program and because removal of class 3-5 roads would be far more costly.

IV. Significant findings

  1. Job Creation: Several communities in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Rockies have started looking to public lands restoration to utilize their skills, local knowledge, and love of the forests, while also creating good jobs for their communities. While the focus of much of this work has been on thinning and fuels reduction, there is also a great need for road-related work, including maintenance, culvert upgrades, and removal. For rural communities this work has the potential to create high-skill, high-wage, locally-based jobs; improve community water supplies; and enrich fishing and hunting opportunities. Roadwork requiring heavy equipment tends to be more locally-based than thinning and planting work, where crews often come from hundreds of miles away.
  2. Sustainable Communities (an alternative to community exploitation of forests via ATV recreation: Such a road removal program, combined with full maintenance of the remaining road system, and based on principles of ecological integrity, workforce sustainability, and social and cultural , can help bridge the gap between healthy forests and sustainable communities.
  3. Constructed Capital: A national program of road removal would decommission 186,000 miles of unneeded roads over a twenty-year period at an average of 9,300 miles per year at an average cost of $10,000 per mile, or an expenditure of $93 million annually. If thirty-three jobs were generated per million-dollar expenditure economy-wide, this would create more than 3,069 jobs annually. The vast majority of local jobs created would involve heavy-equipment operators. Through such a restoration program, the Forest Service can restore balance, save money, and create local jobs, while improving the natural qualities of public lands.
  4. Natural Capital: The cost of removing sediment from waterways after a failure is significantly higher than the cost of preventing it from eroding in the first place. Road removal limits costs to municipal water districts by reducing the need for costly filtration facilities. Road removal can reduce the costs from invasive species whose spread is promoted by roads, while also improving habitat and enhancing a host of recreational and non-market, passive-use values.
  5. Human Capital: Human and social capital can be increased by road removal-related training programs that emphasize interdisciplinary training and skill certification, and that promote a highly-skilled, well-compensated workforce.
  6. Benefits and costs: The Forest Service and interested parties can evaluate road-management options quantitatively by comparing the access benefits that roads provide minus the present value of road-management costs to the benefits from reducing landslides, erosion, and other adverse environmental impacts minus the costs of decommissioning. [Has this been done for any communities in the report?]

V. Questions this raises for the Three Forests

  1. Between 1995-2002 Dixie and Fishlake decommissioned small amounts of roads while Manti-La Sal did considerably more. Were the economic costs and benefits estimated, including ecological benefits?
  2. Were the roads actually removed and the land restored?
  3. Have reductions in sedimentation and habitat improvement been documented?
  4. Are communities involved in road decommission planning and job creation? Are they aware of the benefits?

VI. Forest management significance

  1. Wildlife habitat, riparian, and aquatic areas are damaged by inappropriate dispersed camping and unmanaged ORV use. For instance, negative impacts from sedimentation caused by ORVs have repeatedly arisen during the Forest Service-sponsored TWiG workshops, especially from people who are familiar with the aquatic habitat, e.g., from fishing.
  1. Many Forest users are increasingly concerned with off-road vehicle use and FS management for failing to protect the long-term health of the Forests.
  1. Communities are claiming hugely significant economic benefits from ATV use on the national forests. Such local community economic benefits need to be analyzed for accuracy, along with economic analysis of such costs as water quality maintenance, enforcement of ORV use, maintenance of roads, invasive species management, environmental analysis of routes, and monitoring of impacts on native wildlife and vegetation. Road decommissioning costs and resource benefits need to similarly be analyzed. In all cases, who reaps profits and who pays costs must be made clear in the analyses.
  1. Only a transportation planning program that begins with a baseline network of system roads, and involves the communities to jointly examine the benefits and costs of an ecologically sound, sufficient transportation system accompanied by appropriate road closures will resolve the issues.