Featured Stories
By now, nearly everyone involved in federal land management – from conservation activists to agency staff - embraces the notion that ensuring clean water and healthy populations of fish and wildlife will require proactive action on our part. Even Congress recognized this two years ago by creating the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. So is it working? With two years under its belt, we felt it was time to take a closer look at the program’s successes and challenges...
By now, nearly everyone involved in federal land management – from conservation activists to agency staff - embraces the notion that ensuring clean water and healthy populations of fish and wildlife will require proactive action on our part. Even Congress recognized this two years ago by creating the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. So is it working? With two years under its belt, we felt it was time to take a closer look at the program’s successes and challenges...- By now, nearly everyone involved in federal land management – from conservation activists to agency staff - embraces the notion that ensuring clean water and healthy populations of fish and wildlife will require proactive action on our part. Even Congress recognized this two years ago when it set out to accomplish these ends by investing in fixing the watershed problems caused by Forest Service roads (e.g. repairing and/or reclaiming roads and fixing fish culverts) – by creating the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. So is it working? With two years under its belt, we felt it was time to take a closer look at the program’s successes and challenges...
The 2010 Summer Solstice issue of our quarterly journal, The Road RIPorter. is available online! In this issue's cover story we evaluate the Forest Service's successes and challenges they have had over the past 2 years cleaning up watersheds damaged by their old, unmaintained roads through the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. In additional articles learn about the Forest Service's fatal flaw, how the oil spill in the Gulf relates to our work, what we're doing in the field, program updates & more...
The 2010 Summer Solstice issue of our quarterly journal, The Road RIPorter. is available online! In this issue's cover story we evaluate the Forest Service's successes and challenges they have had over the past 2 years cleaning up watersheds damaged by their old, unmaintained roads through the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. In additional articles learn about the Forest Service's fatal flaw, how the oil spill in the Gulf relates to our work, what we're doing in the field, program updates & more...
By now, nearly everyone involved in federal land management – from conservation activists to agency staff - embraces the notion that ensuring clean water and healthy populations of fish and wildlife will require proactive action on our part. Even Congress recognized this two years ago when it set out to accomplish these ends by investing in fixing the watershed problems caused by Forest Service roads (e.g. repairing and/or reclaiming roads and fixing fish culverts) – by creating the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative. So...is it working?
Despite eight days of snow, sleet, and rain, volunteers surveyed 150 miles of Forest Service roads. The data collected during the “roadtruthing campouts” over the summer of 2008 helped push a big change in Mt. Hood National Forest. It used to be that removing roads required justification, but now it is the road’s continued existence that must be justified. This shift has led to some of the most aggressive road decommissioning efforts in the Pacific Northwest. But surveying the roads was just one step of many along the way..
Cover story: Bark Sounds Off for Restoration. Despite eight days of snow, sleet, and rain, volunteers surveyed 150 miles of Forest Service roads. The data collected during the “roadtruthing campouts” over the summer of 2008 helped push a big change in Mt. Hood National Forest. It used to be that removing roads required justification, but now it is the road’s continued existence that must be justified. This shift has led to some of the most aggressive road decommissioning efforts in the Pacific Northwest. But surveying the roads was just one step of many along the way...more
The Tellico River flows from its headwaters in Cherokee County, North Carolina on into Tennessee. As it does, it supports a self-sustaining population of wild native brook trout. Sadly, despite its classification as “Wild Trout Waters” by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission in 1991, the Tellico also flows through the Tellico OHV System, an off-road vehicle playground. Famous for unprecedented ecological damage caused by man and machine, the Tellico has been the scene of a struggle to reign in these impacts.
Managing the Miles is the culmination of three years of research into how the Forest Service manages and administers its road system. The report includes a brief history of how so many miles were built (mostly at taxpayer expense), an in-depth analysis of agency reports, documents and databases, and recommendations on how to improve agency management. Our forests contain more than 375,000 miles of roads, don’t you want to know how they’re managed?