Analysis: There's A Problem Up Ahead on Forest Roads
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Helena, MT - Thousands of miles of Forest Service roads in Montana and throughout the West are crumbling, sending dirt and sand downstream, causing problems for water systems and reservoirs. An analysis of road inventory shows most are abandoned, and some were illegally built.
Environmental and resource economist Joe Kerkvliet with The Wilderness Society says closing the roads not only saves money, it expands habitat that helps wildlife, and filters mountain run-off that can bring silt into water systems and clog reservoirs.
"Think about it as acres that are no longer in trees because they're now in road. You get 313,000 acres of additional habitat."
Congress is set to vote today on funding to decommission those roads and restore some others. Opponents are concerned that closing roads will limit access. Kerkvliet says the roads on the closing list are usually abandoned, and there are other access points nearby. He notes that the idea of closing crumbling roads came from the Forest Service, which has little to spend on the road system.
"They want to switch from development to maintaining needed roads and decommissioning unneeded roads within the context of restoring healthy ecosystems."
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