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New Lolo National Forest Plan in the works (do NOT turn this political please)

chorky

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Sharing a post I have made on a few sites and FB. If you enjoy off road exploration like me then this is your chance to engage and help shape the future, at least for this forest!!

Please DO NOT turn this into a political argument. This is a topic that affects many of us and I simply want to help bring awareness to others of a change in one of many National Forests and the ability for folks to engage and participate - after all, it is PUBLIC LAND, for all of us to enjoy.


Lolo National Forest plan revision in progress - help managers understand the desires of the 4X4 community! (apologies of the long post)

Hey all figured I would make a post here about a very critical moment happening NOW for the Lolo National Forest. I’m not sure how many know, or if any information about this has yet been shared (and I am cross posting to help inform other enjoyers of off road and exploration), but the Lolo National Forest in Montana (Region 1 of the Forest Service) is undergoing a NEW revision to the old and outdated Forest Plan. A new plan is currently underway. It is a lengthy process of a few solid years.

The Forest Plan is a document of guidance and decision making for every aspect of forest management. Every forest has a Forest Management Plan, and these plans include a TON of aspects regarding managing the land. Topics range from scenery analysis, such as identifying and analyzing ’scenery’ aspects of the Forest on a multi-ranking system, to managing where and how many roads can be on the ground and what road density is allowed. Other aspects revolve around Wild and Scenic Urban Interface, wildfire management, timber management, ‘roadless’ areas, camping and fishing access, and much much more. Additionally, many of these management decisions are ultimately determined by various biologists and what they state the ‘best’ and most recent science reveals. However, often times the information used to determine the state of various aspects of the Forest and wildlife are old and outdated even for modern times. This can be seen abundantly clear in the urban development. There is also a legal aspect to what management actions are required by various laws and policies.


The Lolo National Forest, and Montana as a whole, has very few (comparatively speaking) roads that truly require 4WD, and even fewer, if any, trails that are specifically designated 4X4 trails for full width highway legal vehicles.

In contrast to this, the Lolo does manage and allow for ATV trails, dirt bike trails, fishing, camping, hiking/backpacking, hunting, motorized and non-motorized snow, and more.

This is a big issue because forest managers, and the Forest Service as a whole, are supposed to manage their forests on a multi-use aspect - meaning, they are supposed to provide ample opportunities for all forms of recreation. However, here in Montana they fail to manage ample opportunities for 4X4 vehicle recreation even though they do manage for other forms of recreation.

Additionally, many actions have been taken recently to further restrict and close motorized access. Now keep in mind there is a difference between just an open road, and a trail specifically designated to be a 4X4 route for 4X4 recreation. These trails need not be extremely difficult requiring a purpose-built vehicle, but they certainly should be difficult enough to fully require the use of 4-wheel drive for a stock vehicle to pass.


As a disabled veteran with restrictive physical abilities, off road travel and exploration is now my greatest (and almost only) source of outdoor enjoyment. Not having available 4X4 access in Montana, and further restricting and closing more and more simple 2wd roads restricts my levels of enjoyment. I cannot be the only one experiencing this… Not to push the ‘woe is me’ card, but it is very important for myself, and others like me, to have such opportunities for 4X4 recreation of our highway legal vehicles on our public designated lands, within Montana, Region 1, and the Lolo NF specifically.

I would also like to point out to everyone that many other states have abundant 4X4 specified trails. MOAB is one many people know. The Rubicon Trail in California. Engineer Pass in Colorado. Washington State, typically restrictive, even has Walker Valley, Naches Pass, and others. Even the Ozark National Forest has SIGNIFICANTLY more 4X4 trails and deep water crossings than the Lolo National Forest, or many of the forests around the Rocky Mountains.

So if you share this passion with me, of off road travel, camping, exploration, and 4X4 specific trails for highway legal vehicles, I encourage you to reach out and participate, and voice your opinion and concern for ensuring many more trails will be built into the new Lolo National Forest Plan!



Website
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/lolo/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fseprd993646

Email
[email protected]



Disclaimer:
In case you know me, I am in NO way making this statement in any form or type of official capacity in any way affiliated with my employment. This statement is purely 100% my personal opinion, being formulated on my personal time with my personal resources and is not in any way affiliated with my professional connection.
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chorky

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Public engagement sessions are beginning next week. I hope a few folks here are interested in providing input to those making the decisions
 
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chorky

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There will be a meeting in Superior tomorrow for the forest plan revision - in case anyone here is in the area and wants to attend. I believe it is from 1730-2030.

I highly recommend folks go to the links I posted above and, if nothing else, at least submit a comment. I'm sure several folks here are aware of what is happening in MOAB right now - potentially hundreds of miles being closed to access. Access closure is the opposite of what we want if we want to continue to enjoy our Jeeps being Jeeps. I for one dislike the current internal discussions going on which are very political in nature. I will not expand on it anymore than that. So, your opinion is important. Can't complain if you don't speak up when the opportunity arises.

There have been lots of very excited people on the revision team talking about how they fully want to engage with the public, so this is truly your chance to do so. Hopefully I can bring back some good information after the very late meeting tomorrow if I can stay awake.

Also just as a little bit of oomph to budge you to voice your opinion, whatever that opinion may be, theres a lot of deep pockets around the Rocky Mtn's who are actively suing the forest service for various reasons - some totally legit reasons, others just so they can make money. This has made the FS become very rectory instead of having a good offense to really help keep our forests healthy. There are things that the FS must or must not do because it is in the forest plan, and it is law and policy. Various organizations have a LOT of powerful pull, and the vocal ones are in favor of essentially shutting down every single road if possible, even hiking trails if they could (yes, that is no joke). But, whether right or wrong that is their opinion and it is their right to express their opinion. So the more opinions the revision team receives, the better the team can try and create a well rounded plan that hopefully accommodates a multi-use forest which is what it is supposed to be, by law and policy. However, without input from select groups, then managers would not know what various groups of people want - or don't want.

Second to last I will say - in regards to MOAB, if you are not aware of what is happening there, do some digging and try to find out. Your local 4x4 club probably has good intel on that. There are some legit reasons various decisions are being discussed there, and again, there are some that are just, random let's say. And this is important because between MOAB, and the Lolo NF plan revision, things could happen across the nation that are in favor, or not, of access to lands that we want to recreate in. Because this is on a federal and nation wide level, what tends to happen there, slowly starts to happen here, and vic versa. So, maybe you don't care about Montana. Maybe you dont give a hoot about Superior or the Lolo NF, maybe you only care about Utah, or the Ozarks, or Alaska or the Rubicon - but...you should. Because what happens here, with this plan, can indeed affect YOUR forest over time - good or bad...

The last thing I will say, is to again DO NOT MAKE THIS THREAD POLITICAL. No arguments need to occur here. This forest plan will be a 3-5 year long project, it is VERY intense (a little known fact). I would hope folks here take an interest in what happens on the Lolo and in other locations, but if this thread becomes political then it will probably be shut down and that opportunity will be lost. So just don't do it! Lots of threads have already been deleted from this forum, and people banned, in the short 12 months that I have been here. Please don't let that happen to this one so information can still be passed out.
 
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chorky

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The meeting last night went fairly well (I had the wrong day). Only a couple people from the public attended the Superior meeting (not sure about Plains, Missoula, and Seeley Lake areas). Probably 4 or 5 that have been in this town for over 20 years. One of them was a representing a sawmill (our local and large mill closed recently), several people via virtual attendance and two of which heavily emphasized wildlife and wilderness, and one in person attendee represented some coalition for wilderness. Everyone else were older (retirement ages) and expressed their desire to keep everything accessible to the point it is currently at a minimum. Most everyone (except the wilderness and wildlife people) talked about being avid hunters, fishers, mushroom picking, camping/hiking. This was consistent among the staff and civilians. I was the only "Jeeper" there. So made a point to express my desire to keep current roads open, and create new highway legal off road specific trails due to my surgeries and inability to backpack, bike, or hike long distances - others in the room realized that 'multi-use' encompass more than just hunting and hiking.

The plan probably will take 4-7 years to complete. But access is still a major concern. This is just the very initial stages of the plan BUT once the plan enters scoping phase, there will be a VERY SHORT timeframe to submit official comments.

There are several areas that are currently IRA (Inventory Roadless Area) - meaning, they are not wilderness, but cannot have (new) roads. Many of those areas do have roads from years ago and were grandfathered in through a 20 year timeframe of nation wide forest management changes, and some of those roads are open to the public with a few of them creating a 'loop' through the IRA areas into other drainages, and serve as access for fire abatement - but no logging occurs in those areas - even after fires frustrating enough as that is. These areas, if not the whole forest, the friends of wilderness groups are pushing to be flat out wilderness and all access except hiking blocked - which quite honestly discriminates agains other forms of 'multi-use'.

There is another aspect that is of major concern revolving around wildlife. The Fish and Wildlife service randomly designated the entire Lolo forest (and other forests) as primary Griz connectivity areas. What this has done currently is made any and all projects happening on this forest (even an expansion of a parking lot for a existing fishing ramp, and the addition of a garbage can and pit toilet to cut down of littering) be subject to requiring consultation and concurrent analysis with the Fish and Wildlife (who are also trying to close areas). This, if put into the plan, will be really bad for access. Our current Griz areas are Locked by gate because people cannot access those areas for wildlife habitat. For me as a gov employee to go into that area, I have to take special precautions, can only enter certain times of the year, and have to record how many times I open and close those gates. So, if the entire forest becomes a Griz area, every single road will be subject to gating and the only access for any type of recreation will be just along the interstate since it runs along the Clark Fork river.

Aside from expressing my desires for additional access in the form of 4wd designated trails, I mentioned the desire for transparency and clear communication of what data the team is collecting, how it is being analyzed, and by what means they are using that analyzed data to be turned into the decisions they make - as this process is often times unclear. Much of it is guided by law and policy, but a lot of it is guided by a 'ologist who, being a specialist, can accidentally or purposefully put their own personal thoughts into the deciding factor of what happens with a particular area through their analysis and 'recommendations' to which forest managers then decide on.

After the meeting I approached the main coordinator and asked for a few bits of extra information. I wanted to get in touch with their GIS specialist and find out how they are assessing particular areas as the GIS assessment process is pretty involved and detailed. I also asked to get information from the scenery analyst as much of the scenery analysis portion is highly subjective and left up to the determination of what that analyst believes certain areas should be classified as. There is a 701 (or is it 703) handbook that goes through somewhat of a scientific process to analyze areas through various scoring methods - but how those initial scoring methods come to be appears to be discretionary, subjective, and not specific.

So overall the meeting was good with a lot of great conversation. Nobody was 'angry' or upset - but I do suspect in the future that will become the case as the plan team undoubtedly suggests large areas to be permanently closed to the public for 'wildlife' and 'wilderness' (just my assumption based on current trends) - so hopefully during that time enough people show support to prevent wide spread closure, and that the managers and decision makers, in turn, allow other areas to be opened up further as an offset - which I doubt will happen.

So - get involved! Thus far I am literally the only person advocating for any type of 4x4 access on the trail. Most folks promoting motorized access are specifying single track access, specifically motorcycles - which caters to a specific group and is cool, but it ignores those of us, who for some by necessity, are 'stuck' with highway legal vehicles.
 
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chorky

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I want to provide some additional information on why this plan revision is important to everyone who enjoys recreating in our national forests.

During some side convos I was brought to awareness that the plan does not directly impact the travel management (roads). But in reality it does. Here is a great example.

One particular IRA in this forest is north of Plains / T Falls. Just outside of Trout Creek there is a road going northeast called blue slide road / vermillion creek road. This road eventually turns southeast at the unimproved willow creek campground and takes graves creek road. Graves creek road is within the IRA area meaning there are no side roads and this road was grandfathered into being there. It passes up and over vermillion pass and then turns west to tie back into highway 200 right near cougar peak lookout.

So. The road is safe right now. But, if this IRA area is turned into ‘wilderness’, OR if this road area is considered by biologists to be ‘grizly habitat’ then this road will be gated shut and not accessible any more other than hiking. Were talking over 30 miles of road just for this one loop. And that is one of MANY IRA areas!!

Currently the fish and wildlife service, without clearly communicating its reasoning, designated the entire forest and other forests around the Lolo as Griz connectivity which very likely will result in nearly every single road being gated shut and with limited access for official and administrative purposes only. So this really is a very big deal

I have no doubt, based on my own life experience, that various groups and various types of fish and wildlife biologists and the fish and wildlife service purposefully want to stop any and all activity, including even bicycles, in as much as the forest as possible. A few years ago, some fish biologists and the fish and wildlife service stopped the forest from logging a area after a really bad fire and then taking the money from selling lumber and replanting the area - so instead 38,000 acres of toothpicks are just rotting away leaving the area barren and not able to support wildlife. I have heard many biologists in official positions, and various groups flat out say nobody should be allowed in these places and they should essentially be blocked off from any access other than walking trails. This is hardly multi-use and prevents disabled peoples and those with other issues from enjoying these places.

I am hoping that some folks will join me in expressing our desires for multi use access and not blocking off existing access.
 

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I just saw this thread today, but appreciate your being there for comment representing the recreational off road community.

I have visited the area quite a few times over the past 5 years and sure would hate to lose access. Beautiful country and love that it can be pretty remote allowing escape for humans who wouldn't otherwise access due to those who aren't prepared.

That said, closing roads would make it pretty much inaccessible to 99% of the public especailly people with disabilities that can't hike in/out?
 

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I just saw this thread... It looks like the time period to comment has passed. Is there going to be another time or do I miss it all together?
 
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chorky

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I just saw this thread today, but appreciate your being there for comment representing the recreational off road community.

I have visited the area quite a few times over the past 5 years and sure would hate to lose access. Beautiful country and love that it can be pretty remote allowing escape for humans who wouldn't otherwise access due to those who aren't prepared.

That said, closing roads would make it pretty much inaccessible to 99% of the public especailly people with disabilities that can't hike in/out?
Yes exactly! So its a complicated and convoluted process that is really hard to understand. So just to reiterate a couple aspects here that are important

  • IRA stands for Inventoried Roadless Areas. This came about through 20 years of changes to forest rules (on a national level) that basically makes these areas NOT suitable for creating any new roads, and existing roads that are already gated closed are to remain as such - even FS employees cannot drive behind them. However, there are a series of roads in these areas that were never gated and at the time open to the public, so during this 20 year process those roads were 'grandfathered' in and remain open.
  • Wilderness areas are OFF LIMITS TO ALL MOTORIZED travel of any kind. Even employees and woodland firefighters cannot drive into these areas. the only exception would be managers in national parks for select areas, or if there is a life emergency and somebody needs to be carried out and a there is some type of motorized access or a motorcycle or something. But 99.9% of the time, zero motorized access.
  • Areas that are turned INTO wilderness LOOSE ALL MOTORIZED ACCESS. Roads will be blocked - possibly fully decommissioned depending on cost and money available. Think of any wilderness area near you - only roads that exist are highly maintained and graded (possibly even paved) roads that go to a designated parking lot for trailhead access. That's it.
  • Grizzly areas. This one is VERY complex. There are a series of different types of griz areas and it is not explained well. Even I don't fully understand all of it.
    • There is Griz core habitat - zero motorized vehicles except administrative official use during specific time periods. In these periods, entrance is behind a specially locked gate and there is literally a recording of the number of times, and number of vehicles going in and out of said gate.
    • There is other areas identified as habitat but not core habitat. they are treated in a similar way
    • there is a 'new' area that the fish and wildlife service has created and really are not providing any information on called 'connectivity' habitat where griz may be present and so it still has to be analyzed for projects.
    • In all griz areas, total road density, denning periods, and other things have to be factored. I'm not a biologist so I don't know the full details here but I do know it causes us a MAJOR headache to work around and it often causes things to end up not being done

So hopefully that helps to make sense? So basically - if an area that is currently listed as an IRA is turned into 'wilderness' then that area is going to be blocked off. Now there may be a case where a particular road is left to be open if it leads to an existing trailhead or campground or something, but roads that are just there for sake of being roads will be blocked off most likely. And since the ENTIRE forest is basically within this new griz connectivity area, then there is a lot at stake.

And considering that the Lolo forest ends at the idaho/montana border, and there are many roads that go up and cross over into the Neze Perce NF, and a lot of that 'state line' land is IRA, then if that turns into wilderness, it could block off access to drive up and over into Idaho - and to go around would be something like a 6 hour drive on pavement potentially.
 
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chorky

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I just saw this thread... It looks like the time period to comment has passed. Is there going to be another time or do I miss it all together?
Comment period has not opened up yet. Go check out the link to the web hub I posted above. Right now it is just community engagement and assessing what is important to the community. But once comment periods do open up (and I think they will be separate, so like one period for the overall plan, one period for 'wilderness' areas, one period for wild and scenic rivers, etc..) those comment periods will be open for a very short time - how long I honestly don't know - maybe 30 days at most? So easily missed.
 

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I remember going through this 20 years ago locally. They asked for our 4wd club's help in cataloging existing roads/trails so that they wouldn't have to be closed later because they possibly happened after the fact.

Then most of the good stuff got closed and any connecting routes to the trails only open to "Street Legal" vehicles that were insured and operated by a licensed driver. We complained later that the forest was essentially closed to us now, but they argued that there were still 10,000+ miles of roads open to OHV's.......They weren't lying, it's just that they would have to be unloaded/reloaded and transported to the next "Legal" road after riding that OHV spur road for just 2-3 miles round trip? How could you do this if camping from a toyhauler?

We just decided that it was cheaper to pay the ticket should we get caught thinking that it would break down to about $2.50 a ride if only one in the group stopped and took the ticket. After reaching out to our local county board of supervisors, they leaned on the Forest Circus so hard that they relaxed the "Street Legal" part of the rules.

We didn't even have the grizzly situation against us here.
 

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Comment period has not opened up yet. Go check out the link to the web hub I posted above. Right now it is just community engagement and assessing what is important to the community. But once comment periods do open up (and I think they will be separate, so like one period for the overall plan, one period for 'wilderness' areas, one period for wild and scenic rivers, etc..) those comment periods will be open for a very short time - how long I honestly don't know - maybe 30 days at most? So easily missed.

Thank you. I went to https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/lolo/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fseprd993646 and didn't see a place to comment so I assumed it was closed.

Would you mind posting on this thread or sending me a PM when it is open?

I agree with you that while I(and others) may not wheel or recreate in Montana that what happens in one area sets precedent for others. What is happening in Moab sucks. Part of it I understand and other parts I don't. I think there is a middle ground but I doubt that will happen.
 
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Thank you. I went to https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/lolo/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fseprd993646 and didn't see a place to comment so I assumed it was closed.

Would you mind posting on this thread or sending me a PM when it is open?

I agree with you that while I(and others) may not wheel or recreate in Montana that what happens in one area sets precedent for others. What is happening in Moab sucks. Part of it I understand and other parts I don't. I think there is a middle ground but I doubt that will happen.
They are not accepting official comments because it is not at that stage yet. That is a little ways out still. If you go to that site and look here
Jeep Gladiator New Lolo National Forest Plan in the works (do NOT turn this political please) B6C54633-8586-4051-943C-87E1DBA1213B

you can opt to send the team an email. But it will not be an official comment

when I am aware that comments are open and available I will post a link. Making official comments is difficult and hard to find But there should be a link posted on the main page above when it is available
 
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***PUBLIC COMMENT BEGINS IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS***

Tonight was another meeting for the plan revision. This one revolved around wilderness inventory. I missed the last several meetings due to late nights at work and other issues unfortunately.

This was the first of a few meetings regarding what areas may be recommended wilderness. In short, the team was not clear on what they are and are not considering recommended wilderness. They just talked fluff about 'we do all these things' to assess and make recommendations to the forest supervisor. One question was specifically posed about wildfire and how a human caused fire, and botched FS back burn, will affect a particular area and how that might impact (positive or negative) the assessment of that areas potential for wilderness (which likely will close roads). The response from the team that came back was - they weren't even aware of the specifics to that situation.

This was a large nearly 40,000 acre human caused fire - that they were not even aware of. Yet they are analyzing what should and should not be recommended wilderness (which likely closes roads).

Interesting. Hopefully subsequent meetings will bring about more clarification.

I would encourage more folks to get involved.
 

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So are the people making the decisions about the area not from the area? How could they nit know about a wildfire that large and claim to know what's best for the land?

The groundwork and plan is already in play. All we can do it resist and slow the bleeding.
 
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So are the people making the decisions about the area not from the area? How could they nit know about a wildfire that large and claim to know what's best for the land?

The groundwork and plan is already in play. All we can do it resist and slow the bleeding.
Yeah so it's complex to say the least. And I don't have all the details despite working there myself lol. None of the employees that are actually a part of the Lolo NF are included in the team that is doing the plan revision to my knowledge. Where all of them are from - I honestly don't know. I think they are formulated from several locations. I know a few of them are from Region 1 (Montana, some of Idaho, some of Wyoming, and some of the Dakota's), some are from the WO (Washington DC), and some are from the local university in Missoula (which it confuses me how they can legally be an official member of the team, but I think those ones are more in facilitating information with public engagement rather than actually dealing with hard data directly). The stated idea behind that was to not further bog down our existing projects by yet another project - which, as an employee I understand because we have a LOT going on. We are supposed to be getting consulted on some things here and there, but thus far nobody on the actual Forest to my knowledge has. Please don't quote me on that though because I don't know all of the intricate details. The forest supervisor is the ultimate authority and decision maker. The plan team will assess all things associated with the plan. Then they will make a recommendation - keeping in mid a forest plan is VERY complex. There are also alternatives that can be choses. So, just as a very small example, it could look something like "vermilion creek area should be designated wilderness because XXXXXXXX". Alternative 1 "only XX portion of vermilion creek area should be designated wilderness....." Alt 2 "no portion of vermilion creek area should be wilderness....."" etc..... This goes for every activity and management action on the entire forest - so again, complex. This is how it works for every action conducted on the forest - we call it the NEPA (national environmental policy act) process. The level of the deciding official (ranger, forest supervisor, regional forester, etc, etc...) all depends on how large or small the project being analyzed, as well as if there is or is not significant risk or negative outcomes to resources (resources includes, timber, wildlife, recreation, etc.etc.etc). If folks knew all of the intricate details of what I actually do as a forester they would be blown away at how detailed and intricate our actions are (I say this in regards to the 'all you do is clearcut' comments). But I digress....

The plan will have many phases, and during the progress there will be what is called "public comment period's". This is a time where the public can actively make a comment of official record in favor, or not in favor of specifics, or offer other suggestions, or express frustration, etc... However, these public comment periods have a tendency to be short, and are very difficult to find. Some of that, in my own personal opinion, is done on purpose. But also being on the official side of having to respond to comments, it is very very time consuming and can be difficult. But again, the forest supervisor has ultimate authority to decide which action to choose. She (in this case) may, depending on a lot of factors, have to consult with her boss to choose an appropriate decision. So, this is why I encourage participation. Typically the squeaky wheel (usually environmentalists) get their way. The more people that speak up, the higher likelihood it is to go in favor of that direction as the supervisor will see that the public holds certain aspects very important to them as a community. But that also doesn't always happen because there are some things outlined by law and policy that must be done with no exception. There is also a bit of, reactive, decision making because of how much private interest groups have been suing the gov all around the nation (usually for timber sales).

A very significant portion of this analysis is done via GIS. GIS is a mapping software we use by Esri... to do everything. It's very powerful and allows us to track, everything basically. There is some 'specialist opinion' that does get into the mix and that is supposed to be unbiased and based on fact's (truth is that does not always happen, and often it is swayed by personal bias). I am no exception - I want more roads, and dedicated 4x4 roads....not less. So that makes things more complicated.

Anyway, but for the plan team to say they didn't know of this fire, which was a HUGE event and took almost 2 entire years of my own time at work and significant time of the crew, I am dumbfounded.... Especially since, well I won't say details, but it got way worse than it needed to be. And of course the local community to that fire is very very upset. I literally have no words for how it can be that they said they were unaware. Maybe they just were not wanting to discuss it (which as an employee makes me even more frustrated). So, sadly, I don't have a good answer for you - and as a civilian, that makes me very upset and concerned that the action that will be chosen will not be the most appropriate and informed action based on what is actually occurring on the ground. But this was the first step (supposedly) in analyzing wilderness areas. So future meetings might reveal more.

This is supposed to be a 3-6 year process to formulate the recommended, chosen, and signed off on new Plan - but at the current rate of progress, it seems to me there is a desire to push it through rather fast. I may sacrifice some weekends to dig into it more as I cannot do so at work for obvious reasons, but still am a stakeholder in the plan as a civilian, and there is supposedly civilian GIS data although I have not seen it yet. Being an employee I have to be careful some lines don't get crossed but a concern I have is what specific dataset they are pulling from to make all of these analyses. That's something I will bring up as a civilian in the next meeting.
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