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For at least six years, the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance has worked to limit the impacts of off-road
vehicles in the Gila National
Forest. In 2000, UGWA joined the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA) and the
Sky Island Alliance (SIA) to complete
an on-the-ground road survey in the Burro Mountains area of the Silver City Ranger District, a survey
that identified all user- created routes developed since the Forest Service 2001 inventory of system roads.
Since then, extensive use of GIS mapping software has enabled UGWA to track increasing road miles and the
condition of resources affected by increased travel – including in roadless areas, wildlife habitat areas,
perennial stream reaches, and in areas with slope greater than 40%, and sensitive soils. Through
UGWA’s concurrent Adopt-A-Spring program, we have mapped the location of
all springs in the Burro Mountains where significant riparian habitat is identified and use by wildlife
is documented.
Since 2001, UGWA has worked to establish a collaborative relationship with off-road vehicle (ORV) groups
and Forest Service officials through meetings, attendance at the New Mexico ORV Recreation Management workshop,
various joint field trips, fencing a few springs and closing 9.4 miles of roads along important riparian
corridors.
In the current federally-mandated effort by the Gila National Forest to designate routes open to motorized
travel, UGWA is the only conservation organization consistently at the table in the collaborative work group
formed by the USFS in July 2005 to address implementation of the new rule off-road vehicle rule on the
Silver City RD. Importantly, this is the first collaborative group process to address this issue on
the Gila NF, and one of the very few underway in the Southwest
Region to date.
In order to address issues and concerns on a Forest and Regional level, UGWA has convened meetings with
other conservation partners –
NMWA,
SIA,
Center for Biological Diversity,
and the Sierra Club –
on a quarterly basis to develop strategy and also to gain audience with Gila NF Supervisor Marcia Andre.
Each of these organizations contribute resources to this travel planning process – but none is so close
to the ground as UGWA.
In the fall of 2005, Ms. Andre asked UGWA to assist the process by helping to define “coarse filter query
data,” or GIS coverages and overlaps, which would constitute “hotspots” that might preclude motorized travel.
UGWA reviewed existing literature and, in November 2005, suggested the use of the evaluation criteria
already developed by the Forest in their 2003 Roads Analysis Report. UGWA identified additional
criteria categories that were not addressed or not weighted heavily,
such as road density.
The Forest responded by incorporating these criteria into a suggested evaluation checklist to the
collaborative work group in February 2006.
In sum, the collaborative process on the Gila is early out of the chute compared with other forests, and
UGWA is well-positioned to help structure the process toward balanced decision-making and reasonable
implementation. With a Forest Supervisor and District Ranger stepping out ahead of other forests
and districts, and with UGWA providing GIS data on the resources and procedural safeguards for the
collaborative process, we have the potential to model a collaborative approach and set the stage for
implementation of the off-road vehicle rule on the ground and in the communities throughout the
Southwest Region – as well as the potential for getting a more resource-friendly implementation than would
otherwise result without UGWA at the table. |
