The Forest Service recently launched an initiative to amend the Northwest Forest Plan, a policy document drafted in the early 1990s that still serves as a guide for managers of 19 million acres of national forest lands across the Pacific Northwest. The process of updating that plan started in 2023 with the formation of an advisory committee representing multiple interests. That committee recently issued 47 pages of recommendations to the Northwest Forest Plan Amendment.
Wild & Scenic Chetco River. Photo by 2024 intern Grace Andrade
And let us be clear: the Northwest Forest Plan and the amendment being built does not issue directive on how to manage recreation and trails. But forest policy does find itself in the recreation interface, especially in an era when countless miles of trails are being lost to severe wildfire. And recreation does find itself in the recommendation exactly 29 times. The word "trail" or "trails" appears 5 times.
Most of the recommendations are fairly inconsequential to recreation, but there are are some notes worth taking, and a public comment period before the next meeting (September 25 - 27) is open until September 13th.
Recreation first finds itself within the second recommendation, to support economic and sustainable communities in an effort to consider it as part of local economies in management decisions. But most of the recommendations here are for a "desired condition," or an action that "should occur." That's a lot different than setting a standard, objective, or issuing a "shall" statement.
Under the third recommendation, fire resilience, recreation pops up again (from page 26): "Forest health and fuels treatment projects attempt to minimize negative impacts and seek benefits to recreation infrastructure and settings and rehabilitate trails..." For example, when a fuel prescription is made along a derelict trail, this could encourage managers to use the mobilized crew to restore the trail as well. But it won't require them to because the recommendation is considered a "desired condition," not a standard of objective.
Mobilization costs are expensive and working with contractors to consider multiple project elements could save taxpayers money and get much needed service to trails throughout our national forests. Turning the dial up on the definition could have a major long-term impact.
One recommendation that does come in as a "standard," thus providing a stronger mandate to managers, is also found on page 26: "Trails and recreation infrastructure impacted by fire or damaged by fire suppression operations shall be repaired..." The recommendation would give managers a firm directive to repair trails and other infrastructure following a fire.
The damage from a fire lasts decades as trees of different sizes and species decaying from a diversity of slope compositions topple at different rates into trail prisms, and it's not clear whether or not post-fire successional patterns -- when brush consumes trail prisms left ripe and shadeless by a severe wildfire -- are considered. But the clause certainly provides more consideration than without it.
Recreation and trails do find their way into more of the recommendations, but mostly as desired conditions, management approaches, or goals. Those definitions are found on page four of the document and are important in understanding how this policy could actually be implemented -- or not.
The committee may be overseeing the potential for trail prisms to be managed as brush corridors to help reduce risk of severe wildfires. Trails often follow ridge lines and canyon bottoms, naturally aligning with delineations that could be maintained as strategic fuel breaks at a landscape scale. Because the maintenance would be performed along system trails, the work would be easy to approve.
The practice is in place in the depths of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest where trail crews have worked with the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative to focus on maintaining aggressive fuel breaks along the corridor of trails identified as being advantageous to purpose as a future fireline, provide access for hand crews, or safe egress for direct attack from rapellers.
The treatment is relatively inexpensive, effective, well documented, and provides multipurpose utility in helping maintain fuel breaks and the community's access to their national treasures.
To submit comment before the September 25-27 advisory committee meeting, email sm.fs.nwfp_faca@usda.gov by 11:59pm on September 13. Read more about the NWFP amendment and the process here.