Wilderness: Part of a Balanced Management Strategy

Managing the Green Mountain National Forest (GMNF) for recreation, wildlife habitat, sustainable timber harvesting, water quality protection and wilderness characteristics is essential to cultivate a healthy forest for the state’s diverse needs and interests. That’s why a balanced management strategy for the forest is imperative.

There is enough acreage on the GMNF to strike a balance among its many important uses. Along with areas for timber harvesting and other forest uses, wilderness plays an important role. It is a place where nature runs its course. Allowing a portion of the forest to remain wild is a vital part of a balanced approach.

The Forest Service’s final management plan, released in March 2006, unfortunately does not achieve that balance, primarily due to the limited amount of new wilderness it creates. Out of nearly 125,000 acres that could have been designated and protected as wilderness, the Forest Service only selected 27,473 acres to manage as such. A recent bill introduced by Vermont’s Congressional delegation, however, begins to shift the balance by expanding the Forest Service’s plan to create more wilderness, adding over 20,000 more acres as permanently protected forest land.

A little background…
The evaluation and recommendation of new wilderness areas is a bedrock requirement in the forest planning process. The Forest Service is required to consider potential wilderness areas during the forest planning process by mapping roadless areas and evaluating them for wilderness recommendation. During the recent planning process, the Forest Service found that 124,321 out of roughly 400,000 acres on the GMNF are inventoried roadless areas that are available for wilderness consideration.

Inventoried roadless areas have very few roads in them (no more than 1/2 mile of improved road per 1,000 acres). They are generally found in remote, high elevation areas on the GMNF and many of them fall outside of areas that are suitable for timber harvesting. The Forest Service has stated that few if any new roads will be built on the GMNF due to budget concerns. It follows that that new roads for motorized access and timber harvesting would likely not be built in inventoried roadless areas in the future.

The Forest Service’s final management plan for the GMNF designates 58,403 acres – or less than half of all inventoried roadless areas - as land to be managed for wilderness conditions (either as Wilderness Study Area or Remote Backcountry management designations).

The newly proposed Vermont Wilderness Bill of 2006 would designate 48,161 of these acres as new wilderness – well within the amount of acreage the Forest Service already expects to manage for wilderness conditions. However, the proposed wilderness bill only permanently protects approximately 38 percent of all inventoried roadless areas. Over 60 percent of the remaining roadless areas are left in management designations that are not permanently protected.

VNRC believes a greater proportion of roadless areas could be protected as wilderness while still ensuring a balanced forest plan that accommodates multiple uses. During the forest planning process the Forest Service studied an alternative that would have designated an additional 72,835 acres in wilderness-oriented management (Wilderness Study Area and Remote Backcountry).

With this amount of wilderness management on the GMNF, including land already designated as wilderness, the following balance could be struck on the GMNF:

• About 57% of the forest would still be available for the management of upland openings to provide early successional habitat for species that tend to be hunted, such as deer, woodcock, and grouse. Habitat for more reclusive species, such as bear, bobcat and martens, would be maintained on 49% of the forest. About 33% of these acres would continue to allow vegetation management.
• Approximately 47% of the GMNF would remain open to future snowmobile trails and 41% would be available for the Forest Service to consider future summer ORV and ATV trails. According to the Forest Service, more wilderness designation would proportionally divide the GMNF between roaded and motorized settings and non-motorized and more primitive settings.
• In regards to timber management, a total of 180,381 acres would still be considered suitable for timber production, including approximately half of the tentatively suitable forestland that was acquired since 1982 (48,626 acres). In addition, the average annual sale quantity of wood that could be harvested on the forest, called the “ASQ,” would be 16.0 million board feet of timber.
  

It is important to note that the ASQ is "not a goal for production; it is the maximum amount that could be harvested sustainably” by law according to the Forest Service. Since the ASQ is not a goal, but rather a ceiling for sustainable harvesting, it is more relevant to look at the historic level of cutting to understand what could be accomplished based on budget, staff, and environmental protection standards.

According to the Forest Service, the average annual ASQ realized over the past 44 years has been 10.3 million board feet of timer. Therefore, even with additional wilderness designation, a healthy annual harvest level could still be accomplished on the GMNF that is much higher than the historic average.

Designating new land for wilderness management will likely have little effect on the ultimate amount of timber that is harvested on the GMNF. Arguments that wilderness designation will come at the expense of a healthy timber or wildlife habitat program are false and tend to fuel an unnecessary debate about the impacts of wilderness.

Wilderness has an important role to play on the GMNF, as does timber harvesting, wildlife management, water quality protection, and diverse recreational opportunities. Ensuring that Vermont achieves a healthy balance among these varied interests is essential to ensuring the long-term health and prosperity of Vermont’s national forest.