Water, landslide and other damage occurs annually to every mile of every road, especially here in our heavy rainfall climate.
Some such damage is minor such that its repair can be handled in normal scheduled periodic maintenance. Some damage is major, making the road unsafe or impossible to drive, and requires a project to repair it.
Repair of these damages are essential to maintain access. Even the minor damages must be regularly repaired, or they accumulate to become major obstacles to drivability of the road. Significant maintenance must be scheduled and funded annually to cover both the accumulated minor damages and the less frequent major damages that are more expensive to repair. The amount of such annual damage is somewhat constant over the years, so the amount of funds needed annually can be estimated reasonably accurately.
Sadly, through changes in personnel and administration at the top Washington DC levels, through recent decades, the Forest Service has regrettably and surprisingly lost the simple mechanical process of estimating, totaling up and applying for this adequate funding annually from the Congress. Allowing this loss is grounds for legitimate, very serious criticism of the Forest Service’s high-level managers.
Thus, sadly local districts are usually allotted only a small fraction of the money they need to keep the roads open, and to thus keep the forests usable and manageable. Highest level Forest Service managers do not know how much money the districts need, and do not even ask the districts for that amount. How they determine the ludicrously low amounts they request for road maintenance is a mystery.
Last year’s road maintenance funding to the Cowlitz Valley Ranger District was very inadequate, only a fraction of funds needed in an average year. This year the District’s funding was cut in half.
Fortunately, Pacific Northwest leaders especially our own Congresswoman Jaime Herrera-Beutler, have recognized this serious funding gap, and created the Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads, or ERFO. ERFO makes at least some of the gap funding available but requires the district staff to make extensive and wasteful-of-time applications for the funds, project by project. Most of those funds should be simply in their basic annual appropriation.
We the public, the owners of the forests, depend upon road access for all of our uses of the forests including such as hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, berry and mushroom picking, wildlife viewing, income-supplementing commercial gathering of forest products, and many others. An additional important aspect of “our use” of the forest is the use, on our behalf and for our benefit, by our hired forest employees’ activities, including management of recreation, vegetation including timber, wildlife including hunting and poaching enforcement, water, soils, minerals, cultural resources, law enforcement, and of course, their critically important fire suppression.
A forest without roads cannot be used or managed in any real sense.
Our national forests are dedicated to these above “Multiple Uses,” unlike lands such as National Parks, which are dedicated to only viewing from afar and not touching. Nearly all direct use of the forest in a National Park is strictly prohibited.
A forest without roads is thus indeed “useless.” Closing of roads, whether intentionally for some reason, or by allowing them to close by becoming undriveable due to unrepaired weather damage, prevents all normal uses and management of the forest.
A forest without roads is use-less.
Responsible management of our forests for our multiple uses requires keeping our forest roads open, so our forests remain useful and manageable.
Responsible forest management requires seeking and obtaining sufficient funds to keep the forest roads open and the forests useful and managed.
Closing a road closes the forest.