Dentry: When roads and wildlife intersect

Published February 22, 2006 at midnight

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SECOND IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES

No party in Colorado's roadless debate has made a more thorough examination of wildlife and habitat issues in national forests than the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Hunters and fishermen, in particular, should expect nothing less, considering that the money they spend on sporting licenses and equipment taxes pays almost all the agency's bills.

The wildlife division's mission, after all, is, " . . . to protect, preserve, enhance and manage wildlife for the use, benefit and enjoyment of the people of this state and its visitors."

To that end, district wildlife managers (formerly, game wardens), land and water biologists and area managers have been busy compiling data and observations on wildlife and wildlife-related recreation in that middle zone the U.S. Forest Service designates in some areas as "roadless."

"Most of the areas we looked at are named after mountains or other geographical features," said Jim Goodyear, the division's coordinator on the immense statewide cataloging project. "None are smaller than 5,000 acres, some are bigger."

On Friday afternoon, Goodyear will summarize results from hundreds of field reports at a meeting of the Roadless Areas Task Force at the Adams Mark Hotel in Denver.

In a last-minute change, the meeting, planned primarily to allow public input, was moved up an hour, to 1 p.m. It is expected to run until 6 p.m.

Citizens can sign up to speak briefly or can e-mail their opinions via the Keystone Group, www.keystone.org.

Goodyear will tell the task force that wildlife workers and biologists from all over the state independently have arrived not at a mere consensus, but a unanimous verdict on whether hundreds of roadless areas they've studied so far should be blessed with "system" traffic.

"Maintain current roadless areas," or some variation of that theme, is what every wildlife manager enlisted in the project wrote. There were no exceptions.

In the interest of wildlife and wildlife-related recreation, the staffers gave good cause why every roadless area they examined should be left alone or, better, scheduled for habitat improvements.

Many called for the removal of "pioneered" roads created by motorized thrill seekers. Some asked for temporary roads to be built to enable workers to erase vehicular damage, to thin forests for fire protection or habitat enhancement and to restore damaged wildlife range.

From trailheads to rimrock, the wildlife division already has reviewed hundreds of parcels in the Pike/San Isabel, Grand Mesa/Uncompahgre and San Juan national forests.

Before the roadless task force delivers its recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens in September, the agency will have documented wildlife values in every roadless area in the state, with an eye toward habitat quality, hunting, fishing and wildlife-watching opportunities.

Except possibly for the Forest Service itself, no entity has done such an in-depth accounting - including commercial and motorized special interests, which would like to get their hooks into many of the roadless areas.

Not that there are all that many roadless areas. Or that they are necessarily roadless. On Forest Service maps, inventoried roadless areas look more like sparse freckles on a nose than "areas."

Most are crisscrossed with pioneered roads and trails that regularly accommodate off-road vehicles and dirt bikes. Some border million-dollar summer homes, with access roads. Where previous forest plans are still in effect, logging or mining companies can and do build roads and work in "roadless areas."

"So you can see the deterioration as it happens over the years," Goodyear said. "There's a slow loss over time, especially in an old forest plan, like the 23-year-old Pike/San Isabel plan."

Only 8 percent of national forest lands in Colorado lie farther than one mile from a road, which may explain why the biggest roadless areas and even many small ones are so important to wildlife.

Inventoried species at risk from motorized traffic in the middle zones include elk, mule deer, black bears, mountain lions, bighorn sheep, bats, eagles, goshawks, Mexican spotted owls, ptarmigan and boreal toads.

In one division worksheet after another - from Square Top Mountain south of Idaho Springs to the Sangre de Cristo Range - wildlife managers pleaded for measures to stop the hastening pace of habitat degradation.

Many worry over all those illegal, "pioneered" roads, which have fragmented wildlife range, disturbed wildlife, introduced invasive plant species and caused erosion and siltation in headwaters crucial to the survival of native cutthroat trout and the integrity of city water supplies.

A typical excerpt from one worksheet noted that large, unbroken roadless areas are essential for maintaining healthy habitat and that, "Elk, black bear, mule deer, mountain goat, mountain lion and lynx exhibit road avoidance or rely on remoteness from human activity as a key habitat characteristic."

As special interests covet the last few freckles on the mountain's nose, that remoteness is fading fast.

Task at hand

Jim Goodyear of the Colorado Division of Wildlife will summarize results from hundreds of field reports in a meeting of the Roadless Areas Task Force that is open to the public.

• When: 1-6 p.m. Friday.

• Where: Adams Mark Hotel in Denver.

• Purpose: Planned primarily to allow public input about whether roadless protection on some federal taxpayer-owned properties should be scuttled in favor of roads.

• How to be heard: Citizens can sign up to speak briefly or can e-mail their opinions via the Keystone Group, www.keystone.org.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com

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