LARAMIE – Conservation groups gave mixed reviews to the newly released Medicine Bow Forest Plan, a long-term road map for forest management over the next decade.

The groups praised the Forest Service for making important strides in conservation by proposing wilderness status for the Rock Creek roadless area and several smaller tracts. “Given the anti-conservation climate in Washington, the Forest Service’s decision to give long-term protection to Rock Creek was a bold step in the right direction,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist for Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “The Forest Service’s proposal to make Rock Creek wilderness is an important victory for Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, the Sierra Club, and all the citizens of Wyoming who have been working so hard for 15 years to protect this special place.”

Unfortunately, the agency failed to give wilderness recommendations for equally deserving lands such as the Laramie Peak, Sandstone Canyons, Snowy Range, and Vedauwoo.

The plan opens up a small but significant percentage of roadless land to future logging, and some roadless areas previously closed to motor vehicles were designated for year-round motorized recreation. Other roadless areas are slated to retain their wild qualities.

Five new Research Natural Areas were also designated in the Plan, set aside to provide baseline data for the study of naturally functioning forest ecosystems, which are increasingly rare on the Medicine Bow. Perhaps the most outstanding of these is the Browns Peak RNA, which protects the fragile tundra on part of the north slope of the high Peaks of the Snowy Range, an area that is home to many types of rare wildflowers and unique wildlife.

The new plan would also permit lower-impact selective harvesting in all types of forest, but still puts heavy emphasis on clearcutting, an obsolete method that has a severe impact on the health of the forest. “Forest fragmentation is clearly the biggest problem facing wildlife on the Medicine Bow, and the new plan’s continued reliance on clearcutting isn’t going to help,” said Molvar. “So in the future, when the Forest Service proposes big clearcuts to mimic historical disturbance patterns, we’ll be looking for ways to work within the plan to make sure that the agency is also restoring the big tracts of virgin forest that were originally found here.”

In many cases, the new Plan provides only token measures to protect wildlife. For example, under the new plan an oil well or road could be built right on top of a sage grouse dancing grounds or in the middle of crucial big game winter range, as long as it is constructed occurs during the off-season. In another example, protective measures for the northern goshawk, a rare bird of prey that depends on large expanses of mature forest, will include much smaller, 30-acre buffer zones around nests where logging does not occur compared to the 1985 Plan.

The overall percentage of old growth forest protected under the new plan is more than was previously required. But the old growth percentage is now calculated by mountain range, meaning that the old growth could be largely eliminated from some areas managed for a logging emphasis without violating the quotas.

The new plan also gives free rein to snowmobilers and appears to open new backcountry to ATVs and dirt bikes, at the expense of nonmotorized recreation such as cross-country skiing and hiking. “The Forest Service had an opportunity to provide solutions for off-road vehicle problems in the planning process, but instead of tackling the issue head on, they chose to stick their head in the sand and hope that problems with motorized recreation on the Forest will go away,” noted Patricia Dowd of the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club. “The new plan fails to provide meaningful backcountry winter recreation for folks who want to get away from the noise and pollution of snowmobiles. And in a Forest where the backcountry is very limited, hikers, hunters, and fishermen will find it even harder to escape from off-road vehicles."

The new plan allows up to 22.8 million board-feet to be logged off each year, more than triple the current logging levels. The new ‘Allowable Sale Quantity’ is far higher than the maximum sustainable cut calculated in a 1992 Forest Service study on the Medicine Bow, the Timber Demand and Supply Study.

“It’s going to be a long road from here to sustainability, but this new Plan represents the first small steps toward recovery for a badly battered Forest,” concluded Molvar. “ In the years to come, we’re going to be working with the Forest Service to find solutions that work not only for industrial forest users but also for wildlife and the public.”

Detailed analysis of the new Medicine Bow Forest Plan