The long-awaited Medicine Bow Forest Plan has finally been released. The new plan will guide Forest Service Management for the next 10 to 15 years, provide zoning for where various types of industrial use and public recreation will take place, and set forth measures that determine which resources are protected and which are not. Overall, this Forest Plan is a mixture of good news and bad news for conservation, of reform and inertia, of enlightened management and bad decisions based on politics rather than sound science. Under the Plan, the Forest Service could substantially restore a forest battered by abusive logging practices to a semblance of health and diversity, or it could continue to destroy and degrade the resources, wildlife, and recreation opportunities found here. Much will depend on the tenor of leadership on the Medicine Bow over the coming decade, and on the vigilance and involvement of concerned citizens and conservation groups alike.

The new Forest Plan proposes a major new addition to the wilderness system in Rock Creek, and also proposes smaller expansions of the Platte River and Encampment River wilderness areas. These steps are worthy of applause, as they represent a priceless gift to Wyoming residents, both now and in the future. Almost as good, the following roadless areas will remain quiet and pristine for nonmotorized recreation on a year-round basis: Vedauwoo, East Fork Encampment, Laramie Peak, Bear Mountain, and parts of Illinois Creek, plus the Pole Mountain area.

Several roadless areas will be nonmotorized in the summer but open to snomobiles in the winter: the Middle Fork of the Little Laramie, the Snowy Range, French Creek, and parts of Gunnysack and LaBonte Canyon. A number of roadless areas have ambiguous designations, in which logging and road construction may or may not be allowed. These include the Sandstone Canyons, Buffalo Peak, and Solomon Creek in the Sierra Madres.

But the plan also includes substantial bad news for roadless lands. Deep Creek, Singer Peak, Bridger Peak, and Mowry Peak in the Sierra Madre have become 'Backcountry Motorized' areas. So have Cambpell Lake, Libby Flats, and part of the Gunnysack roadless area. And big chunks of roadless land have been put into management areas that feature commercial logging on Deep Creek, Pennock Mountain, Illinois Creek, LaBonte Canyon, along with small parts of Rock Creek and Laramie Peak. Thus, the fate of these roadless lands may depend on whether the Roadless Rule is ultimately upheld or not by the courts

Five new Research Natural Areas have been established, to study natural processes in a variety of habitat types. These areas will be managed in a largely pristine state, although (paradoxically) prescribed fire, fire suppression, and perhaps even the artificial control of insect populations may occur here. Most praiseworthy are the establishment of RNAs on Browns Peak (with its fragile tundras and rare wildflowers), Battle Mountain (with its unique Gambel oak woodlands and ungrazed grasslands), and LaBonte Canyon. The establishment of RNAs in the Savage Run and Platte River wilderness areas achieves little other than guaranteeing that grazing allotments that are currently vacant of livestock stay that way.

The Forest Service's Wild and Scenic River recommendations were as gutless and insignificant as possible; the agency only recommended two stretches of river, both of which already receive the full protection of wilderness status (in the Platte River and Encampment River wilderness areas). In doing so, the Forest Service missed a golden opportunity to accord much-deserved protection for streams like the Roaring Fork of the Little Snake, Big Sandstone Creek, and North Fork of the Little Snake, which contain important populations of the rare Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Although there is some general (and non-binding) guidance in the new plan to restore connections between habitats and design projects to mimic the pattern of natural disturbances, the new Plan does not provide a solution to the problem of forest fragmentation on the Medicine Bow. There is one Forest Products management prescription that calls for restoring natural patterns by increasing the size of openings to an average of 250 acres. Unfortunately, openings are only half of the problem, and the unimportant half at that. The real problem is the scarcity of unfragmented patches of mature forest of 250 acres and larger, which are depended on by many types of forest wildlife and plants. It will be very difficult for the Forest Service to create new, large patches of mature timber, because it will be 50 years before the first clearcuts have any chance at all to reach maturity. Thus, the new plan will be superimposing new, giant cut areas on an already fragmented forest, making problems worse, not better, for interior forest wildlife.

Scientists agree that old-growth forest is much scarcer today than under natural conditions before the onslaught of logging and human-cause fires that typified the past 150 years. Because old-growth stands provide some of the most diverse wildlife habitat on the Forest, and because a number of species are absolutely tied to old growth for their survival, the maintenance of existing old growth and the recruitment of new old growth stands is a key issue. The new plan sets the following percentages of forest types to be maintained in an old growth condition:

• spruce/fir - 25%
• lodgepole - 15%
• ponderosa pine - 25%
• aspen - 20%.

These percentages are larger than the 10% across-the-board standard in the old plan, but old growth quotas under the new plan will be measured by mountain range, rather than by the much smaller-scale management areas under the old plan. Thus, some management areas which had 10% old growth in the past might have their old growth reduced, perhaps even to zero, if quotas can be met by counting old growth acreage in roadless areas closed to logging and the 'Forest Products, Ecological Maintenance' management area, where the logging of old growth is specifically prohibited. Overall, the amount of old growth in all forest types is expected to increase slightly over the life of the plan; it is our hope that the Forest Service is able to meet or exceed this objective through Forest management, and BCA will be working to make it so.

The Medicine Bow National Forest is dominated by forests of lodgepole-pine, a fire-dependent tree that colonized the massive burns and cut areas that occurred around 1900. Sadly, clearcutting will remain the "optimum" method for lodgepole under the new Plan, although the Forest Service will consider selective harvest as an alternative in lodgepole for the first time. Clearcuts would be limited to 40 acres in size on some parts of the Forest, but could average 250 acres in size elsewhere. Commercial logging will target trees as small as 7 inches in diameter. While the Plan leaves room for major reforms in how commercial logging is pursued on the Forest, it also leaves plenty of potential that the abusive clearcutting of the past 50 years will continue.

While one part of the plan indicates that timber harvest will emulate the pattern and frequency of natural disturbances (such as fire or beetle outbreaks) - ranging from 200-700 years for most types of forest on the Medicine Bow, another part of the plan indicates that logging will most often occur as soon as tree growth slows down, which usually occurs when stands reach 100 years of age. Thus, it remains doubtful that logging will resemble natural patterns of forest succession.

The new plan contains excellent requirements to protect standing dead trees, or "snags," to provide habitat for woodpeckers and many other types of wildlife. There are also new requirements for retaining downed logs during the course of logging projects, although the tonnages requires do not meet the recommendations of Dr. Dan Tinker, a biologist who studied the ecological importance of downed wood on the Medicine Bow.

Big Game

For big game, a substantial acreage has been put into a fairly protective Winter Range designation, but oil and gas drilling would be allowed there, and the old limits on road density have been removed under the new Plan. The plan includes non-binding guidance to protect and increase blocks of security cover larger than 250 acres in size and more than a half-mile from the nearest road or motorized trail. This is a worthy goal if implemented, but is not a hard-and-fast requirement under the new plan.

For bighorn sheep, sensitive lambing areas are now open to road construction and oil and gas drilling, as long as construction activity occurs outside the early-summer lambing season. Strong measures have been put in place in the Laramie Range to separate domestic sheep from wild bighorns, reducing the probability that sheep diseases would be transmitted to the wild herd, potentially wiping out the bighorns. These same measures are provided in a weakened form in the Snowy Range to protect the herd that inhabits the Platte River Canyon and sometimes ventures up to Medicine Bow Peak. The Encampment Canyon herd, however, was given no such protection, and remains at risk. This population has never risen much above 50 animals, and is hardly in a position to survive a disease outbreak. The Forest Service's failure to protect this herd runs contrary to legal requirements to maintain viable populations of all wildlife across the entire Forest.

Rare Birds

Sensitive bird habitats would in general receive reduced protection under the new plan. The traditional breeding sites of sage grouse and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, called "leks," could be gobbled up by road construction and oil and gas drilling, as long as the construction occurred outside the breeding and nesting seasons. In contrast, the old plan forbade any such activities within ¼ mile of the lek site, a weak an inadequate standard but still better than the measures under the new Plan.

For birds of prey, the standard nest buffer where logging could not occur was ¼ mile, which translates to an area of 125 acres. Under the new plan, goshawk nest sites would receive smaller, 30-acre buffers; a 200-acre post-fledging area would also be protected somewhere in the vicinity of the nest. Bald eagle nest buffers were reduced from one mile in the old plan to ½ mile in the new plan, meaning that nesting eagles will now have to contend with a greater degree of disturbance. For open-country birds of prey, such as ferruginous hawks and golden eagles, the quarter-mile nest buffers of the old plan have been maintained, with the addition of new seasonal restrictions on activities within a quarter mile of the nest buffer.

Lynx

The new Forest Plan contains a number of new measures intended to enhance or protect lynx habitat; it is unclear at this point whether they will attain the intended objective. A number of "Lynx Analysis Units" are established under the Plan. Unfortunately, much suitable lynx habitat has been excluded from these Units, and Units in the Snowy Range are not connected to suitable lynx habitats across the Colorado Border. Special measures will apply in these units. For example, no more than 30% of the habitat in a Lynx Analysis Unit can be in an unsuitable condition. And salvage logging, which destroys the downed timber so important to lynx denning habitat, will be discouraged - but only for disturbances smaller than 5 acres in size. There are limitations on grazing to prevent lynx habitat degradation, and provisions to prevent the paving of roads, which would result in higher traffic speeds and greater road-kill of lynx. Winter travel in lynx habitats would be restricted to roads - but not for recreational snowmobilers, who make up the bulk of winter traffic on the Medicine Bow. And across the Forest, projects will be designed to maintain or enhance habitat connectivity for lynx. Since lynx require dense forest for travel, this measure may (if implemented effectively) yield benefits for other forest-dwellers.

Wildlife Monitoring

The number of Indicator Species that the agency will be required to monitor has been reduced from 28 to 8 under the new plan. These are the "canaries in the coalmine," and monitoring allows adjustments to be made to projects that are having unforeseen impacts on wildlife before the damage becomes irreversible. The new Indicator Species include some strong additions, such as the pine marten, a good indicator of forest fragmentation. But there are no Indicator Species that are found in any numbers in aspen or ponderosa pine habitats, which make up substantial acreages in the Sierra Madre and Laramie Peak units, respectively. Thus, any project that occurs in these habitats will essentially be unmonitored, and ecological damages will be difficult to measure until after it is too late. Finally, the Forest Service only paid lip service to monitoring requirements under the old plan; we shall see if a more comprehensive and effective monitoring program is undertaken with this much-reduced list of Indicator Species.

Other Rare Wildlife Species

There is a strong standard in the new plan guaranteeing that projects may not go forward if they threaten the viability of local populations of sensitive species or species of local concern. There are new restrictions on road construction the in the habitat of the Preble's meadow jumping mouse; these measures confer additional benefits because the mouse lives in streamside grasslands, which are very rich in wildlife and contribute to the health and water quality of neighboring streams. Known habitat of rare frogs and toads will be maintained under the new Plan.

The viability of rare plant populations must also be protected during forest projects under the new Plan.

In general, the guidance in the new Forest Plan indicates a continued commitment to suppressing and fighting against the natural disturbances that shape Rocky Mountain forests under natural conditions. However, there will be 45% of the Forest on which natural processes will supposedly be the primary architects of the forest mosaic. There is some allowance for 'Prescription Control' in some areas, which would allow fires to burn as long as they stayed within certain limits. Shockingly, fire suppression and 'control' of forest insects would be allowed even within wilderness under the new plan. The suppression of forest fires will be pursued even in aspen woodlands, which are dependent on forest fires to regenerate and which tend to burn with cool ground fires.

Overall, the Forest Plan missed out on the opportunity to effectively manage oil and gas drilling to minimize impacts to wildlife and other resources. While there are some strong provisions to protect recreation areas, oil and gas drilling, and all the impacts that go with it, will be allowed in crucial elk winter ranges, bighorn lambing habitats, and on sage grouse lek sites as long as construction occurs in the off-season. There is some general (non-binding) guidance in the new plan suggesting that seismic exploration methods should minimize impacts to resources, which will be a positive step if it is enforced. There is a provision that would prevent oil and gas exploration in proposed wilderness, Research Natural Areas, and Special Interest Areas if these activities would damage the natural qualities of these areas.

There is some general guidance in the new plan to reduce the road system by 150 miles over the life of the plan by decommissioning unnecessary roads during the course of forest projects. This is a small measure in light of the over 3,000 miles of roads on this Forest, but represents a step in the right direction. On the negative side, road density limits for sensitive wildlife habitats, contained in the 1985 Forest Plan, have been eliminated in the new Plan.

Protection for streamside habitats will continue under the new Plan, with added measures for streams harboring rare plants or wildlife. The overall trend here is positive. There are new limits on streamside grazing, which call for the removal of livestock when plants are grazed down to varying levels, ranging from 3 inches for spring grazing on healthy range to 6 inches on ranges that have been deteriorating. The Plan commits to maintaining instream flows and water quality Forest-wide, which might be very helpful to prevent continued degradation of streams holding Colorado River cutthrout trout.

In general, the new forest plan favors motorized recreation while failing to create or maintain opportunities for quiet recreation, including hiking, hunting, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and wildlife viewing. In winter, it will still be virtually impossible to go anywhere in the Snowy Range and have a quiet recreation experience, and nonmotorized areas elsewhere on the forest are typified by thin snow and/or very difficult winter access. In the summer, a number of roadless areas have become 'Backcountry Motorized' zones, where ominous plan guidance seems to indicate that new trail networks may be built, although Supervisor Peterson has at this point committed to keeping motor vehicles on currently designated routes. There also is some indication that new winter motorized trailheads may be built along the Snowy Range highway, and that the Snowy Range Ski Area may ultimately expand across Libby Creek into the roadless area beyond it.