The 2001 Roads Rule

In 2001, the Forest Service adopted the Roads Rule.  The Rule provides forest managers with the objectives and procedures necessary to change the current overbuilt and under-maintained road system to one that is economically feasible and less damaging to the environment.

When the Roads Rule was adopted, PRC led efforts to advocate for the consistent and thorough implementation of the Rule and its implementing directives. (The Rule and directives were collectively known as the Roads Policy).  We produced an important publication, Roads & Rivers: An Implementation Guide to the Forest Service Roads Policy, for the conservationists tracking the Roads Analysis process and for the forest managers carrying out the analyses.

Under the Roads Rule, forest managers must:

• Determine the minimum road system needed for the forest. Most national forests are vastly overbuilt, and getting down to the minimum would mean not only decommissioning of existing roads, but also prevent building of new roads, to the enormous benefit of the ecosystem;
• Use a science-based roads analysis to inform the minimum road system determination;
  
• Determine that the road system is affordable. Current road obligations are way beyond the budgets, and budgets are declining. An affordable road systems is a sharply reduced road system, with sharply reduced environmental impacts;
• Minimize the ecological impact of the road system. This is a biggie. For any forest in America to truly minimize ecological impacts would mean a wholesale reworking and reduction of the road system. Progress towards this goal is exceedingly important.

The original Roads Policy included the Roads Rule and the directives designed to implement the rule.  The directives have recently been largely amended, greatly diluting important requirements.  But the Roads Rule itself requires the national forest transportation system to be managed in a fiscally responsible manner within the environmental capabilities of the landscape, and is a marked departure from the timber access dominated policies of the past.

However, the Forest Service has recently shifted its emphasis away from complying with the Roads Rule.  Instead, it has been focusing much of its attention on off road vehicles and deciding which roads should be open or closed to their use.  A new rule, known as the Travel Management Rule, was adopted to address this issue, and as part of the implementation of the new rule, the Forest Service proposed new directives that eliminated many of the requirements of the original Roads Policy.  The directives were finalized in December 2008.  Read the final directives.

As the Forest Service's focus has been diverted to off road vehicles, some Forests have been distracted from the need to downsize and maintain the road system. PRC has engaged in travel management planning to ensure that Forests properly analyze the existing road system as part of any Environmental Impact Statements where additions to the forest road and/or motorized trail system are proposed and to discourage such additions.

Read comments written with our colleagues on the new proposed directives.

Read our scoping comments on the Rogue River-Siskiyou Travel Management Plan.

Read our comments on the Rogue River-Siskiyou Travel Management Plan DEIS.

Read the EPA's review of the Rogue River-Siskiyou Notice of Intent, which highlights the need for the forest to identify a minimum roads system.

Read our scoping comments on the Umpqua National Forest Travel Management Plan.

Read our scoping comments on the Clearwater Travel Management Plan.

Read our scoping comments on the Siuslaw Travel Management Plan.

Read our National Forest Roads briefing materials, which we produced when the Roads Policy was still in draft form.

No other Forest Service activity has as great an effect on watershed integrity as does roads management. PRC will continue to play a lead role in ensuring that national forest roads management is based on ecological, not logging, priorities.