Why forest planning matters

By Toner Mitchell            

We all know at least one obsessive planner, a friend whose wristwatch and calendar resemble family more than objects. This person can flawlessly recite the flight schedules from three different cities to 10 other cities on five different airlines. With eyes so fixed on the far horizons, such people are rarely a lot of fun. Then again, when they’re with you on a trek to a favorite trout stream, they’ve packed the GPS in case you get lost, as though that could happen in their presence.

Understand that we anglers will have to become obsessive planners in the years ahead, since many national forests have begun a new planning cycle. The good news is that participating in forest planning will be a golden opportunity to improve fishing through better land management.   

Passed in 1976, the National Forest Management Act required the U.S. Forest Service to involve the public in creating management plans for its forests and grasslands. The law required that all forest activities be consistent with the plans, which were to be revised every 10 to 15 years. The first plans were completed in the 1980s. Since then, political and administrative hiccups have disrupted the process, delaying scheduled revisions.

In 2009, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vlisack initiated the development of a new planning rule, which was finalized in 2012. The new rule specifically emphasizes restoration in the interest of landscape resilience and climate change mitigation. Revised plans must protect water sources and improve forest health, and they must respond and adapt to ecological, social, economic, and species concerns according to known science. The new rule guides planning on a landscape scale, with the health of the broader ecological community being a priority.

What I like best about the new rule is its demand for transparency and consistent public involvement throughout the planning process. Also exciting is the fact that sustainable recreation will be an important component of revised forest plans. Secretary Vlisack’s vision for the future acknowledges that forest health and the human activities that depend on it must be reconciled when extractive uses are being contemplated in these modern times.

TU has been a strong voice for sportsmen and women in this new forest planning process: In California, for instance, TU has been organizing sportsmen to get involved in national forest plan revisions in the Sierra Nevada to help protect some of the state's best trout streams and headwaters.

For me, participating in the revision process here in New Mexico will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I’ll cherish and take seriously. The management plan for my home forest - the Carson National Forest in New Mexico - is up for revision under the 2012 rule. Since 1986, the year the plan was completed, the U.S. population has grown by 100 million souls. With this growth has come a great number of vehicles, newly constructed homes, roads, and strip malls. Much of the development over that period—second homes in ski towns and alongside trout streams—took place in the West where most national forest land is located.

Growth in the rural West brought new economies--recreation, real estate, service-based business--while challenging established ones founded on more than a century of extraction and harvest. Old ways of interacting with the forest are in many ways to blame for the land’s damaged condition, but also for the best of what remains. Responsible livestock management, for example, has delivered benefits to range health and wildlife. Good stewardship has sustained rural communities and has protected them from urbanization. Located in regions we love to hunt and fish, these communities face a chronic lack of economic opportunity, and the flight and permanent loss of younger generations as a result.

Well-meaning folks could argue over the benefit or destructiveness of growth, but no one can argue that it shouldn’t be accounted for as we plan for a future of prosperity and good fishing. Since 1986, we’ve experienced further decline of wild and native trout and steelhead stocks. Our forest-urban interface grows more blurred every year and more threatened by severe wildfires caused by drought, overstocked forests and, many would claim, political and administrative paralysis.

All of this is further complicated by the machinations of the diabolical few who believe our national forests should be sold away from us. These people don’t believe in science or in change of any kind—especially the climate—or at least in change that serves the common good. Ridiculous though it is, these folks must be reckoned with as well.

As far as our fishing is concerned, none of this is insignificant. These realities demand focused, sustained, and, most important, immediate angler involvement, so if you fish on forest land, visit your nearest Forest Service office to find out if its plan is under revision. Then get engaged for the long haul.

Toner Mitchell is New Mexico Public Lands Coordinator for Trout Unlimited.