Ecological and Financial Implications of Roads in the Monongahela National Forest

Report Highlights
Across the eastern United States, the national forests are home to some of the wildest lands, the kinds of places that are seldom found on private lands. Yet, this wildness is not without human influence. The lands that now make up the national forests of the East were extensively farmed and logged over the last three centuries. Since designation as national forests, much cleared land has grown into new forest. However, logging and mineral extraction have continued, and recreational use has increased dramatically. The result has been the gradual creation of an extensive road system in these national forests.

There has been a growing awareness, both inside and outside the Forest Service, of the wide variety of adverse impacts that roads have on the environment. Research clearly documents that roads disrupt landscape connectivity and fragment large intact blocks of wildlife habitat with negative ecological effects on biological diversity, aquatic resources, and the maintenance of healthy natural communities and wildlife populations.

From a fiscal perspective, the Forest Service currently estimates a backlog of $10 billion in outstanding maintenance tasks for all national forests, and the total grows every day. As a manager of lands belonging to all Americans, the Forest Service has a responsibility to live within its budget as well as to protect the environmental integrity of the land. The agency acknowledged these twin responsibilities in its recent adoption of the Roads Policy calling for the development of a minimum road system in our national forests that is both environmentally and fiscally responsible. The Forest Service has acknowledged that compliance with the Roads Policy will result in a significant reduction in the size of the national forest road system.

This report addresses roads management in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest by exploring the ecological and financial implications of the road system. The Forest Service in the Monongahela is currently developing a new land-use plan that will guide management of the land, including roads, for the next decade. Development of this land-use plan provides the agency with both the opportunity and the imperative to identify and implement a minimum forest roads network that balances social, ecological, and economic needs and constraints. The report explores the legal framework that the Forest Service must follow in managing roads and synthesizes the relevant conservation principles related to road effects and the ecological values associated with large unroaded areas. Then, for the Monongahela National Forest, we present two spatial analyses: the first to demonstrate the unique role that the Monongahela and other national forests in the central Appalachians play in the protection of large unroaded blocks, and the second to illustrate the ecological restoration and changes in environmental indicators that could take place if the Forest Service were to adopt the long-term goal of decommissioning and obliterating a significant portion of the roads from within the forest.

Study Results
Results from the first analysis showed that overall road density is significantly lower and that the average size of unroaded blocks is significantly higher for the Monongahela and other national forests than it is for non-national forest lands.

Results from the second analysis showed that focused road decommissioning could significantly decrease the extent to which road effects have a direct impact on flora and fauna and the health of the forest’s ecosystem. Two theoretical restoration scenarios showed significant decreases in mean road density throughout the national forest and in the proportion of the landscape within 164 feet of a road, as well as a dramatic increase in the proportion of the landscape in large unroaded blocks and an improvement in connectivity between those blocks.

Results also show that the Monongahela National Forest’s road maintenance needs are almost three times the size of its current roads budget and between 5 and 10 times larger than the road maintenance portion of that budget.

Recommendations
Through the plan revision process, Forest Service staff in the Monongahela National Forest should engage in a forest-wide assessment of road conditions, system size, and priorities. The Wilderness Society urges the Forest Service to adopt the following recommendations:

Use a forest-wide analysis that documents the effects, risks, and values of the road system to help illustrate priorities for road decommissioning and road obliteration.
Develop a management plan that protects values, such as large unroaded blocks of forest, that are not readily available on surrounding private or state lands.
Consolidate roadless areas and increase the number of large unroaded blocks, as well as the connectivity between these blocks, by strategically decommissioning and obliterating roads adjacent to and between unroaded blocks.
Increase the proportion of the Monongahela National Forest that has no roads in the surrounding square mile by decommissioning and obliterating roads.
Improve watershed integrity by prioritizing the decommissioning of roads in the upper end of watersheds that currently have low road densities.
Accurately assess the cost of road management and reduce the overall road network to one that can be maintained within budgetary limits.
Ensure that there is no net increase in roads and no new roads in unroaded blocks over 1,000 acres in size until the Forest Service has completed a thorough systematic determination of the minimum road system and identified the objectives for each road.
Give priority to maintenance and decommissioning of roads that are causing, or are likely to cause, the most serious ecological damage.