Roadless Forest Gains

More Roadless, Less Extinction

For the last two years Conservation Northwest has worked with the Forest Service to identify univentoried roadless areas within Washington's eastside national forests. Now, the thousands of hours of thoughtful discussion and hard work of Conservation Northwest eastside staff David Heflick, George Wooten, and Tim Coleman, and former board member Steve Anthes have brought results.

Conservation Northwest also coordinated with the Wenatchee-Okanogan Colville Taskforce, which includes other conservation groups in Washington, on this issue.

Colville National Forest Gains

For the Colville, the 2006 inventory added 50,000 more acres than was recognized by the Forest Service in its 2001 inventory. The new inventory helps protect many special places including Cougar Mountain, Owl Mountain, Deer Creek, Cabin Creek, Granite Peak, and significant additions to the Kettle Crest inventoried roadless areas. And though the 2006 inventory drops two previously inventoried areas because they do not meet  "inventoried roadless area" criteria (an assessment to which Conservation Northwest concurred), as well as some portions of existing inventoried roadless areas that no longer met criteria, we gained five new inventoried roadless areas that meet the criteria that had never before been inventoried. We also gained nearly 10,000 acres that qualified for additions to existing inventoried roadless areas.

• Owl Mountain is an important piece of the connectivity corridor running up the Kettle Crest and into British Columbia.
• Another key segment of the Kettle Crest is Cabin Creek, which provides elk and lynx habitat.
• Roadless acreage added adjacent to the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area includes habitat for grizzly bear and mountain caribou.

Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forest Gains

On the Okanogan/Wenatchee this newest inventory is nearly 70,000 acres more than 2001. While we lost acres in Hungry Ridge and South Ridge we gained thousands of acres in Chelan-Sawtooth, Pasayten Rim, and Granite Mountain, as well as a brand new roadless area at Lookout Mountain. This is the first time that the Okanogan National Forest has added new inventoried roadless acreage since the Roadless Area Review Evaluation (RARE II) of the mid-1970s.

• The Chelan-Sawtooth is a rugged, wild piece of terrain where hikers and horseback riders can find many trails allowing access to numerous high country lakes nestled in picturesque cirques.
• The Pasayten Rim borders the Pasayten Wilderness Area for over 50 miles, from Harts Pass to Toats Coulee, along the Lost River and Farewell Peak, and south through Long Swamp; this area is home to lynx, moose, northern bog lemmings, and boreal chickadees.
• Granite Mountain is a high elevation forest in the heart of the Okanogan Range.
• Lookout Mountain, just a few miles from Twisp, provides valuable mule deer habitat.

Certainly there's more work to be done. These special areas are so unique and so increasingly rare; they deserve protection. In the Colville National Forest, many of these areas deserve protection as designated wilderness. Protecting these lands in the interim from motorized recreation, logging, road construction, and other harmful activities remains a high priority for Conservation Northwest.