The Carson National Forest has released proposed rule changes that would eliminate cross-country use of motor vehicles throughout the 1.5-million-acre forest and close 600 miles of forest roads to public use, El Rito District Ranger Diana Trujillo said. However, the Forest Service has no corresponding plans to increase enforcement in the National Forest.
The proposed prohibition will apply to ATVs and motorcycles but not snowmobiles or emergency vehicles. It is intended to protect wildlife habitat and reduce the risk of wildfire, the influx of invasive plant species, damage to soil and the loss of native vegetation, according to the Service.
Forest-wide, 600 miles of 2,700 miles of road will be closed, leaving 2,100 miles open to motor vehicle use, Carson National Forest Spokesperson Kathy DeLucas said. The road closures will primarily affect the Canjilon, El Rito and Tres Piedras districts, DeLucas said.
“It’s a change,” Trujillo said. “(But) the vast majority of visitors to our district stay on existing roads. We have 688 miles of designated roads (on the 275,295 acre El Rito Ranger District alone). Of that, 147 miles would be closed, leaving 541 miles open.”
That means only about a fifth of road miles in the El Rito Distrct will be closed. More than half of the miles of current roads on the Canjilon District — or 202 miles of 387 miles of road — will be closed, leaving 185 miles of road open to public use. Tres Piedras District will lose 125 miles of its 689 miles of road. The Jicarilla District will lose 14 miles of roads to the proposed closures, leaving 171 miles open.
The public has a right to comment on the proposal until Saturday, Trujillo said. A final decision about which roads are closed will be made in the summer and closures will take effect in October.
The proposed changes mirror an August 2008 announcement that the Santa Fe National Forest intended to close about half of its roads. The Santa Fe forest road closures have yet to take effect, but will cut the number of miles of forest roads by more than half, from nearly 5,000 miles to 2,309 miles of roads open to motorized use. The Santa Fe Forest will leave just 50 acres open to off-road motorized travel. About 820,000 acres in the Santa Fe Forest are currently open to off-road travel.
Off-road travel will be completely eliminated in the Española District.
“We are going about it a little differently than the Santa Fe forest,” DeLucas said. “They are doing one big, forest-wide environmental impact assessment. We’re doing four separate environmental analyses, breaking up the (Carson) forest into geographically distinct areas — one environmental assessment (encompassing) the Tres Piedras, El Rito and Canjilon districts, another for Jicarilla District, one for the Questa District and a fourth for the Camino Real District. They will all be done simultaneously. (Both Santa Fe and Carson national forests) are shooting for the same deadline of Oct. 1, 2009.”
The road closures are part of a nationwide effort to reduce forest road densities, DeLucas said.
The Forest Service has not received much public feedback about the proposed changes, Trujillo said. She met with Rio Arriba County Commissioner Felipe Martinez to answer his questions and to provide him with large maps of proposed road closures, she said.
Some closed roads will be revegetated while others — such as firefighting access roads — will merely be gated, Trujillo said. But many won’t be physically closed at all.
“Closed roads will be noted on maps,” Trujillo said. “Visitors will want to obtain copies of the map. We’ll be emphasizing public education more than enforcement.”
Livestock grazers will be eligible for exemptions to the off-road driving ban, Trujillo said.
“If they have needs off the existing system, we’ll write that into their permits,” Trujillo said. “We’re meeting with grazing permit (holders) now and into the first week of March.”
That’s welcome news to Martinez, whose district includes the El Rito ranger district. Martinez, himself a cattle stockman, said he has “mixed feelings” about exceptions to the off-road travel ban.
“To exclude everyone else is unfair,” Martinez said. “But we’re seeing more and more indiscriminate, uncontrolled ATV travel. We need some measure of control.”
Martinez was quick to add that he believes a single road does more damage to forest soils than all off-road traffic put together.
“There are way too many forest roads. It’s a maze,” Martinez said. “Most are used for poaching and (poachers) cut fences. All the repairs fall to the stockmen.”
Fellow Commissioner Alfredo Montoya sees the changes as positive — but probably unenforceable.
“Where I hunt there is already a ban,” Montoya noted. “It’s frustrating to hike or ride a horse for an hour and a half in the freezing cold just to see a vehicle drive in. There’s nobody to enforce anything.”
There are only three law enforcement officers to patrol the entire 1.5 million-acre Carson National Forest, DeLucas said — but the Forest Service has memos of agreement that allow State Police and county deputies to patrol federal forest roads, and will provide those law enforcement agencies with maps of closed forest roads.
El Rito resident Favian Maestas said he uses his ATV off road to access hunting areas on the Carson forest, but he too has mixed feelings about the Forest Service ban.
“A lot of people up here hunt and if we can’t use ATVs off road to get to the spots we need or whatever, people won’t like it,” Maestas said. “(But) there’s a lot of natural springs up there and a lot of people go wherever they feel like going, and destroy the springs and the grass. I see a lot of damage. Where there was green grass there was motor oil from ATVs, and there’s garbage, a lot of litter everywhere.”
The Carson National Forest will also adopt a “corridor” camping area system, Trujillo said, with camping allowed at designated campsites or 300 feet on either side of forest roads.
“Some corridors will be 150 feet wide, near archeological sites or where roads are close together,” Trujillo said.