August 20,1998 HUNGRY HORSE NEWS Letter to Editor: Culvert excavation destroyed ecology by Chuck Samuleson
CAG Comments
As you read about road closures, grizzly bears, bull trout, can you see the
relationship and what is happening???
You are quietly being put into a straight jacket in the name of Man and the Biosphere, a United Nations concept subscribed to by the president and vice
president of the United States-all for the public good.
WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!
End CAG Comments
If you should wish to observe some forest roads as "swaths of ecological destruction" you only have to hike Forest Roads 317, 1642, 1687, and 1689, in the South Coal Mathias Creek drainage of the Glacier View Ranger District. Roads that were well constructed, healed and vegetated.
"Ecological destruction" was inflicted upon the drainage and roads in one short month's time. Contract action that excavated 41 culverts, 18 inches to 48 inches diameter and dug 318 deep water diversion bars across the road surfaces. Streams now cross the roads in mud instead of culverts. Waterbars run water across road surfaces instead of cross drain culverts provided. Two roads parallel the creeks for miles and only a stone's throw away in several areas. Will future high water events flush sediments and nutrients into South Coal Mathias Creek, a creek closed to fishing as a bull trout spawning stream?
Forest Service engineers and hydrologists attended a training session several years ago conducted by Road RIP, at the Glacier Institute now in the Old Big Creek Ranger Station. It was a training conference in how to destroy forest roads. The training has been successful, the swaths of ecological destruction have been occurring behind closed gates on our public lands for several years.
Incidentally, the advertised conference fee for the road destruction conference was: Activistinon-agency $50. Agency personnel $200.
RETURN