The Sierra Club's specific objection is to the decision to adopt, as a Forestwide Objective, the establishment of the Shoshone OHV trail in northern Utah. This portion of the decision is described as Objective 7.b on page 4-34 of the Revised Forest Plan, and is reflected in certain details of the ROS maps for the Cache - Box Elder and North Wasatch / Ogden Valley Management Areas.

It should be noted that the Sierra Club has participated at every opportunity in the NEPA process that led to this decision, from the initial scoping, through the development of alternatives, to the workshops, hearings, and submission of written comments on the draft Plan and DEIS. However, this appeal concerns an Objective that was added to the Revised Forest Plan only after opportunities for public participation had ended.

REASONS FOR THIS APPEAL

The decision to establish the Shoshone OHV trail is a major federal action requiring comprehensive environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). No environmental review of the Shoshone OHV trail proposal (or anything similar to it) took place during or prior to the development of the Revised Forest Plan. In fact, the Shoshone trail proposal was not made public until more than four months after the public comment period on the associated Draft EIS had expired. The Shoshone OHV trail is not analyzed anywhere in the Final EIS. Because the Forest Service has not taken a "hard look" at the effects of this action as required by NEPA, incorporation of this Objective into the final Plan is a violation of NEPA.

To understand why establishment of the Shoshone OHV trail is a major federal action, it is necessary to review what this action will entail. According to page 4-34 of the Revised Forest Plan, "The Shoshone OHV trail would be a motorized trail on State, BLM, private and National Forest system lands on the Logan and Ogden Ranger districts," which would "provide extended riding opportunities between communities" and "connect the existing trail opportunities on the National Forest with trails on BLM, State, and private lands." No further details are explicitly stated in the Plan or the FEIS. However, many further details can be ascertained from the actions that the Forest Service has already taken to further this Objective.

The Shoshone OHV trail proposal has been developed primarily by the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation, which has drafted a map of the proposed trail system. The most recent draft of this map is dated 14 February 2003, and was on display at a public open house, hosted by the Forest Service to unveil the Revised Forest Plan, on 23 April 2003. A copy of this map is attached (see Attachment 1). The map shows approximately 200 miles of specific routes as part of "Phase 1" of the Shoshone trail system, plus approximately another 300 miles of "potential trails." Thus, at the time of the decision to adopt the Plan, the Shoshone Trail was a specific proposal, not a vague concept. Even establishment of Phase 1 would constitute a major federal action, while there is ample evidence that the Forest Service is interpreting Objective 7.b to also include many of the "potential trails."

Phase 1: Context and Intensity

Phase 1 of the Shoshone trail (as defined by the aforementioned map) would consist of approximately 200 miles of motorized routes and seven new or expanded trailhead facilities. Most of the routes lie on federal land, divided between the Logan Ranger District, the Ogden Ranger District, and adjacent BLM lands. Some of the routes also cross private lands and State lands (managed by the Division of Wildlife Resources or the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration). The Phase 1 routes span a roughly square area of about 500 square miles, within Cache and Rich Counties. This area encompasses ten inventoried roadless areas, and most of the Phase 1 routes form the boundaries of these roadless areas. One of the Phase 1 routes lies within the Temple Peak Inventoried Roadless Area.

With the possible exceptions of some routes on non-federal lands, all of the routes included in Phase 1 are already open to ATV's (and in most cases, larger vehicles as well) under the current applicable travel management plans. Thus, Phase 1 would not open any new routes on federal land. Rather, the purposes of Phase 1 appear to be to promote increased OHV use in northern Utah, preempt any attempts to close these routes in the future, and lay the groundwork for future expansion of the system to include some or all of the "potential trails."

Promotion of increased OHV use has been frequently cited by public officials as a purpose of the Shoshone trail system. A news article dated 22 July 2002 (see Attachment 2) states that Jeff Packer, chairman of the Utah Board of Parks and Recreation, publicly compared the Shoshone trail to southern Utah's Paiute ATV trail in its potential to create an "economic boom from the tourism." The same article quotes the mayor of Brigham City advocating the Shoshone trail as a means of bringing "economic development." As an initial step to implement Objective 7.b, the Forest Service recently assisted in drafting a Memorandum of Understanding among the affected government agencies, agreeing to work together to establish the Shoshone trail system (see Attachment 3); this MOU also cites "economic development in the surrounding communities" as a benefit of the project. Of course, these economic benefits would ensue only if there is an increase in the number of motorized recreationists using the area.

Promotion of increased OHV use would be accomplished by installing signs along the trails, constructing trailhead facilities, and publicizing the Shoshone trail system via published maps and other literature. The Utah Division of Parks and Recreation has apparently offered to carry out these activities using its own funds, and it appears that the Division is ready to begin these activities as soon as the MOU referred to above has been signed by the Forest Service. Forest Service officials have told the Sierra Club that they are contemplating no further environmental analysis before signing the MOU or allowing these activities to take place. (The only exception would be trailhead construction on federal land, which apparently would undergo site-specific NEPA analysis. However, most of the seven Phase 1 trailheads would be on state or private land. No NEPA analysis of these trailhead projects is planned, even though they would have a major effect on the nearby federal land into which the trail routes lead.)

The federal courts have repeatedly found that the NEPA review of a trail project must analyze the cumulative impacts of any increased motorized use that would result from the project. See North Cascades Conservation Council v. United States Forest Service, 98 F. Supp. 2d 1193 (W.D. Wash. 1999); Washington Trails Association v. United States Forest Service, 935 F. Supp. 1117 (W.D. Wash. 1996). In the second of these cases, the court also found that the potential for increased motorized use of an area elevated the project from one that might be exempt from NEPA analysis to a major federal action that required NEPA analysis. By the same logic, the Forest Service must perform a NEPA analysis of the Shoshone trail project before signing an MOU authorizing the activities described in the previous paragraph, because these activities are likely to result in significantly increased motorized recreational activity over at least 200 miles of routes encompassing a large area and affecting many land owners and other users.

Besides leading to increased OHV use, establishment of Phase 1 at this time could preclude certain alternatives from being considered during the upcoming revision of the Logan and Ogden Ranger District travel plans. The Revised Forest Plan acknowledges that these travel plans require revision in the near future. The environmental analyses of the travel plan revisions should consider a full range of alternatives, including alternatives that would close certain routes for environmental reasons. However, the apparent requirement that the Shoshone trail system be a "connect[ed]" system that spans two ranger districts and provides "extended riding opportunities" may be incompatible with such alternatives. Restriction of the range of alternatives to be considered in an environmental analysis is a violation of NEPA regulations.

Phase 1 of the Shoshone trail system lies mostly within the Bear River and Monte Cristo mountain ranges, in the heart of the "broad scale, north-south wildlife corridor" referred to repeatedly in the Revised Forest Plan. This corridor is crucial to the continued viability of certain wildlife populations, most notably the Canada lynx, which was listed as a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in March 2000. Thus, Objective 7.b, which apparently mandates that most of the motorized routes within the corridor remain open to motorized use and that their use be increasingly promoted, may be a violation of the Endangered Species Act as well as of NEPA. This Objective may also be incompatible with those passages in the Plan (e.g., page 4-132) stipulating that restoration and maintenance of this wildlife corridor "will be a priority in all management decisions." To determine the extent to which the Shoshone trail system might be compatible with the ESA and the rest of the Plan, a comprehensive NEPA analysis of the Shoshone proposal, including a range of possible alternatives, is needed.

Besides its effect on wildlife, establishment of Phase 1 of the Shoshone trail system could have a number of other negative environmental effects. Increased traffic could cause erosion of trail surfaces, widening of trails, creation of multiple braided trails, establishment of new user-created trails (often within inventoried roadless areas), establishment of new dispersed campsites, deterioration of water quality, spread of noxious weeds along routes, and displacement of nonmotorized trail users. These potential environmental effects have made the Shoshone trail project extremely controversial among the local population (see Attachment 4). Increased motorized traffic could create unsafe riding conditions, especially where ATV's and larger vehicles share a narrow roadway. Safety concerns could then make it necessary to widen trails or to create separate parallel routes for ATV's and highway-legal vehicles; either solution would entail significant damage to vegetation and watersheds. All of these significant, foreseeable effects, and others, need to be analyzed before a decision is made to establish even Phase 1 of the Shoshone trail, and this analysis has not occurred.

"Potential Trails": Context and Intensity

The so-called "potential trails" (as defined by the aforementioned map) would extend the Shoshone trail system to include over 500 miles of routes spanning an area of approximately 1000 square miles. These routes tend to be even more controversial than the Phase 1 routes. Many of them cross wide stretches of private land where landowners are opposed to ATV access (see Attachment 5). Several "potential trails" within the National Forest are along routes that are closed in the current travel management plans. Some of these routes would need to be widened, reconstructed, or completely realigned before safe travel along them is possible.

Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that the Forest Service is interpreting Objective 7.b to include many of the "potential trails" in addition to the Phase 1 routes. On the ROS maps of the Revised Forest Plan itself, the areas surrounding four currently closed "potential trails" are incorrectly mapped as "semi-primitive motorized," as if these routes were already open to motorized use. Three of these routes, and a portion of the fourth, are currently being managed by the Forest Service as open, with no signs or barriers to indicate otherwise. Two of these routes are also incorrectly shown as open on the published "Box Elder County/Interagency Travel & Recreation Map, Tremonton/Promontory Point," a map that carries the Forest Service emblem and the words "For sale by . . . U.S. Forest Service." The erroneous portion of this map has also been duplicated and distributed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Forest Service officials did not object to distribution of these erroneous maps until pressured to do so by the Sierra Club. In a meeting with Sierra Club volunteers on 1 April 2003, Ogden District Ranger Chip Sibbernsen stated that he was unwilling to post these two routes as closed during the coming summer travel season. A recent news article reported that at the 3 June 2003 meeting of the Box Elder County Commission, Sibbernsen spoke in favor of extending the Shoshone trail into Box Elder County, and offered to work with private landowners to negotiate rights of way for the trail system (see Attachment 5). The MOU referred to above has been circulated to Weber and Box Elder Counties, and includes places for their representatives' signatures, even though only "potential trails" pass through these counties.

This evidence indicates that the Forest Service is pursuing implementation of "potential" Shoshone system routes without NEPA analysis. Before currently closed routes are legally opened as part of the Ogden Ranger District Travel Plan revision, a perfunctory NEPA analysis will, of course, be performed. However, it is clear that the decision to open certain routes has already been made and even implemented on the ground (by refusing to post the routes as closed), without environmental review. Objective 7.b appears to be a part of this process: an attempt to prejudice the eventual outcome of the travel plan revision toward opening those new routes that are considered part of the Shoshone trail system, even though the Shoshone system as a whole has never undergone environmental analysis.

The environmental issues associated with these new "potential" Shoshone routes are many. For example, the route from Dock Flat to Balsam Basin includes lengthy segments that exceed a 30% grade, where erosion and safety problems would be inevitable. This route also passes through flammulated owl habitat and is serving as a corridor for noxious weed invasion. The route from Public Grove to Devils Gate Valley passes through an inventoried roadless area and historical sage grouse habitat. Other "potential" routes that are currently closed lie in the Monte Cristo Range, which forms a portion of the "broad scale, north-south wildlife corridor" referred to above. One of these routes is a cherry-stem into the Mollen's Hollow Inventoried Roadless Area (though as a closed, unmaintained trail, it should have been simply included in the IRA, not cherry-stemmed). Many "potential" routes pass through open terrain where it will be virtually impossible to construct effective physical barriers to keep vehicles on designated routes.

Lack of NEPA Analysis

For all of the reasons just outlined, the establishment of the Shoshone OHV trail constitutes a major federal action and is thus subject to NEPA analysis. The fact that no NEPA analysis of this action was performed during the just-concluded planning process is documented by the lack of mention of the Shoshone OHV trail, or any similar concept of a large, connected system of OHV trails in northern Utah, in the Proposed Forest Plan (dated May 2001), or Draft Environmental Impact Statement (dated May 2001), or of any analysis of such a trail system in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (dated February 2003). Early during the planning process, the Forest Service informed the public that the NEPA process then underway would not address site-specific or route-specific proposals affecting summer motorized recreation (see, for example, page 1-14 of the DEIS), yet the Shoshone OHV trail is such a proposal. The public comment period on the Proposed Plan and DEIS ended on 1 November 2001, whereas the public had no way of knowing that such a project was being contemplated until 12 March 2002, when a bill to establish the Shoshone trail was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. (The bill was subsequently defeated in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.) There is evidence to indicate that before the bill was introduced, public officials deliberately kept the project a secret (see Attachment 6). Before the final Plan was released to the public in March 2003, the Forest Service gave no notice to the public that the Shoshone trail, or anything similar to it, might be incorporated into the Plan.

It appears, moreover, that no NEPA analysis (EA or EIS) conducted prior to the recent planning process has ever studied the environmental impacts of motorized use along the proposed Shoshone routes (Phase 1 or "potential"). The staff of the Ogden Ranger District, at least, have informed the Sierra Club that they have no record in their office of any such prior analysis. The most recent district-wide revision of the Ogden Ranger District travel plan was done in 1991, and was accomplished via a categorical exclusion. That revision included the opening of one of the Phase 1 Shoshone routes (Forest Road 216, a loop off the Curtis Creek road) to motorized use. The context of incorporating this and other routes into a vast system of hundreds of miles of connected trails was not considered at that time. Several of the "potential" Shoshone trails were also opened or considered for closure in the 1991 travel plan revision, without consideration of the cumulative impact that might come from incorporating these trails into a connected system that would attract motorists in much greater numbers. Many Shoshone routes, on the other hand, appear to have been "always open," with no existing record of why they are open and certainly no environmental analysis of their impacts.

Thus, the decision to establish the Shoshone OHV trail and thereby dramatically increase OHV use over a wide area--which clearly may have a significant effect on the natural and human environment--has never been analyzed as required by NEPA.

Aside from the NEPA requirement that major federal actions undergo rigorous environmental analysis with opportunity for public participation, the Sierra Club believes that it is simply bad public policy to exclude the public from a major decision such as this. We are not alone in this view. On 14 May 2003, the Ogden Standard-Examiner editorialized that the public had been "left out of the loop" during the planning of the Shoshone trail (see Attachment 7), echoing opinions that had recently been expressed by the Sierra Club, the Weber County Commission, and the Bureau of Land Management (see Attachment 8).

SPECIFIC CHANGES SOUGHT IN THE DECISION

1. Revised Forest Plan, page 4-33: Change the title "Objectives for the Bonneville Shoreline, Great Western, and Shoshone Trails" to read "Objectives for the Bonneville Shoreline and Great Western Trails."

2. Revised Forest Plan, page 4-34: Beginning with the words "The Shoshone OHV trail . . ." on line 6, delete this sentence and the following two sentences, through to the end of the paragraph. Delete Objective 7.b at the bottom of the same page.

3. Revised Forest Plan, ROS maps for Cache - Box Elder and North Wasatch / Ogden Valley Management Areas: Revise these maps to reflect current travel plans, by changing certain areas from a "semi-primitive motorized" designation to "semi-primitive non-motorized." The areas in question are: (1) the bulk of the Public Grove roadless area and nearby lands; (2) the area west of the Willard Basin road near Dock Flat, adjoining the Brigham Wildlife Management Area; (3) the area lying to the west of Highway 39 near the Monte Cristo campground, including the Skunk Creek route; and (4) the area surrounding the currently closed portion of Forest road 196, between Pete's Hollow and Davenport Hollow in the southern portion of the Mollen's Hollow roadless area.

4. Order the Regional Forester to take no actions towards implementation of the plans for the Shoshone OHV trail, either "Phase 1" or "potential," until such plans have been analyzed pursuant to NEPA.

APPELLANT:

Sierra Club, Ogden Group
Daniel V. Schroeder, Chair
1444 Binford Street
Ogden, UT 84401
801-393-4603 (home)
801-626-6048 (office)

ATTACHMENTS

1. Shoshone trail map. This map, dated 14 February 2003, shows the precise routes that would be incorporated into "Phase 1" of the Shoshone trail system, and also the many "potential trails" that would presumably be added later. Thus, the Shoshone trail is a concrete proposal affecting specific travel routes, not a vague concept.

2. News article from the Ogden Standard-Examiner, 22 July 2002. This article quotes state and local officials who say that increased tourism and economic development are among the purposes of the Shoshone trail system. In other words, the trail is intended to increase the number of OHV users in the affected area.

3. Memorandum of Understanding between the Forest Service and other governmental agencies (FS MOU No. 03-MU-11041907-004), provided by the Forest Service to the Sierra Club on 5 May 2003. This MOU cites economic development as a benefit of the Shoshone trail and demonstrates that the Forest Service already intends to extend the trail system beyond "Phase 1" into Weber and Box Elder Counties.

4. Editorial from the Logan Herald-Journal, 13 June 2002. This editorial illustrates the controversial nature of the Shoshone trail proposal and names several of the likely environmental consequences of increased OHV use in the area.

5. News article from the Ogden Standard-Examiner, 4 June 2003. This article illustrates the controversial nature of the Shoshone trail proposal among affected landowners, and shows that Forest Service officials are already pursuing the implementation of the "potential trails" that would extend the Shoshone system to Box Elder County.

6. Web page: www.utahatvtrails.com/ATVShoshone.html. This web page, on a site maintained by Robert Birkinshaw, states that the Shoshone trail proposal was treated as a secret by public officials (possibly including the Forest Service) as late as March 2002, four months after the public comment deadline on the draft Plan and DEIS had expired. (This copy of the web page was downloaded on 26 July 2002; the page has since been revised to remove the reference to the secrecy of the meeting.)

7. Editorial from the Ogden Standard-Examiner, 14 May 2003. This editorial illustrates the widespread view that any decision to establish the Shoshone trail system should be preceded by open public discussion, which has not yet occurred.

8. News article from the Ogden Standard-Examiner, 12 May 2003. This article shows that representatives of the Weber County Commission and of the Bureau of Land Management share the Sierra Club's view that the public must be involved in any decision to establish the Shoshone trail.

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Last modified on 27 June 2003.