Forest Service unveils draft
MANAGEMENT: The plan seeks a balance between recreation and environmental protection.
12:15 AM PDT on Thursday, June 10, 2004
By JENNIFER BOWLES / The Press-Enterprise
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FOREST MEETINGS
The U.S. Forest Service will hold open houses so the public can get information on the draft management plans for the Cleveland and San Bernardino national forests
All meetings are from 7 to 9 p.m.:
Tonight: Pine Springs Ranch, 58000 Apple Canyon Road, Garner Valley, turn north off Highway 74 at Hurkey Creek Campground and drive 2.8 miles.
Tuesday: Best Western Green Tree Inn, 14173 Green Tree Blvd, Victorville.
Wednesday : USFS Danny Rhynes Training Center, 4121 Quail Canyon Road, San Bernardino.
June 17: Lions Center West, Filippi Room, 9161 Baseline Rd., Rancho Cucamonga.
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When fire strikes the mountains, Big Bear City Fire Chief Dana Van Leuven knows well that time is of the essence.
The last thing Van Leuven wants to worry about is how he can attack the flames.
Yet, in the U.S. Forest Service's recently unveiled draft management plans for the San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests, a proposal to designate wilderness on 9,000 acres around Sugarloaf Mountain would ban him from using bulldozers and other mechanized equipment without first taking the time to get permission.
"It makes it difficult for firefighters to do their job when they have to deal with wilderness," the chief said. "It slows us down."
In some areas, he said, the proposal would place the wilderness area a little more than a mile from homes on the edge of the mountain hamlet that can swell with 80,000 people on holiday weekends.
The wilderness proposal is part of the blueprint that will guide recreation, species protection and fire management in the two Inland forests over the next 15 years. Given the increasing population, the plans are focused on finding the delicate balance between what to preserve and where to allow more recreation.
Considered the nation's highest form of land protection, wilderness also bans bicycles, prompting concerns from two-wheeled jockeys who rumble through the forest.
Ron Pugh, the U.S. Forest Service employee who is leading the planning effort for the Southern California forests, said the boundaries of the Sugarloaf other recommended wilderness areas throughout the two Inland forests aren't etched in stone yet.
In finalizing the forest plans, Pugh said, the Forest Service will consider such comments and draw ideas from five other management options. The agency is holding a series of open houses through June 17 in the Inland area, including tonight in Garner Valley west of Idyllwild and next week in San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga.
Looking over the vast meadow of scrub and pines below the rounded Sugarloaf Mountain, the tallest in a ridge south of Big Bear Valley, Van Leuven said the fire danger is extreme this year with the ongoing beetle plague that has left scores of pines ready to burn.
"My issue is strictly from a public safety standpoint," he said, "and being able to aggressively fight fire."
Room for fun
Southern California forests, unlike most of the nation's logging-dominated forests, act largely as sprawling playgrounds for the people who live in the valleys and foothills below.
Some 8 million visitors each year pack into the San Bernardino, Cleveland, Angeles and Los Padres national forests that stretch over 3.7 million acres tooff-road, hike, bike, ride horses, camp or picnic.
And in the next 15 years, Pugh said, there's a 20 percent increase in the 20 million people living near the four forests.
"We know we'll get some percentage of that coming to the forests," he said.
To accommodate that growth, land in the four forests zoned for motorized use would increase by about 2 percent to nearly 1.6 million acres. However, only a few new trails would be built to connect existing trails, he said.
"We're looking at improving, where we can, the road and trails system, but we're not looking at building a whole lot of new stuff," he said.
Despite the slight increase in motorized use, some feel that off-roading may be getting the short end of the stick. Some areas that have been used for off-roading appear closed under the plan, said Eddie Phillips, who lives in the Moonridge area of Big Bear Lake.
"I look at the maps and I see where we're losing," said Phillips, a member of Americans for Forest Access, which advocates for off-roading and other activities. "We need to have better information on the downside of all this."
Preserving land
Besides recreation, forests snuggled into mountain ranges provide much of the region's drinking water in the form of snow melt that drips down canyon walls and into rivers and groundwater.
They also provide habitat for 144 imperiled plants and animals, including a few that are barely hanging onto existence.
Environmentalists believe wilderness designations help to preserve water sources and species.
"The forests are islands of refuge for endangered species," said Monica Bond, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Idyllwild. "Because of so much sprawl and development in the lowlands, we really need to have protection in our forests."
Sugarloaf, for example, provides habitat for imperiled plants, the bald eagle, southwestern willow flycatcher and the mountain yellow-legged frog, an endangered species.
But both Bond and Joyce Burk, chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Southern California Forest Committee, said the Forest Service isn't going far enough, sacrificing wildlife protections by allowing too much recreation. Environmental groups had sought nearly five times the amount of wilderness than what ended up in the plans.
In all, the Forest Service is proposing a total of 21,514 acres of new wilderness in the San Bernardino National Forest and 16,415 acres in the Cleveland.
While a separate California wilderness bill sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is making the rounds in Washington, D.C., officials from individual forests pull weight with Congress by recommending what they think should be wilderness in their management plans, Pugh said.
"We're not ignoring it," Pugh said of the bill. "We've taken that into account."
Even more uses
While competing groups battle for every inch of forest land, Pugh is bothered by what he sees as an increasing dependence on the forest to support lifelines for the urban sprawl below.
"We understand public land is a place where that can occur, but is it the best place?" he said.
In the Cleveland, such proposals include a high-voltage power line as part of a hydroelectric project for Lake Elsinore; a tunnel that would run under the forest to ease congestion on Highway 91 for Inland workers who commute to Orange County; and possibly a widening of the Ortega Highway that weaves through the forest.
The forest plans, however don't approve or disapprove any specific plans.
"All that stuff," he said, "has to be weighed out."
Reach Jennifer Bowles at 909-368-9548 or jbowles@pe.com
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