Red Rock Forests

• Spring 2002/Fall 2003 Planning team conducts fact finding.
• Fall 2003 team sets up Topic Work Groups to advise on criteria for Forest use suitability.
• Spring 2004 publish Management Direction Package (proposal to revise the Forest Plans)
• Spring 2004 publish Draft  Environmental Impact Statement,  initiate scoping period.

At the end of February, 2004, a coalition of 13 conservation organizations led by Red Rock Forests and the Grand Canyon Trust, coordinating with UFN, will deliver Conservation Alternative Management Plans to the Manti-La Sal, the Fishlake, and the Dixie National Forests. Each Alternative will be delivered with a request that it appear alongside the Forest's alternatives in the Draft Plan EIS. To be fully qualified, our alternatives will be comprehensive, that is, they will address all aspects of management being considered by the three Forest planning processes; and they will:

• be reasonable, and feasible in light of Forest Service budgets, and the long-term social, ecological, and economic interests of the national public as well as the Forests’ nearby communities;
• speak to the long-term health needs (as understood by the best available scientific evidence) of native ecosystems, plants, fish, and wildlife; and
• address the various conservation legal mandates under which the Forests operate.

In order to accurately represent long-term Forest health needs, rather than merely our "wants", we are drawing upon scientific expertise throughout Utah and the nation, as well as people who have spent time on the land. NEPA requires analysis of "all reasonable alternatives" for a proposed action (in this case management of the forests for 15 years). Thus, our request that our conservation alternatives appear alongside other alternatives in the Draft and Final EISs will likely be honored.

NEPA also requires that, agencies "...shall identify any methodologies used and shall make explicit reference by footnote to the scientific and other sources relied upon for conclusions in the statement." So, along with our conservation alternatives we will submit a set of scientific documents and an annotated bibliography, obliging the Forests to analyze not only our alternatives in light of the scientific information we are submitting, but also to use it in their analysis of all other alternatives.

Forest Plans are the general plan documents that direct all National Forest management.  Each of the three Southern Utah National Forests -- the Manti-La Sal, the Dixie, and the Fishlake -- is revising its plan to better reflect conditions that are vastly different from the time nearly 20 years ago when the current plans were developed.  The Three Forests Conservation Plans emphasize the value of preserving species, ecosystems, habitat, watersheds, and wilderness as well as maintaining opportunities for low-impact recreation in these highly visited National Forests. Your involvement is critical to ensure the revised plans eventually adopted by the National Forests provide for protection of southern Utah's high country vegetation layers: sage; pinyon/juniper; oak and shrub; aspen and ponderosa; grasslands; mixed conifer, spruce/fir; and alpine tundra.

Updated National Forest Management Plans should:

1. Fully provide for survival and recovery of all state and federally listed species and Forest Sensitive species.
2. Prioritize low-impact recreation and watershed protection over all other permitted forest uses and activities.
3. Recommend to Congress additional Wilderness Areas and manage them for their Wilderness values.
4. Recommend to Congress Wild and Scenic Rivers and manage them for their Wild and Scenic values.
5. Protect critical habitat linkages and wildlife corridors.
6. Protect all remaining roadless areas, including those less than 5,000 acres, from road building and other intrusions.
7. Increase new Research Natural Areas (RNAs).
8. Increase Special Botanical and Zoological Areas.
9. Conserve all rare and declining forest habitats such as montane meadows, P-J/oak woodlands, and old-growth forests.
10. Protect all riparian areas and streamside areas from cattle grazing.
11. Withdraw from mineral entry areas with special wildlife, vegetative, roadless and other sensitive values.
12. Re-establish natural fire regimes where possible.  Use prescribed burning as appropriate to mimic natural fire conditions where natural fire regime is not possible (close to towns, etc.)
13. Prevent and control undesirable exotic species; and restore native vegetation.