It takes time for a horse to get comfortable around chainsaws, but Becki Krueger and Bob Wolf are willing to put in the hours. As executive members of the Backcountry Horsemen of Missouri, Krueger and Wolf are dedicated to keeping the state’s recreational trails open and accessible for horseback riding.
Wolf cleans trails off the back of his loveable horse Duke, a Missouri Fox Trotter. For Krueger, work happens atop her 17-year-old Quarter Horse, Easter. She and Easter do a little bit of everything together, from working cattle to hauling debris.
“I've had her all over the United States riding out west, so I trust her with my life,” Krueger said. “Her four feet get me places that I can't get on my own two feet.”
Krueger, Wolf and the Backcountry Horsemen of Missouri’s 400 members spend many of their weekends maintaining trails in natural areas all across Missouri, including the Mark Twain National Forest.
Krueger and Wolf see America’s national forests as a haven for peace and quiet, but that reality could get louder.
In August, the U.S. Forest Service started repealing the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a law that prevents road construction and timber harvesting within millions of acres of national forest land across the country.
Opponents of the law call it a one-size-fits-all solution that has led to a decline in the health of public land, keeping it off limits to practices that would improve forest health. Rescinding it would prevent wildfires and give control back to local foresters.
Environmental groups think it’ll do the opposite and open the door to pollution, construction and wildlife fragmentation. For them, this effort is one link in a long chain of federal deregulations that could change the terrain of public lands for generations to come.
A federal Band-Aid
Of the more than 190 million acres in the National Forest system, 44 million acres of that is designated as roadless, a landmass roughly the size of Missouri. Areas that are designated roadless consist of relatively undisturbed and biologically diverse land, providing clean drinking water and serving as safe havens for threatened species.
At 1.5 million acres, the Mark Twain National Forest makes up less than 1% of all the land in the national forest system, but in Missouri, it consists of close to 85% of the state’s publicly owned forested land.
Hundreds of freshwater springs start in the Mark Twain National Forest. Krueger said those springs directly impact the water quality of waterways throughout the Ozarks.
“A lot of these streams, those are the headwaters out there in those roadless areas,” Krueger said. “We allow access in there (and) that's going to cause a major problem, pollution, and it's going to change the ecosystem.”
The Mark Twain National Forest’s mixed hardwood and pine forests occupy much of southern Missouri, stretching from Branson to Poplar Bluff and reaching as far north as Columbia. More than 25,000 acres of the Mark Twain are covered under the “roadless rule.”
Many of the Mark Twain National Forest’s roadless areas would retain some form of protected status if the rule is eventually repealed. Ted Heisel, environmental and natural resource attorney in the St. Louis region, said the Mark Twain National Forest’s local forest plan covers these areas with their own makeshift roadless rule.
“As a conservationist, I see the roadless rule as an added or a second layer of protection for the areas on the Mark Twain,” Heisel said, “even if the forest plan sort of already gives them more or less a hands-off designation.”
The Mark Twain National Forest’s roadless areas are considered “semi-primitive” and “non-motorized,” according to the forest plan, which was adopted in 2005. These overlapping designations are like two Band-Aids covering the same wound. A local Band-Aid ensures the areas are protected even if the federal Band-Aid is taken away.
Heisel said, despite the local protections in place, the roadless rule is still worth preserving.
“There's just so few wild areas where there's no roads and no logging, where nature gets to take its course,” Heisel said.
‘We’ll never get that land back’
Not every roadless area has two Band-Aids. Big Creek is the Mark Twain National Forest’s largest federally protected roadless area at more than 9,000 acres. Its designation as a “roaded natural area” doesn’t include provisions like the roadless rule.
According to an email from Cody Norris, public affairs officer for the Mark Twain National Forest, building roads in Big Creek would require environmental impact and transportation studies. Areas with stronger designations would require the forest plan itself to be revised. That process usually takes place every decade or so.
Supporters of the rule’s rescission have said it’ll reduce the risk of wildfires. Timber harvesting is prohibited in roadless areas, and forest management is strictly regulated. Repealing the rule would allow firefighters and forest managers to access tree stands that have since turned into “tinderboxes,” according to supporters.
In Missouri, as well as across the country, the largest cause of wildfires is humans. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation wildfire dashboard, more than 750 fires have burned five acres or more in Missouri this year; more than one-third of those were caused by human debris.
Bruce Palmer, who has taught fire safety to foresters across multiple agencies, said more access could actually lead to more fires.
“Having road access to every place lets people in to travel those roads,” Palmer said. “When you have people, then you increase the probability of having fires getting started.”
Palmer is also the executive director of the Missouri Consulting Foresters Association. He said there's probably a middle ground, something between a one-size-fits-all regulation and rescinding the rule altogether. Idaho and Colorado may have already found it when they passed their own state-level roadless regulations in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
Krueger with the Backcountry Horsemen has mixed feelings about the term “local control.” On the one hand, natural resource departments need to listen to their foresters on the ground, but she sees these decisions being made from up above in D.C.
In the end, Krueger worries the consequences of repealing the roadless rule could reach far into the future and be hard to reverse.
“If we start building roads in there, and they decide that maybe for some reason, ‘Oops, we made a mistake and it's not working,’ we'll never get that land back,” Krueger said.
This story was first published by Missouri Business Alert, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
