Wednesday, Sept. 23 marks Travel Management Rule comment deadline

Backcountry Hunters and Anglers leader Ryan “Cal” Callaghan issued the following statement today reminding the conservation community that the comment period for the Travel Management Rule ends tomorrow. See a link at the end of the piece to comment yourself.

Managing travel and access is one of conservation’s trickiest topics.

Ask most hunters whether they’d rather drive right to a downed elk and load it into a pickup or carry it over miles of blowdown, and the answer is most likely: Load it up.

And would you rather hike or pedal that 1,000-foot climb, or use a pedal-assisted e-bike? Working smarter, not harder, is often attractive.

But it’s easy to forget that what’s good for us individually is not always what’s best for hunting as a whole – or for the wildlife and wild places we hold dear.

The earlier examples illustrate this: It’s more convenient for me to drive to that elk and spare my aching back, but what if that drive spooks the rest of the elk on that block of public land over onto a private-land sanctuary? What if it ruins the hunt of other hunters in the area? Or further, what if that two-track – intended as a temporary, single-use route – is taken by the next vehicle down the road, and then the next?

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Maybe a primitive campsite is established on what was just a multipoint turnaround, and temporary becomes permanent – something neither elk nor hunters want on the landscape. Maybe the traffic causes erosion, spreads invasive weeds and degrades water quality in the nearby trout stream. The same goes for e-bikes on nonmotorized trails (as has also been proposed) which push disturbances of elk, deer and other wildlife deeper into the backcountry.

As hard as it is to admit – our individual actions, unfortunately, have consequences for others. I’ve certainly lost sight of that at times. Maybe you have, too. It’s easy to focus on what’s best for ourselves in any given moment.

That brings us to the current scoping process to revise or rescind the Travel Management Rule on our national forests, and the trade-offs we need to weigh. We may want to use a motor here or there, but we have to ask ourselves,”What are the long-term implications for everyone and for the future of our public lands?”

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ position is clear: Keep the core framework of the 2005 Travel Management Rule intact.

For more than 20 years, it’s given the U.S. Forest Service a workable system for balancing motorized access with healthy habitat, clean water and quality hunting and fishing—a system built through years of local, on-the-ground public input. That system can be modernized, but it shouldn’t be dismantled.

We’re urging USFS to keep designated-route management rather than shift to an “open unless closed” default, retain the environmental and use-conflict review process that governs new travel decisions, and preserve the public’s seat at the table when those decisions are made.

Last chance: The comment period closes tomorrow, Sept. 23 at 11:59 PM.

The outcome of this debate will affect our public lands for years to come and hunters who stay quiet leave the loudest voices in the room to speak for all of us.

Conservation isn’t convenient. But neither is losing the ground, literally, that we’ve fought to keep wild.

For more information and to comment, visit here.