New Conservation Voices
 Celebrating Wilderness
By Doug Scott
We humans use anniversaries as occasions to celebrate and to take stock. Wedding anniversaries and birthdays are obvious examples. As it happens, 2009 has been a year rich in wilderness anniversaries for Washington conservationists to celebrate.
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Increased Funding for Watershed Restoration Washington, D.C. (10/29/09) —The Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill was approved by Congress and awaits President Obama’s signature. The bill provides important increased funding for watershed restoration, including a $40 million increase for the Legacy Road and Trail Remediation Program. The program aims to repair and decommission failing Forest Service logging roads and trails, including many in the Skokomish River watershed which is a high priority for restoring Hood Canal.
Additionally in Washington State, the bill will provide an increase of $30 million next year for the cleanup and restoration of Puget Sound, and an extra $20 million for removing two dams on the Elwha River in Olympic National Park, opening up key habitat for five species of native salmon.
As a part of the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative, Washington Wilderness worked with a coalition of organizations to urge for the increased federal funding for targeted, road-related, watershed restoration. Forest Service roads are a huge, neglected problem. The Forest Service estimates the maintenance backlog in Washington to be $300 million, excluding inflation, to repair damage to roads that fail. This translates into $30 million per year for the next 10 years to cover the costs of road repair and decommissioning. At the previous rate, the Legacy Roads funding ($3 million provided to Washington in 2008), would take 100 years to address the problem.
Failing forest roads are harmful to the endangered and dwindling runs of salmon that need cold, clear water to thrive and reproduce. Muddy water from washed out roads harm the gills of salmon and trout, and fish eggs smother when silt settles into clean gravel beds. Deteriorating, unmaintained and poorly designed national forest roads contribute sediment-laden runoff into streams, making them wider, shallower and more susceptible to warming by the sun. Sediments also foul drinking water, increasing the need for community water filtration systems, and failing roads threaten recreational opportunities.
To prevent harm to water quality and salmon, the Washington Department of
Ecology and the Forest Service signed an agreement in 2000 to develop an inventory of Forest Service roads and set a timeline to improve them sufficiently to prevent harm from pollution and excess sediment. The Forest Service concluded that it would cost an estimated $300 million to bring Washington’s national forests into compliance with today’s standards.
The funding to invest in forest watershed restoration will create green, high-wage,
high-skill jobs in rural resource-dependent communities, and the public investment in forest watershed restoration can sustain American families whose lives and
work are tightly connected to our national forests.
Find more information:
Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative
Puget Sound Funding in Final Interior Bill; Measure to be Signed by President this Week
The Kitsap Sun, “Congress Approves Money for Puget Sound, National Forests”
The Adverse Ecological Impacts of Roads and Logging: A Compilation of Independently Reviewed Research
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