The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
More than 5,000 unique comments submitted on draft
[ By Katherine Nettles ]
A final version of a new U.S. Forest Service plan that will direct its management of nearby public lands for decades to come is under final analysis and is expected to be complete next year. The Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison (GMUG) National Forest, comprised of more than 3 million acres, kicked off its three-phase Forest Plan Revision process in 2017, and after multiple rounds of reviews and drafts the GMUG planning team says it is incorporating public comments into a final plan to be published early in 2023. Local environmental advocates are hoping for a final plan that incorporates more overall protections than what were found in the draft.
The Forest Plan is “an overarching document that guides forest management through broad direction, standards and guidelines for years to come,” according to the agency website. The GMUG Forest Plan was last updated in 1983. The GMUG’s stated goals for the update are to create simplified direction and fewer management area categories while retaining an emphasis on areas for wildlife and for recreation as well as potentially adding wilderness designations to eligible areas.
The earlier phases of what has been a five-year process included federally required wilderness area evaluations and wild and scenic river evaluations. The GMUG released a Wild and Scenic Eligibility Report in 2019, identifying 118-plus miles of eligible rivers within the GMUG to be considered for inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS). Within Gunnison County, those include Oh-Be-Joyful Creek and tributaries, West Elk Creek, West Soap Creek and Copper Creek and tributaries.
Those reports were followed by a long-awaited draft of the entire Forest Revision Plan and Draft Environmental Impact, released in the summer of 2021 after COVID delays in 2020. A public comment period last fall yielded thousands of comments to process regarding the draft.
High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA) public lands director Matt Reed says he hopes to see more overall conservation priorities in the final version than what was included in the draft, including stronger wilderness considerations, watershed and wildlife protections and integration of current scientific data.
“Throughout this process HCCA and the community have advocated for a forest plan that prioritizes landscape-level conservation, sustains ecosystem health, and is based upon the best available science. There is an appetite in Gunnison County for wilderness, watershed health and thriving wildlife, and the final GMUG plan should reflect that,” commented Reed.
“The draft plan released last year came up short, but we’re hopeful that the final will conserve the public lands values and sustainable uses that are so important to this community and that are the very foundation for its quality of life. If the agency listens to the public, and follows applicable law, regulation and policy, the revised plan should accomplish that,” Reed concluded.
GMUG officials say they have been listening to the input collected.
“Over the past few months, we’ve been working diligently to consider these comments and make adjustments where appropriate,” wrote the GMUG planning team in a press release late last month. “Responding to comments is indeed a monumental task but absolutely critical to ensuring an inclusive and adaptive final forest plan that is considerate of our collective values.” The team says its plan is to use this fall season for an internal review process and then share it with the public later this winter or in early spring of 2023.
Beginning with the assessment phase of the plan revision in 2017, followed by the Wild and Scenic Eligibility Report in 2018, the GMUG has conducted 10 formal comment and informal feedback periods, according to GMUG public affairs officer Kimberlee Phillips. Those have yielded more than 20,000 comments in total.
Over the past year the GMUG planning team reports that is has responded to approximately 5,000 “substantive, unique comments” on the draft plan, from approximately 8,000 comment letters submitted. About 1,000 comments were unique letters (neither forms nor duplicates), says Phillips, and most came from the immediate planning area and the state of Colorado. A minority of comments were also submitted from across the U.S., she says.
“The main themes from the public comments included forest and watershed health, wildfire mitigation and fuels treatments, planning for a diverse set of recreational use, climate change mitigation and adaptation, special area designations such as recommended wilderness, support for a variety of preservation- and recreation-oriented citizen proposals, balancing wildlife habitat with demand for new trails, protections for fens and other wetlands, among many others,” Phillips summarizes.
The forest plan revision process has included the aid and participation of 14 federal, state, county and municipal cooperating agencies, as well as consultation with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe and the Southern Ute Tribes, according to the agency.
A public reading room for comments is available at https://cara.fs2c.usda.gov/Public/ReadingRoom?project=51806
