For 20 years, as Forest Service volunteers, my husband and I have built and re-routed trails in the Bridger Teton Wilderness of Wyoming.
Per the rules of the Wilderness Act, we have never used a chain saw.
One summer, after the Yellowstone fires, on a crew of 10 volunteers (not trained sawyers), we cleared over 500 downed trees from trails in one week.
It can be done, we did it – without chain saws!
Forest Service representative Jason Robertson claims that chain saw use is justified here in Colorado because it has been allowed previously.
It is true that chain saws have been allowed after storms have taken down extremely large number of trees in one event. That situation is not true this year in the Southwest Colorado wildernesses.
On July 4, 1999, a straight-line wind storm took down millions of trees over 370,000 acres in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on the Minnesota-Canada border. After that storm, we witnessed the devastation while volunteering for the Forest Service on trail recovery work.
Although we used only hand saws and axes, the Regional Forester subsequently authorized chain saw use “only where the use of non-mechanized equipment would be unsafe.”
The BWCAW chain saw policy, issued in Spring of 2000, states that chain saw use is an exception to normal operation. “Safety is the only reason for chain saw use – cost, convenience, efficiency, etc. are not reasons for mechanized tool use.”
The 2000 policy would clearly not permit the exception to the Wilderness Act being used in Colorado. The safety of forest service personnel is not the issue here!
The chain saws will be used to “enhance visitor safety, improve access and reduce resource damage.”
Inconvenience to visitors and enhancing their use fails to rise to the level of the 2000 policy, which sought to protect foresters in dangerous conditions.
Chain saws are not necessary in our Colorado wildernesses. The regional forester needs to reverse the exception which allows their use in the Weiminuche and South San Juan forests.
Mary Handrick
Durango
