Grand Canyon Trust, Three Great Forests, and a Great Coalition (Back to Forests Program Index)

	Southern Utah Forests Map Click on image to see larger photo.

The Three Forests Coalition (Coalition) formed in November 2003 during a three-day meeting of conservation organizations in Park City, Utah. Thanks to the Coalition, the three southern Utah national forests – Dixie, Fishlake, Manti-La Sal -- are now receiving challenging, yet productive, input to restore and protect their natural heritage and ensure the well-being of native fish, plants and wildlife.

The Coalition formed with the express purpose of influencing long-range planning in these forests via submission of feasible (Sustainable Multiple Use -- SMU) forest management proposals in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents (i.e., environmental impact statements -- EIS), both at the forest plan and site-specific project levels.

The Coalition’s steering committee, made up of representatives of the Grand Canyon Trust, Utah Environmental Congress, Red Rock Forests, and the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, oversees Coalition working groups. Various Coalition organizations specialize in particular management areas, such as motorized travel management planning and oil and gas operations, providing key assistance, advice, and data.

The mission of the Coalition is to:

• Positively change national forest management to retain and restore native species and systems.

             Each forest must:

• Manage for retention and restoration of the ecological functioning of its native species (e.g., beaver, sage grouse) and systems (e.g., natural springs, aspen communities)
• Provide management that is consistent with science (including citizen-gathered evidence)
• Fully and publicly consider a full range of reasonable alternatives in forest decision-making
• Ensure management decisions comply with applicable laws and regulations

• Engage local, state, and national communities and non-traditional partners in protecting the three Forests

When the Coalition was created in 2003, all three national forests were beginning forest plan revisions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Coalition organized to write a comprehensive, common-sense, conservation and multiple-use-based “Sustainable Multiple Use Alternative” (SMU Alternative) for each forest, to be fully considered as a viable plan for each forest.

Throughout 2004, the Coalition wrote its Sustainable Multiple Use Alternatives (“SMU Alternatives”). However, in January 2005, the Bush Administration proposed NEPA compliance exemptions for all national forest plans, and finalized that proposal in December 2006. The Administration claims that if the plans promise no site-specific actions, make no commitments to anyone, and include no standards to which the forests could later be held accountable, then the plans have no environmental consequences and thus nothing to analyze in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under NEPA. This exemption means that the Forests do not have to analyze the environmental benefits of our SMU Alternative or the environmental costs of their own proposed plan.

The Grand Canyon Trust and the Three Forest Coalition oppose exempting forest plans from NEPA, and will continue to work for a full analysis and consideration of our SMU Alternative. In the meantime, we have submitted portions of it for several project-level NEPA-complying plans in the three forests, including a 31-allotment sheep EIS (Manti-La Sal); an ORV plan (Fishlake); an 8-allotment cattle grazing EIS (Fishlake); a multi-year logging proposal (Dixie); and an oil and gas plan (Fishlake).

The Coalition’s proposed alternatives are “making waves.” It is the first time that the Forest Service has been asked to fully consider comprehensive management approaches that place valid human uses of the forests within the needs of the native species and ecosystems on the Forests. For instance, in their most recent FEIS on revision of ten-year permits for eight cattle allotments in the Tushar Mountains, the Fishlake NF states that our SMU Alternative would be better than the Forest Service’s proposal for fisheries, big game, migratory birds, riparian areas, stream structure, water quality, willows, wetlands, aspen, upland soils, and sagebrush-nesting birds.
For more information, contact Mary O’Brien, Utah Forest Project Manager: Email

Reference Areas Project

Background for the Reference Areas Project.

These forests contain most of the middle and upper elevation native habitat of southern and central Utah, ranging from 2,800 to more than 12,000 feet. Communities of pinyon-juniper woodlands, sagebrush steppe, mixed conifer forests, extensive aspen clones, and alpine communities, along with lakes, streams, riparian areas and meadows are crucial corridors, migratory and breeding habitat, and water sources for wildlife.

Endemism is high on the forests. The reason for this is not clear, but perhaps it is related to the harshness of the region’s particular habitats. Wildlife such as beaver, Bonneville and Colorado cutthroat trout, greater sage grouse, pygmy rabbit, and Utah prairie dogs are all present in populations that can be expanded. It is also believed that bighorn sheep and wolves could one day re-inhabit these forests as well.

On the three Utah forests, Forest Service managers currently evaluate habitat conditions by comparing their forest areas with other heavily impacted areas. Similarly, they predict consequences of their proposed management activities and recreational and extractive uses using degraded lands as their only benchmarks. This amounts to a six million-acre experiment with no controls. As a result they:

• Do not know and are not compelled to acknowledge losses to each forest’s biodiversity, wildlife habitat and ecosystem functioning caused by such activities as livestock grazing, mining, motorized recreation, and clear-cutting of forest stands.
• Underestimate their potential to restore depleted hydrological systems, fisheries, core wildlife habitat, and connectivity with adjacent public and private lands.

These forests, however, do have areas that could be used as benchmarks (reference areas, i.e., examples of the most intact native examples of each major habitat) when assessing the impacts being caused by permitted activities.  As well, some areas on adjacent protected lands (e.g., Cedar Breaks National Monument, and Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Parks) may provide some initial reference areas.

Project to Begin in 2007

For three years the Trust has been speaking with Forest Service staff about the need to survey the healthiest areas on each forest in order to compare the detriments of current management practices with the benefits of conservation-based management. In 2007 we will launch the Reference Areas Project to work with all three forests to identify reference areas in each major vegetation habitat.  Each reference area will be sufficiently sized (200-1000 acres) to understand the native diversity of the area. Each will also be free of: livestock grazing for at least 10 years; roads and motorized recreation routes; major water diversions; recent logging; and oil, gas, and mining operations. Fire regimes will be as natural as possible.

Using Trust staff and volunteers, we will help identify, map, and characterize candidate reference areas. We will encourage the Forest Service and the Three Forests Coalition to use these reference areas when judging the conditions of most areas on the forests, and when predicting the environmental consequences of proposed projects.

The Reference Areas Project will move the Forest Service toward a healthier vision for these Colorado Plateau forests, the heart of central Utah.

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