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From Open Forests to Permission-Based Access

  • keepitopenfafa
  • 5 minutes ago
  • 3 min read

What Changed in the Blue Mountains Forest Plan — and Why It Matters


For more than three decades, the Blue Mountains National Forests have been managed under forest plans adopted around 1990. While those plans differed in details across the Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur, and Umatilla National Forests, they shared a common foundation:


Motorized access and roaded recreation were treated as normal, expected components of multiple use.


As the Forest Service prepares to release a new Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan revision, the public has repeatedly been told that the plan “does not close roads” and “will not restrict motorized access.”


That statement deserves closer scrutiny — not because forest plans usually close roads directly, but because forest plans determine whether access is protected or left vulnerable to future restriction.


What Forest Plans Really Do


Forest plans rarely list specific roads to be closed or left open. Instead, they establish the assumptions, priorities, and management direction that guide all future decisions — including travel management, route designation, and road decommissioning.


So the real question is not whether the plan closes roads today, but:


Does the plan protect access, or does it remove the protections that used to exist?


What the 1990 Blue Mountains Forest Plans Had in Common


Across all three Blue Mountains forests, the 1990 plans consistently:


  • Planned for roaded recreation and semi‑primitive motorized use as legitimate outcomes

  • Treated motorized access as a baseline assumption, not a special authorization

  • Recognized roads as access infrastructure supporting recreation, grazing, timber, fire response, and community use

  • Addressed closures openly and specifically, tied to defined objectives such as seasonal wildlife needs

  • Made access decisions at the plan level, rather than deferring them to future processes

In short, access was acknowledged, planned for, and managed — not quietly displaced.


What the 2025 Preliminary Draft Does Differently


The 2025 preliminary draft land management plan takes a different approach, not by announcing closures, but by changing how access is treated.


Key shifts include:


  • Replacing affirmative access direction with conditional language such as “where appropriate” or “may be allowed”

  • Deferring meaningful access decisions to future travel management and project‑level processes

  • Relying on Management Area prescriptions to incrementally constrain access without forest‑wide protection


These changes may appear subtle, but they fundamentally alter how future decisions will be made.


Why “The Plan Doesn’t Close Roads” Misses the Point


Technically, the statement may be true. Substantively, it is misleading.


Forest plans rarely close roads outright. They set the rules that determine whether roads remain defensible or disposable in future decisions.


When access is no longer protected at the plan level, restrictions become far easier to justify later — even if no single closure is announced today. This is how plans lay the foundation for access loss without ever naming it.


Why This Matters


For people who live, work, and recreate in the Blue Mountains, access is not abstract.

It affects:


  • Hunting and fishing access

  • Firewood gathering

  • Livestock management

  • Family recreation

  • Emergency and wildfire response


When access shifts from a protected use to a discretionary allowance, the impacts are felt quickly and locally.


What to Watch for in the DEIS


When the DEIS is released, the public should watch closely to see whether it:


  • Acknowledges the departure from historic access assumptions

  • Analyzes the consequences of deferring access decisions

  • Explains why long‑standing plan direction is being changed

  • Treats motorized access as a supported use rather than a problem to be managed


If the DEIS fails to address these issues, that omission matters.


Why Commenting at the DEIS Stage Is Critical


The DEIS comment period is the public’s last guaranteed opportunity to raise these concerns and preserve standing for later phases of the process.


Silence now makes it much harder to challenge how access is treated in the final plan and beyond.


Forest Access For All will continue providing tools and information to help people engage effectively when the DEIS is released.


Understanding what changed — and why — is the first step.

 
 
 
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