Wilderness advocates oppose chainsaw use in wilderness
(Missoula Current) Some people, namely outfitters and guides, are pushing the U.S. Forest Service to allow the use of chainsaws in wilderness areas, but many people and organizations oppose such a violation of the Wilderness Act.
Last week, almost 100 former Forest Service specialists, conservation organizations and trail groups from the Sierra Nevada of California to the White Mountains of New Hampshire sent a letter to Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz encouraging him to maintain the Wilderness Act ban on machines, in this case, chainsaws. Led by Wilderness Watch, the signers of the letter argue that allowing chainsaws in designated wilderness would set a bad precedent.
“The Forest Service is not entertaining a narrowly-tailored request to use a chainsaw in a specific area for a specific task—an inquiry that itself would face a high legal hurdle. Rather, the Forest Service is considering a diffuse request by commercial interests to clear wilderness trails across broad regions for an unknown period of time,” the letter said. “Clearing trails with chainsaws is not necessary to meet minimum requirements for administering Wilderness.”
The 1964 Wilderness Act was passed to protect wild areas for the benefit of wildlife and future generations. Ideally, such areas should remain “untrammeled” or undamaged by man, and no mechanized or motorized tools should be used in order to preserve the peace of uninhabited wildlands. Only hand tools and pack animals can normally be used to repair trails or certain structures.
However, in March, Wilderness Watch learned the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association had sent a request to Schultz asking permission to use chainsaws for trail maintenance in Idaho wilderness areas. When Wilderness Watch asked the Salmon-Challis National Forest supervisor about it, she said an analysis was being conducted but wouldn’t elaborate.
Wilderness Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Forest Service and learned the Idaho proposal is part of a nationwide effort. According to internal emails, the agency is bringing in an outside contractor to “help address the chainsaws in wilderness issue at the national scale.” So wilderness advocates sent Schultz their own request.
“Chainsaws are prohibited in Wilderness because they represent, and effectuate, a level of domination and control over the landscape that has decimated so many other places. We hope the Forest Service Chief appreciates the seriousness of the authorization he is considering,” said Dana Johnson, Wilderness Watch’s policy director in a release.
The Wilderness Act does allow upper-level managers, such as forest supervisors, to grant exceptions for the use of mechanized or motorized equipment. But the Act limits such exceptions, requiring an analysis of whether the activity is necessary “to meet the minimum requirements” for administration of the area, and which tool or method should be used to cause the least impact to the area or wilderness values such as clean air or lack of noise.
Fallen trees are an increasing problem. Over the past few years, downfall in western national forests has multiplied as climate change has produced stronger windstorms, and snowpack that was once deep enough to keep fewer trees from toppling dwindles. Increasingly, trails are blocked by pines laying crosshatched after being snapped off or uprooted by strong winds. Forest Service crews that a decade ago could clear 10 to 15 miles of trail in a day are sometimes limited to clearing just a few miles.
The Trump administration’s cuts to the Forest Service workforce hasn’t helped. Last year, DOGE eliminated 250 new Forest Service employees in Montana, according to a February Prospect Partners analysis. So there are fewer agency crews out clearing trails across the national forests.
Volunteer organizations, such as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation and the Selway-Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation, do what they can to clear wilderness trails with crosscut saws and people power. Meanwhile, some civic-minded Montanans have taken it upon themselves to clear their favorite trails up to the wilderness boundaries using chainsaws. For example, near Libby, photographer Bob Hosea and two friends spent a few days clearing the log-clogged Cedar Creek trail up to the Cabinet Wilderness boundary.
“There's still a lot of debris on the trail, and I'm sure there is a lot of debris under the snow too. At least all of the trees are cleared now, except one that was under too much snow. It's not as nice as what our awesome trail crews do, but at least you can get through it,” Hosea wrote in an April 10 social media post.
But volunteers can’t overcome the backlog of trail work, and each year, more trees come down, particularly in burned areas. The Bob Marshall Wilderness alone has more than 1,700 miles of hiking trails that need upkeep.
The outfitters argue chainsaws are necessary, but wilderness advocates disagree, especially because Forest Service crews wouldn’t be the ones wielding those chainsaws. They argue the solution is to provide better funding so the Forest Service can rehire agency trail crews and keep them working all season.
“Allowing commercial outfitters and guides to clear wilderness trails with chainsaws, particularly when the authorization is considered at a broad scale, is a foundational affront to wilderness protection on multiple levels,” Johnson said. “It shows the Forest Service has abandoned its statutory duty to protect these special places from the tools of industrialization, and equally troubling, the Forest Service is putting the chainsaws in the hands of commercial interests. Motorized equipment and commercial enterprise are both prohibited in Wilderness for good reason.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.