The Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison (GMUG) National Forests are are in the middle of the Forest Plan revision process within a volatile political climate, to say the least. Roll-backs of existing law on Capitol Hill are the word of the day. And many laws protecting the forests are being caught in the fray.

The Latest on Roadless

Did you know? The GMUG Forest has more acres of roadless forest than any other national forest in Colorado!
Roadless areas on the GMUG remain unprotected because of legal maneuverings by opponents of Clinton’s Roadless Rule. The failure to implement the Rule means local roadless areas could potentially be designated as suitable for development (logging, mining, oil & gas) during the Forest Planning process.

M2M -- The Plan is out! See it Here!

M2M -- you’ll be hearing that more often now. It stands for Mountains To Mesas, a coalition of Western Colorado citizens concerned with management of Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests. This is a common sense plan for the GMUG that identifies and expands connected wildlands networks to protect, maintain and retore native biodiversity. The plan allows all current human uses, but maintenance and enhancement of native biodiversity is paramount.Learn more


Other Environmental Rollbacks

More CE’s Means Less Analysis
The administration has now proposed expanded use of categorical exclusions (CE’s). So-called ‘expanded use’ would give the agency broad discretion in deciding whether to do any environmental analysis at all. Expanding the use of CE’s means that the Forest could offer a timber sale in a roadless area—without doing the required environmental analysis. While we doubt that this would happen (or be successful), widespread use of categorical exclusions is a slippery slope that opens the door to detrimental and unintended environmental consequences.

NFMA Rules
The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) was first enacted in 1976 to establish a planning framework that would decide where things happened on each National Forest, and how much of each activity happened over the planning period (10-15 years). NFMA sets levels of grazing, mining, logging, recreating—you name it—for a forest. Through a series of Standards and Guidelines, a Forest Plan tells managers (and the public) how short you can graze the grass on the Forest, or what percentage of forest canopy cover makes good elk hiding cover. For Forest Planning, NFMA is the keystone, and any changes in NFMA can have profound impacts on a local planning process like ours.

The 1976 NFMA regulations were based mostly on defining (and producing) outputs from the forests. Success was measured in volume of trees logged, or the number of cows grazed. An overarching assumption in these regulations was that mankind comes first; the critters, water, and air come later. In 1998, the Forest Service began a revision process for NFMA, engaging an esteemed Committee of Scientists and holding hundreds of public meetings across the country. The outcome of that process created a new NFMA that suggested a radical shift: the needs of critters and mankind should be considered on an equal footing during the planning process. Unfortunately, these regulations never saw the light of day. Instead, the current administration has created new regulations that are problematic in their own ways.
For more on these regulations and what it might mean for the GMUG,
Go Here

The latest word is that we expect a restarted plannning process in 2009. Look for updates here on deadlines for comments, revisions to timeline, etc.