USFS: New OSV rule doesn't affect current plan

SANDPOINT — Snowmobile and other over-snow vehicle riders won’t encounter any surprises when they hit the trail in the northern zone of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.

The interim winter travel plan that was implemented following legal proceedings in 2006 and 2007 will remain in effect for the time being despite the U.S. Forest’s release of a management plan for winter motorized travel across all national forest lands.

“In order to release the court order completely, we’ll have to go back to them with our final travel plan,” said Jason Kirchner, a Forest Service spokesman for IPNF.

Conservation groups filed suit in U.S. District Court because there were no winter travel plan in the northern zone of the IPNF and snowmobile riders were accessing caribou habitat. Snowmobile access was initially shut down in parts of Bonner and Boundary counties until an interim travel plan was developed.

Kirchner said work on a final winter travel plan is tentatively forecasted to start next year.

“We hope to start in 2016. That’s our goal,” Kirchner said, adding that it could take up to two years to complete the plan.

The development of a final winter travel plan was sidelined by work to complete overall forest plans for the Idaho Panhandle and Kootenai national forests, which was completed earlier this month.

Moreover, the agency has to finalize a summer travel plan on the St. Joe Ranger District. Wheeled travel plans have been in place in the north and central zones of the IPNF since 2005.

Brad Smith of the Idaho Conservation League, one of the parties to the caribou habitat litigation, said the time has come to get a better grip on snowmobile use in the northern zone.

“There are certainly places in the national forest system that we should allow people to ride snowmobiles and to recreate, but we need to manage them so that we can balance those recreational uses with things like wildlife and also non-motorized winter recreation,” Smith said.

Smith notes that the new over-snow vehicle plan is the counterpart to the existing wheeled plan and both plans have language about minimizing impacts to natural resources and wildlife.

“The kinds of minimization criteria that applied to off-road vehicles in the summertime will also apply to snowmobiles in the wintertime,” Smith said.

Smith also hopes Congress provides the Forest Service with resources it needs to complete the final winter travel plan.

“They’re so important for balancing the recreational uses of the forest with natural resources and resolving user conflicts,” he said.