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A Conservationist’s Alternative Plan for Management of the Hoosier National ForestSection 3. Need for Change: Specific Management Issues3.5 WildernessFour additional Wilderness Areas should be designated.Wilderness designation for the large forest tracts on the HNF is the best means of providing lasting protection for these undeveloped public lands. Additional wilderness areas in the HNF will also help protect the forest's only existing wilderness area, the Charles Deam Wilderness, by drawing away some of the heavy visitor use in the Deam, which is close to several population centers. "Wilderness" is a formal designation given to specific federal lands by the U.S. Congress. "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, and where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." (the Wilderness Act, 16 USC 1121; see also Eastern Wilderness Act, 16 USC 1132). In the HNF, Congress designated the 12,953 acre Charles C. Deam Wilderness Area in 1982. This wilderness area included two of the three inventoried roadless areas (from RARE II) in Indiana: Grubb Ridge and Cope Hollow. The other RARE II area is Mogan Ridge. In designating wilderness, Congress is not limited to inventoried roadless areas. The original wilderness proposal for Indiana was the 30,000 acre Nebo Ridge Wilderness proposal, which actually passed the U.S. Senate in 1974. This was later reduced to the 16,250 acre Salt Creek compromise wilderness proposal, and then a 13,050 acre compromise area, which deleted 3200 acres of Army Corps of Engineers, lands in the Maumee Valley. Finally the Deam Wilderness proposal was adopted with boundaries drawn by the Orr Administration that deleted the Salt Creek compromise lands east and north of the creek and added Cope Hollow south of Tower Ridge Road. The Deam Wilderness bill "released" other potential HNF wilderness lands for management under a forest management plan. In 1991, the amended HNF Forest Plan designated a number of large forest tracts as backcountry areas as recommended by the Conservationists Alternative. We believe the following roadless areas, in each of the four purchase units, should be designated as wilderness.
3.6 Roadless Area ConservationThe Hoosier National Forest will address the Roadless Area Conservation Plan. All identified Roadless Areas provisions should be implemented; the issue has been covered in the Wilderness section of this document.3.7 RoadsForest managers should prevent further road construction and consider restoring the environment through road decommissions.Natural forests do not have roads, and therefore the preservation of a natural forest environment should work to minimize or eliminate roadways and vehicle infiltration. While roads may provide for a certain degree of recreational benefits by way of access to the forest interior for human use, and increased firefighting capability near human populated fringes, there are severe environmental impacts as well. For example, roads increase erosion of soils and dust in the air, wildlife mortality through collision and displacement, and habitat fragmentation in an already splintered ecosystem. Roads bring noise and exhaust from vehicles to the forest. Roads reduce the natural solitude many seek in the forest, and the increased access to remote areas increases recreational overuse and degradation of sensitive areas along with increased fire risks from human activities. Forest managers on public lands should not only prevent further road construction, but also seriously consider restoring the environment through road decommissions. The Hoosier National Forest should complete the task of creating the Charles C. Deam Wilderness Area by advocating the closure of Tower Ridge Road to vehicle traffic. An alternative road is available in a developed area on the perimeter of the Wilderness, with similar miles and fewer hills. Roads in the Mogan Ridge area should also be considered for removal to allow this area to fully attain its greatest value as a natural area. 3.8 Outdoor RecreationProtection of the forest's plant and animal habitats is most compatible with non-mechanized, low-impact, more primitive recreation activities. Use should be monitored; high-impact areas must be maintained as a sustainable resource, or closed down until the resource can be recovered.Public land recreation management should emphasize high quality, more primitive recreation activities such as hiking, back country hunting and fishing, backpacking, horse riding, and mountain biking. These types of recreation activities are the most compatible with protection of the forest's plant and animal diversity because they require less land-disturbing management activities. Those public lands, such as the HNF, with limited recreation developments and large areas of unbroken forest without public roads, provide the best opportunity to supply this type of outdoor recreation. All recreation activities have negative impacts. Even non-motorized activities such as mountain-biking and horseback riding have significant potential for soil and vegetation damage and must be carefully managed. Impacts of each user type and maintenance costs of each should be evaluated. Standards for trail condition should be adopted, not "goals," as in the present Plan. A mechanism for registration by users of substandard trail conditions should be set up, with requirements for follow-up. No more miles of each use should be allowed than the forest has budgetary provisions for maintaining. Badly eroded trails should be closed down until repairs can be made, to prevent further deterioration of the resource. 3.9 Off-road VehiclesOff-road vehicles should continue to be excluded from forest trails.Off-road vehicle (ORV) use on the Hoosier National Forest is inconsistent with our general goals for the HNF. The wide rutted trails that ORVs and other motorized vehicles produce cause much more erosion than less intensive uses, as has already been explained elsewhere in this document. Wider trails also cause habitat fragmentation. ORVs increase the danger that rare and threatened plants and animals will be crushed. The noise, speed, and smell of ORVs, along with the damage they cause, such as soil erosion and compaction, are inconsistent with the recreational experience of hikers and other less intensive users of the forest. Surveys have shown that the general public feels ORV use of forest lands is incompatible with their vision of the Forest. Sustainable maintenance of ORV trails would be expensive and akin to paving or rolling and graveling. Numerous lightly traveled public gravel roads in back country areas, suitable for ORV use, already bisect forest lands. Illegal ORV use is already a problem on the Hoosier National Forest, and officially sanctioning it would only increase the probability that ORVs would end up on trails not designated for their use, or off the trails altogether. Neighboring landowners also face the possibility of nuisances caused by ORV users such as trespass and property damage. In 1989, the Forest Service renewed its existing ban on ORV use in the HNF for the following reasons:
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