The U.S. Forest Service and the UW Ruckelshaus Institute met with members of the Laramie community last Wednesday in the hopes of prompting dialogue about upcoming Pole Mountain road management projects.
The Ruckelshaus House Institute is assisting the Forest Service with data collection and public meetings. The project is in the pre-scoping stage.
“The Forest Service is looking to hear from the public, as no decisions have been made for the Pole Mountain Travel Management Plan,” Meghan Neville, summer organizational assistant for the Ruckelshaus Institute, said.
The Forest Service is hoping to hear from the public about how various public lands at Pole Mountain, such as Happy Jack, Vedauwoo and other areas are used. The analysis will take place over the next year.
“This area is unique and is so well used,” Aaron Voos, U.S. Forest Service public affairs specialist, said.
Due to this, Voos said there is “heavy impact on the public.”
The Forest Service is hoping to get the public involved “early and often” so they can best understand how to manage the Pole Mountain roads.
Pole Mountain has over a 100 miles of unauthorized roads. The Forest Service hopes to learn from the public how it can best use the available roads in order to provide the public with access to the places they want to use while minimizing environmental damage, Frank Romero, Laramie District ranger, said.
“It’s important for us to look at sustainability for our generation and future generations,” Romero said.
The goal of the Travel Management program is to analyze how the public uses the land in order to understand how to deal with unauthorized routes, through signs and looking for better routes.
“It’s not about closing roads,” Voos said during the Wednesday night meeting. “We hope to weigh the trade off between road access and environmental damage.”
Some local residents feel the motor access on Pole Mountain needs to be better controlled.
“My concern is what can we do to restrict motor access to authorized roads? We need to have every use in its appropriate place, have to accept some conditions and restrictions,” Bern Hinckly, 35-year Laramie resident, said.
Regardless of how one uses the land, Romero said he urges everyone to get a motor use vehicle map. There will be another meeting in August, but the date has not been announced.
