Over 500,000 miles of roads exist within our national forest system. Most of these are unused, unmaintained, and ecologically damaging roads that are only used by the most rash off-road vehicle devotees. These roads fragment fragile habitats, increase stream sedimentation, accelerate erosion, and increase wildlife mortality. Clearly it is time to do something about them.

The Forest Service agrees, as they estimate that 186,000 miles of roads need to be decommissioned. The cheapest method of decommissioning these roads is physically closing them by blocking their entrances; however, this short term solution can cause long-term physical and economic damage. Removing them is the only way to ensure proper restoration of the land. Removal of the roads involves restoring the natural contour of the land, removing culverts to recreate original hydrologic flow, and revegetating the damaged ground. This time- and labor-intensive work employs many of the same people who created the roads in the first place: heavy equipment operators, manual laborers, and engineers.

These jobs are long-term employment opportunities in a burgeoning restoration economy. A Clearwater National Forest Road Analysis report estimates that 33 jobs are supported or created for every $1 million spent on road removal or restoration. At an average removal rate of 9,300 miles per year and an average cost of $10,000 per mile, the removal of the country’s 186,000 miles of unneeded roads would cost approximately $93 million per year. While expensive, this would create an estimated 3,069 jobs each year, employing many of the displaced workers from prior road construction and timber harvesting activities. These jobs pay a living wage and largely consist of local labor.

Much more is gained from road removal than just these jobs. Restoring roads to their natural state results in cleaner water, healthier wildlife habitats, and fewer introduced species. It creates and re-establishes services that humans cannot provide; it restores natural capital to our world. The value of natural services to the world is unquestionably important. Many of these services - such as air purification, carbon storage and recycling, and nitrogen cycling - are essential to human survival, yet we cannot duplicate them. Global studies estimate the financial value of earth’s natural capital at between $400 and $500 trillion dollars. Activities such as mining, unsustainable timber harvest, and road building have depleted earth’s resources. Now, by removing these unneeded roads and restoring land to its natural state, we can begin to regenerate the natural capital of the earth.

Road removal does many things to restore this natural capital. It restores natural land contours. This helps prevent erosion and catastrophic landslides which claim the lives of many animals and occasionally people. Stopping this erosion decreases stream sedimentation; fisheries become healthier as a result. Road removal also restores animal habitat to its natural condition by decreasing unnatural edge habitat, thus increasing species richness and biodiversity. Furthermore, roads often introduce invasive species that damage local ecosystems. Removing unneeded roads eliminates this possibility.

The economic and natural capital gain is not just theoretical. Many communities have realized the harm caused by unneeded roads in forested lands and some of them have acted:

• Seattle’s drinking water comes from the Cedar River Watershed. This water is clean in its untreated form. However, the many unpaved and unmaintained roads in the watershed began to increase stream sedimentation. Faced with the choice of installing a multimillion dollar water treatment plant or removing the derelict roads, the city chose to remove the roads. They decided to trust ecosystem services to protect their water source rather than relying on a maintenance prone mechanical water treatment facility.

• Northern California’s Karuk tribe relies on fishery resources for their survival. They began to see a decrease in the fish levels and tied it to increased stream sedimentation, higher water temperatures, and lower aquatic nutrients caused by an unmaintained mountain road system leftover from mining and logging activities. In the process of removing Steinacher road, 18 stream crossings were restored, 196,000 cubic yards of soil was moved, and 18 tribal members were trained and employed as heavy-equipment operators, surveyors, and supervisors.

• The Clearwater National Forest is a 1.8 million acre forest in north-central Idaho with about 6,000 miles of unpaved roads, built orginally for logging or mining and currently obsolete. In 1996, a combination of larger than average snowpack and heavy rains led to over 900 landslides in the forest, the majority of which were caused by road failures. These landslides dumped 272,000 tons of sediment into streams, damaging fisheries, wildlife habitat, and municipal water sources. The Clearwater National Forest and the Nez Perce Tribe, who use this forest for hunting, fishing, and gathering, entered into an agreement to remove hundreds of miles of unneeded roads in order to clean-up the ecosystem and prevent future landslides. A significant public outreach campaign educated the general public about the project, and gained many allies. Between 1997 and 2003, they removed 380 miles of road, and continue to remove dozens of miles of roads each year.

Road removal is clearly gaining momentum in this country. We have long known that removing roads protects ecosystems by preventing sedimentation, habitat fragmentation, and stream degradation. However, now we are able to apply road removal to the new economy, taking into account not only the jobs created, but also the economic gains from utilizing ecosystem services such as water purification and the subsequent revival of natural capital. As over 70 national forests rewrite their management plans in the coming years, a great opportunity exists to create jobs, benefit local communities, and revive natural lands. But this road removal opportunity can only exist through local support and a desire for change. We must embrace this chance to benefit the economy while creating a better environment.

Josh Hurd spent the Winter ‘06 term interning with Wildlands CPR in Missoula, MT.