Some Bullets for Identifying
Why Roadless Areas are Valuable to Fish
1. The timber industry itself admits roads harms
fish. Core commitments in Plum Creek’s proposed
Habitat Conservation Plan for 17 native salmonids
on its lands involve reducing sediment from roads
and improving passage barriers, mainly road culverts.
The company proposes enhancing its “BMPs,” closing
some roads, fixing “hot spots” (areas
prone to catastrophic failure) and replacing culverts
that are passage barriers. Other items being sold
as “commitments” are some road closures
and agreements with fish and wildlife agencies
to reduce poaching. The company concludes these
road-related items will have significant benefits
to fish. In addition, the industry regularly cites
its compliance with voluntary BMPs and mandatory
streamside management regulations as examples of
how committed it is to helping fish. These practices
are devoted mainly to reducing sediment from roads.
2. Peer-reviewed scientific conclusions from the
Interior Columbia EIS conclude that:
· Increasing road density and management
intensity is correlated with declining pool frequency
and increasing fine sediments. Thus roads are harming
important elements of aquatic habitat.
·
Increases in sedimentation are unavoidable even
using the most cautious road methods. Thus, no
roads is better than roads with BMPs.
·
In streams in most unmanaged (ie., roadless) areas,
pool habitat has been retained or improved during
the last 55-60 years. Pool habitat is essential
to all salmonids for overwinter habitat, thermal
refugia and foraging areas. Sediment from roads
fills pools.
·
Roadless core areas with healthy aquatic habitat
remain to serve as sources for restoring functional
aquatic systems. That is, in order to rebuild important
native fisheries, such as for westslope cutthroats
or bull trout, we need to protect existing core
areas then connect them by restoring corridors
(in roaded country) to other core areas.
Specific Examples of How Roadless Country
Has Been Important to Montana’s Fisheries,
Especially Critical Native Fisheries.
1. The South Fork of the Flathead has perhaps the
state’s strongest populations of bull and westslope
cutthroat trout. Most of the watershed is roadless
(mainly in the Bob Marshall Wilderness).
2. The Blackfoot drainage has some of the healthiest
populations of fluvial bull trout and westslope
cutthroat trout in Montana. The three most important
spawning tributaries for bull trout are Monture
Creek, the North Fork of the Blackfoot and the
Landers Fork. Large portions of the upper parts
of these watersheds, where most bull trout spawn
are either roadless or in designated wilderness.
3. Rock Creek is one of the most popular wild trout
fisheries in the state. More than half of its watershed
is in roadless country. Biologists have found that
most of the important spawning tributaries for
fluvial and resident bull trout are in roadless
areas (Stony Mtn., Quigg Peak, A-P additions, etc).
4. Some of the healthiest populations of westslope
cutthroat and bull trout in the middle Clark Fork
watershed (Milltown to Thompson Falls Reservoir)
are found in headwater streams of Fish Creek. The
best populations are in Cache Creek and the N.
and W. Forks of Fish Creek. Most of their watersheds
are in the Great Burn Roadless Areas.
5. The tributaries of the Bitterroot River with
the best water quality and most robust fisheries
(including the last bull trout) are found on the
public lands in the west side streams that are
either in wilderness or roadless. The best on the
east side are in the upper Skalkaho drainage (including
Daly Creek) and upper Burnt Fork. Large portions
of their upper watersheds are roadless. The tributaries
with the worst water quality and habitat problems
are the watersheds on the east side that have been
developed.
6. The majority of the remaining pure-strain native
westslope cutthroats in the upper Missouri drainage
(about 144 tiny, very fragmented and at-risk) are
in roadless areas including along the Rocky Mountain
Front, upper Big Hole, Lima Peaks country and similar
areas. The relationship is not coincidental.
7. Cutthroat and bull trout populations in NW Montana,
especially those in the lower Clark Fork drainage,
are, according to surveys conducted by FWP and
the Washington Water Power Co., are in heavily
roaded areas of the Cabinet and Bitterroot Ranges
(see, portions of the Bull River drainage, Vermillion
River, Elk Creek, Beaver Creek). Logging roads
and logging have disrupted channel function, added
sediment, increased temperature and reduced woody
debris recruitment.
8. The most important tributary of the Smith River
below Fort Logan (the floated stretch) is Deep
Creek. It’s cold, clean and regular flows
are considered critical to the Smith, especially
when mainstem flows get low. In addition, it’s
the only tributary recruiting cutthroats into the
river. Much of the Deep Creek drainage is roadless.
9. Most of Montana’s most famous free-stone
trout streams have important parts of their headwaters
in roadless conditions, including the Gallatin,
the Madison, Yellowstone, Boulder, Big Hole, Rock
Creek, etc. The relationship is not incidental.
The least healthiest tributaries in terms of fishery
production in these watersheds are generally those
with significant roading and road-related development.
For example, the West Fork of the Madison does
not have a very robust trout fishery. One of its
acknowledged problems is sediment and bedload related.
Much of the watershed is roaded (and grazed!).
Look at the worst fisheries in major streams in
Western Montana, and you’ll find many have
high road densities, including the Fisher River,
Thompson River and Bull River. Though these streams
have other problems, road related impacts have
generally been acknowledged as prime culprits in
fishery loss. It’s not coincidental that
they have large portions of private timber land.
