The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF) rolled out its Travel Management map Jan. 30.

After 2½ years of planning and receiving public input, the map depicts 1,400 roads that may be traveled upon with motorized vehicles. What doesn’t appear on the map are the unauthorized roads not open to motorized vehicles. All roads in the Forest are open to walking/snowshoeing/skiing.

The map is available for downloading from CNNF's website, and will be available at district ranger offices and headquarters in Rhinelander and Park Falls on Feb. 27.

Education will be the emphasis of the first three years of implementing the plan. People traveling via ATVs or other motorized vehicles on roads that aren’t signed or don’t appear on the map, may be stopped by Forest officials and given literature and Comments forms.

Individuals also will have the opportunity to file comments and Road Request Forms to suggest opening unauthorized roads, or ask to close roads that do appear on the map. The plan will be updated every year, explains Suzanne Flory, public and legislative affairs officer for CNNF. “As we get comments and do risk analysis on roads, the map gets updated. Part of the process is inviting public involvement.”

During the education period, Flory notes, fines will be given out. “If a person is doing something blatantly wrong – going behind a gated road or harming resources, for example – they will get ticketed. It’s $150 for going on a closed road and usually multiple violations are involved. And,” she adds, “contrary to what some people think, the CNNF does not get that fine money. It goes to the federal government.”

Riding through the Forest

The 1.5 million acres the CNNF forest takes up a big chunk of northern Wisconsin and until recently, there have been no official guidelines for motorized travel on its land. All roads in the Forest, regardless of being designated authorized or unauthorized, were open to any kind of motorized traffic.

“Twenty years ago there really was no need to regulate motorized traffic,” explains Flory. “People had jeeps and 4x4s, and they were allowed to go most anywhere. ATVs weren’t a big presence.”

Interestingly, the two forests, which were separate back then and had their own administrations and policies, treated motorized vehicle traffic differently. “On the Chequamegon side of the forest, you could go off-road, but on the Nicolet side, ATVs had not been allowed,” Flory explains. “It was a matter of two different cultures. You would find that throughout the U.S. Forest System, especially out West, where many of the U.S. Forests have different rules.”

Managing recreation in the Forest

In 1993, the Chequamegon and Nicolet forests were put under one administration – part of a trend in consolidation taking place throughout the nation. In 2005, U.S. Forest Chief Dale Bosworth drew up a comprehensive plan for the U.S. Forest that included a uniform approach for managing recreation. The initiative was called the Travel Management Plan, and it was mandated by the agency.

“Every forest and grassland has to implement this new rule,” Flory explains. “The goal is standardization. The plan stated that until each Forest implemented its plan, off-trail motorized travel would be eliminated.”

Each U.S. Forest is unique, and each is at a different point of implementation, says Flory. Some have completed the process; others – particularly in the West – are in the beginning stages. “CNNF is the end of the process,” Flory notes. “For us, the challenge has been our huge territory and having so many unauthorized roads – a legacy from our logging days in the early 1900s.”

“This whole region was devoid of trees in the early 1900s, after the loggers moved through,” explains Mike Miller, an engineering technician with the Nicolet (east zone) part of CNNF, “and they left a lot of ice roads and access roads.”

Many of these roads have grown over and are fairly inaccessible. Others have been used regularly by hunters.

In general, the two-year commenting period on the Travel Management Plan has revealed that bear hunters who use dogs tend to want more roads open to motorized access; grouse hunters often want fewer roads open to access; deer hunters are often divided – half for more motorized access, half wanting fewer roads opened. And there are groups that want no roads opened, and no logging or motorized recreation to take place in the Forest, viewing it as a wilderness sanctuary.

When the commenting period was closed in September 2008 and the Plan was published, the CNNF received nine appeals. All were resolved except one, and that currently is in pending status.

The Forest’s many constituents

A unique aspect of CNNF is the large amount of private land found within its boundaries. “Most of this region used to be in private ownership,” explains Harv Skjerven, a district ranger in CNNF. In the 1930s, the federal government bought much of it back from farmers who were failing and unable to pay their taxes.

Skjerven, who spent 25 years in western Forests, notes that, “In the West, the main reason for founding the Forest Service was to produce timber. And people would come to the Forest to camp, hunt and fish. The public land seemed unlimited. In the CNNF, they own property.

“What that means," he continues, "is the CNNF gets a variety of visitors, people from Chicago, Milwaukee – and they’re here on a regular basis. The various constituencies are more vocal, and it becomes a matter of balancing their wants and needs with every other constituency that wants to use the Forest.”

Miller explains further. “Here, it’s more confusing as to where the U.S. Forest ends and private or state or county forest begins. In the West, the flat lands were privately owned and the forested mountains is where you’d find the public lands. Here, it blends together. It’s hard to tell where the U.S. Forest roads end and other roads begin.” Which in turn, Miller adds, makes it more difficult to manage the Forest’s resources.

Twenty-five percent of roads to be closed within the Forest

Another confusing aspect of the CNNF is its network of roads falling under different jurisdictions. There are 9,200 miles of roads in the CNNF; of these, the CNNF has jurisdiction over half – 4,600 miles. The remainder fall under the jurisdiction of towns, counties and the state, as well as private owners.

Some hunters’ coalition groups were upset when a statement made by local newspaper last fall claimed that “Fifty-five percent of the Forest roads would be closed.” The statement was misleading, says Joan Marburger, the Travel Management Plan project leader. “The Forest only has jurisdiction over half of the roads in CNNF. The truth is, it’s 25 percent of the Forest roads that are closed to motorized travel.”

The closed roads are those which haven’t been used much, tend to be overgrown and/or are considered high-risk in terms of resources or cultural sites. Even so, every closed road is fair game for a petition to be opened.

“From 2006 to 2008 we went to every part of the region," says Flory, "holding open houses, manning information booths at sports shops, doing mailings and receiving comments on what roads people wanted open or closed in the Forest. If someone wanted an unauthorized road opened, we did an environmental impact analysis on it, and many of these roads were opened to motorized travel.”

Skjerven explains further. “Mostly, someone will say to us, ‘I want to use this road,’ and then we’d put it through a risk analysis. It got harder if one person said, ‘Open it up’ and someone else said, ‘No, close it.’ The decision would come from the rangers, knowing they wouldn’t make everyone happy. You just had to do best job you could.

"Guiding us are the staff," he adds, "the biologists, the foresters, professionals with years of experience. If a road is through a high-risk area – like an archeological, prehistoric, farmstead or burial ground cultural resource – these are easier to decide to close.”

Miller points out that “often, there is a system road nearby, so it becomes a no-brainer that the high-risk road can be closed.”

The bible

The new Travel Management Plan is treated similarly to the Forest Management Plan that the U.S. Forest Service is obliged to implement. Whenever a timber harvest is proposed, a thorough risk analysis has to done on the area where the harvest takes place, and now this same procedure must be followed for the travel plan.

“It’s all laid out in 2004 Land Resource Management Plan, what we can do and not do,” says Skjerven, placing his hand on a thick well-thumbed, stained, doggeared and underlined book. “This is our bible. It’s our commitment to the public, our promise of how we manage the Forest.”

“Some of its rules are kind of nebulous,” adds Marburger, “but many are highly specific, like there can be no motorized vehicles within so many feet of where a species is breeding.”

The Plan is analyzed every year by staff, and by a Forest Leadership Team, “to make sure we are meeting our goals and reaching for what we’ve promised to do,” Flory notes.

Enforcement of Travel Management Plan

Education is the emphasis through 2011 – a result of a deal worked out with the hunters’ Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, who accused the CNNF last fall of not giving the public adequate time to comment on the Plan.

Flory guesses that the map will change a lot in the first couple of years in response to comments, and then things will quiet down. “There are so many roads no one would want to drive down anyway,” she says.

Marburger agrees. “I’m already receiving lots of comments cards from the 1,400-piece mailing we did. There are 2,000 roads out there up for grabs. If people don’t want a road on the map, they’ll have to tell us. If we’re only hearing from the motorized people, then that’s what we’ll have to respond to.”

“I think it will be an effective tool for managing recreation,” Flory contributes. “This is a much more thorough way of looking at our road system. We won’t have areas getting ripped to shreds because those sensitive roads won’t be on the map.

“Ninety-nine percent of the Forest users care deeply about the Forest,” she adds. “That’s why I’m hopeful this plan will be a way to manage recreation in CNNF.”