Gates don’t seem to stop public from driving closed Forest Roads, study in suit claims

A study done earlier this year by the Swan View Coalition claims that the Forest Service is overstating the effectiveness of road closure devices on the Flathead National Forest.

In its previous documentation, the Forest Service claims that gates, berms and other road closure devices are about 92% effective in keeping motorized use off closed roads.

The Swan View Coalition, in turn, claims that percentage is far worse — at least on the 300-plus closure devices it examined in the summer of 2022 on the Swan View Valley Geographic area.

It claims that only 53% of closure devices were actually effective, as people went around boulders, gates and other barriers to various degrees. The study does concede that some of the tire tracks and other evidence appears to be administrative use, but even then, gates still weren’t as effective as other barriers.

The study was done by Swan View Coalition Chairman Keith Hammer and is part of an ongoing lawsuit over roads on the Flathead National Forest.

Swan View has maintained that when the Forest Service rewrote its Forest Plan in 2018, it illegally expunged standards for road closures that were established in the previous plan. In the old plan, a standard called Amendment 19 allowed for a certain amount of open road density in bull trout and grizzly bear habitat. Roads that went beyond that density wee not only supposed to be blocked under A-19, they were supposed to be removed altogether.

As a result, the Forest Service removed hundreds of miles of roads over the years.

Under the new plan, the Forest Service changed its road management to allow roads to be closed by things like gates and berms, but they wouldn’t be ripped out entirely as they were under Amendment 19.

Swan View, in turn, sued the Forest Service and in addition then began surveying closed roads to compare its results to the Forest Service’s.

In short, it found that gates were the least effective at stopping motorized use, as people would drive around them. Earth berms and boulder barriers were found to be 69 and 70% effective.

The most effective barrier was where a bridge was removed across a stream. That seemed to stop everyone, the study found.

The report is part of the Swan View Coalition ongoing lawsuit against the Forest Service. As such, the Forest Service declined to comment, as it does not comment on ongoing litigation, spokeswoman Kira Powell said.

But in previous documents, the Forest Service notes that grizzly bears have largely recovered with the current road density on the landscape and as such, the road program, even with openings and closures, appears to be giving the bears the security they need, based on the slow, but sure increase in the grizzly bear population.

Swan View maintains that research done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finds that grizzly bears do better when road density is lower and bull trout streams aren’t as impacted by road runoff if the roads are removed, rather than simply closed.

Culverts in roads that are closed can plug during high water. When they overfill they can send a rush of sediment into bull trout streams.

But roads are often necessary for forest management and timber sales as its often impossible to get equipment into areas without roads. And as climate change causes larger and more frequent fires each summer, the public often wants to see forests thinned so the chance of a catastrophic fire burning into nearby towns and homes is reduced.