New Management Plan RELEASED for
Los Padres National Forest

Revised Guidelines Will Govern Development
Activities on the Forest for the Next Decade

The U.S. Forest Service has released a new land management plan for the Los Padres National Forest and three other national forests in southern California. The new plan covers all 1.76 million acres of the Los Padres, and will guide decisions on everything from protecting wildlife and providing recreation opportunities, to deciding where potentially damaging development can take place.

ForestWatch criticized the plan for not going far enough to address challenges that threaten the natural and recreational values of the Los Padres.

Below is our preliminary analysis of the plan. We encourage folks to attend one of the agency's open houses in October (see schedule to the right) to find out more. In the meantime, if you'd like to view the agency's documents and maps, click the "View Documents" icon towards the top of this page.

Wilderness Areas & Recreation

The Los Padres currently contains 10 wilderness areas across 48% of the forest's land base. Wilderness designation is the best way to permanently protect forest lands and to accommodate rising demand for wilderness recreation.

The new plan recommends wilderness protection for only four areas totaling 35,821 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. This amount represents just 2% of the forest's land base. The agency failed to identify any new wilderness areas in San Luis Obispo or Monterey counties.

The new plan recommends adding this area along       
Mono Creek to the existing Dick Smith Wilderness.

The areas recommended for wilderness in the new plan include:

• Dick Smith Wilderness Additions (32,273 acres) - Two areas about 10 miles north of Santa Barbara, near Buckhorn and Mono creeks. If approved by Congress, these areas would be added to the existing Dick Smith Wilderness area.

• Matilija Wilderness Addition (2,822 acres) - A small area six miles northwest of Ojai in Ventura County. If approved by Congress, this area would be added to the existing Matilija Wilderness.

• Chumash-Toad Springs (726 acres) - This is an old off-road vehicle corridor that cuts through the middle of the existing Chumash Wilderness area in Ventura and Kern counties. Under previous legislation passed by Congress, this area is automatically added to the Chumash Wilderness as soon as the agency creates an alternate OHV route.

The agency even retreated from it's draft plan, slashing 11,000 acres of wilderness that it recommended just last year. ForestWatch will work to ensure that additional areas are recommended for wilderness protection.

Read more about how the plan affects wilderness areas.  MORE >>

Roadless Areas

The Los Padres contains nearly 600,000 acres of pristine, roadless areas representing the last remaining untouched wildlands in the forest. These roadless areas contain many of the same qualities as official wilderness, but are not yet officially designated as such.

The plan opens up 74% of these roadless areas to new road construction. The plan zones 443,000 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas as Back Country, Back Country Motorized Use Restricted, or Developed Area Interface, all of which allow varying levels of road construction and development.

It is vitally important that the Forest Service designate more roadless areas of the forest as Recommended Wilderness or Back County Non-Motorized. This zoning would ensure that no new roads are built in these pristine areas, which were left unprotected when the administration recently repealed the Roadless Rule. MORE >>

Clean Water Supplies

The plan recommends three river stretches for protection under the Wild & Scenic River Act. These rivers include:

• Arroyo Seco River - The plan recommends protecting the entire 18-mile stretch of the Arroyo Seco River, near the Ventana Wilderness in Monterey County. This river flows by steep canyon walls, gorges, rock outcrops, and deep pools. It also provides habitat for threatened steelhead.

• Upper Sespe Creek - The lower 31.5 miles of Sespe Creek are already protected under the Wild & Scenic River Act. The plan recommends protecting an additional 11.5 miles of Sespe Creek immediately upstream of this area, from Chorro Grande Creek to Rock Creek. This stretch contains one of the largest populations of endangered arroyo toads, and also provides outstanding habitat for steelhead and the southwestern willow flycatcher. It's also located along the scenic Highway 33 in Ventura County, a popular recreation destination.

• Upper Piru Creek - The plan recommends 38.6 miles of Piru Creek for Wild & Scenic River designation, from the headwaters in the Sespe Wilderness to the upper limit of Pyramid Lake in Ventura County. This year-round stream contains excellent fishing and other recreation opportunities and several outstanding Native American sites.

The agency will now have to manage these rivers to protect their wild and scenic values until Congress officially grants protection under the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act.

Unfortunately, the Forest Service identified a total of seven streams in the Los Padres that are eligible for Wild & Scenic River protection, but selected only these three. Find out which streams the agency failed to recommend for Wild & Scenic River designation. MORE >>

Piru Creek, recommended for Wild & Scenic River protection.

Oil & Gas Drilling

The new plan incorporates the administration's decision in July to open up 52,075 acres of the Los Padres to oil drilling. The new plan incorporates this decision in full, even though it was approved under the old Forest Plan and is currently under appeal by the California Attorney General's Office and three conservation groups, including ForestWatch.

Click here for the latest news regarding the oil drilling decision and our appeal. MORE >>

Wildlife Protection

The new plan identifies 12 "management indicator species" (MIS). These species reflect the health of entire ecosystems - if these species are declining, then the entire ecosystem is not properly functioning. The Forest Service monitors MIS to ensure that existing or proposed development activities do not damage other species with similar habitat requirements. Because of their surrogate status, MIS play a vitally important role in ensuring healthy ecosystems and avoiding habitat damage.

The new plan selects 12 management indicator species to monitor the health of various habitats. The plan eliminates steelhead as a MIS, even though it was included in the previous forest plan and is an excellent indicator of aquatic habitat quality and overall watershed integrity. The new plan also omits other important species from the MIS list.

The new plan also provides inadequate protection for streamside riparian habitats. The plan establishes buffers to protect streams from nearby development activities, but contains a loophole that allows development closer to these sensitive areas simply "if a need is identified." Design Criteria, Appendix E, p.65.

This is just one of many examples where the agency establishes a guideline, but also establishes a loophole that allows the agency to sidestep the guideline whenever it wants to.

ForestWatch will work to ensure that the new plan contains stronger, enforceable standards without unnecessary loopholes. This is the only way to guarantee that the agency will live up to its word.

Off-Highway Vehicles

The new plan continues the agency's existing policy of restricting OHVs to designated trails. This prevents erosion and damage that occurs when OHVs illegally leave the trails.

Despite this longstanding policy, irresponsible OHV enthusiasts have cut several illegal, unauthorized trails through the forest. The agency has counted 160 miles of illegal OHV trails in the Los Padres.

Instead of requiring the immediate closure and rehabilitation of these illegal routes, the plan requires the Forest Service to analyze each of these illegal routes and (1) incorporate them into the official OHV route system, or (2) close and decommission the illegal road.

The Forest Service admits that it doesn't have enough staff and resources to monitor all of the existing legal OHV routes. ForestWatch will work to ensure that the agency spends its scarce resources on monitoring and enforcement of existing OHV routes, not on opening even more (illegal) routes to the system.

Monitoring

The new plan requires the agency to prepare a "program of work" each year, and to consistently monitor forest conditions. Monitoring ensures that existing activities do not unnecessarily damage the forest, and allow corrective actions to be taken before such damage becomes permanent.

Most importantly, monitoring provides the public with evidence that the new forest plan is (or is not) working. ForestWatch will review this monitoring data every year to ensure that the agency is living up to its promises.

What's Next

The new forest plan becomes effective in late October 2005. All activities and project approved after this date must comply with the new forest plan.

Our staff is busy peering through the thousands of pages of documents so that we can determine exactly how this new plan will affect our national forest. We remain optimistic that it's a step in the right direction, but it appears that the new plans do not go far enough to protect our public lands.

The agency will sponsor several workshops in October in communities near the forest, including Salinas, Big Sur, Arroyo Grande, Goleta, Ventura, and Frazier Park. ForestWatch will attend these workshops, and we encourage you to join us as we ask the agency some tough questions about why it did not enact stronger protections.

Conservation groups will have 90 days to appeal the decision. ForestWatch will work in coalition with other conservation groups to review the new plan in its entirety. If we determine that the plans are a far cry from what is truly needed for forest protection, then you can bet we'll take action to protect our public lands.