It’s been 12 years since Steamboat Springs voters directed local lodging taxes toward trail construction and half that many years since the Forest Service proposed additional singletrack around the Continental Divide on Rabbit Ears Pass above town.
The Routt National Forest this month issued its final decision for that Mad Rabbit project connecting Rabbit Ears to the north with the Mad Creek draining to the south. The final decision wraps more than a decade of contentious discussion over where best to build trails funded with local tax dollars. The project gathered more than 1,400 comments during the Forest Service environmental review, which began in 2017.
The initial plan for new Mad Rabbit trails drew criticism from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which was concerned that increased traffic would trouble already stressed elk herds and new trails would fragment critical elk habitat. CPW objected to the original plan but withdrew its objection in November after the Forest Service agreed to a unique adaptive management plan. That management plan was anchored in an initial wildlife study and annual monitoring to make sure that phased construction of trails was not hurting wildlife.
But that elk monitoring study – priced at $33,000 to launch and an annual cost of $6,500 in the draft plan – is not part of the final decision.
“The final decision shows the Forest Service unilaterally altering the adaptive management plan in a way that imposes serious and deleterious impacts on the wildlife of Colorado,” said Larry Desjardin, whose Keep Routt Wild group spent several years urging the Forest Service to increase protections for wildlife in the Mad Rabbit project. “That wildlife study was meant to serve as a baseline for the elk population. Without it, there is no way to implement the adaptive management plan. The Forest Service lied to the state of Colorado. They lied to CPW. They lied to the city of Steamboat Springs. They have betrayed the public trust and have poisoned the well for any future adaptive management plans in Colorado.”
Aaron Voos, a spokesman for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests, said “adaptive management consists of implementation, monitoring, then adapting according to the plan depending on the monitoring results.”
“A study pre-implementation is outside of the scope of an Adaptive Management Plan,” Voos said in email.
The final decision issued in early April by Routt National Forest District Ranger Michael Woodbridge pointed to 1.9 million visits to the Routt National Forest in 2017, a 23% increase in five years and “heavy use” of forest trails around Steamboat Springs and a proliferation of illegal, user-created trails. The new plan calls for removing illegal trails and funneling traffic onto new trails.
“The project’s intent is to provide the greatest benefit to the public with the least degree of effect,” Woodbridge wrote in his decision. “The designation of trails will help focus use to areas that have been analyzed and determined to have the least impact on forest resources.”
The Steamboat Springs City Council in December voted to direct as much as $1.6 million of the city’s $2 million trails fund approved by voters in 2013 toward Mad Rabbit.
The local funding, along with lots of help from local trails groups and volunteers, is a critical part of the Forest Service plan for Mad Rabbit as the federal agency endures withering budget cuts and lost jobs as part of the Trump administration’s slashing of federal spending.
“One of the things working in favor of this project is the city council vote to fund most of the implementation phase and construction and decommission the user-created routes,” said Laraine Martin, executive director of local bike advocacy group Routt County Riders, which formed in 1991 and has been instrumental in pushing for the Mad Rabbit trails.
Martin said the Forest Service decision that lists a host of local partners and volunteer groups reflects not just the Forest Service scramble for outside funding but the community support for the project.
“When the community is included in the responsibilities and strategies, it increases community support and volunteer involvement and the positive vibe around the project,” Martin said.
The original proposal called for 79 miles of new trails and the final project allows 49 miles of new trails – 41 of which will be nonmotorized – and closing 36 miles of existing illegal trails across 127,124 acres of the national forest. The project also will impose seasonal wildlife closures of trails to protect elk-calving habitat.
The Forest Service plans to reconfigure or build seven trailheads to access the new trails. The agency decision says Forest Service trail crews, Youth Corps, trail contractors, partners and volunteers will help with the trail construction, with the initial phase of construction developing about 16 miles of trails and four trailheads while removing about 17 miles of trails. A second phase plans for 14 miles of new trails and a third phase calls for 15 miles of new trails. The second and third phases require evaluation of both use and the cost of monitoring and management as part of the Forest Service’s adaptive management strategy.
The final decision switches the order of some phases outlined in the draft. Desjardin, with Keep Routt Wild, said the Forest Service now plans to move a third phase of trail building into the second phase and cut a proposal from the initial draft that said “only one phase of development will be implemented per field year.”
“This effectively eliminates the requirement to evaluate the impacts to wildlife from one phase before starting the other,” Desjardin said.
In the days after the decision, Desjardin said his group had pushed for a fundamentally different plan but the adaptive management strategy provided a way to quickly detect and avoid impacts to wildlife.
“If we can make this plan work it can be a real model for all of Colorado,” he said. But a day after the release of the final 80-page decision, Desjardin had read through the document and decried the removal of the elk count.
“You know, we have considered Mad Rabbit basically done and we were supportive of the adaptive management plan,” he said. “We offered to help accelerate the wildlife study but the Forest Service turned us down. Now we understand why. They were always going to eliminate the study.”
CPW and wildlife officials with the Department of Natural Resources worked closely with the recently retired Routt Forest Supervisor Russ Bacon to craft the adaptive management plan “that we felt would help balance wildlife conservation needs and trail stewardship needs with new trail development,” department spokesman Chris Arend said.
“We were concerned to learn that the USFS decided to make changes to the adaptive management, which includes removal of the wildlife study,” Arend said in an emailed statement, noting that the department gathered stakeholders to better balance outdoor recreation and protect wildlife. “We are actively working to evaluate this and other changes made to the adaptive management plan to determine any next steps we may need to consider to protect important wildlife habitats, such as key elk calving areas.”
The Forest Service said it plans to spend $31,000 for agency personnel to handle the management and maintenance of the new trails, and volunteers will contribute about 1,000 hours a year in the management plan. The Forest Service also hopes to secure annual grants from the federal government as well as the Yampa Valley Community Foundation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the voter-approved Steamboat Springs trails fund.
The Forest Service estimates the total cost of the project – including building new trails, reclaiming old trails and developing trailheads spread over three to five years – at $1.9 million.
That is based on outside contractors doing the work, Voos said. Costs could lower with the help of volunteer workers, grants and additional Forest Service funding, Voos said.
“We continue to work with our partners, value their work, and anticipate positive outcomes we can achieve together,” Voos said.
