Wanted: Your opinions

There will be no better time than this summer to tell Steve Ellis, supervisor of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, where you think motor vehicles should be allowed to go on the forest.

Last week the Wallowa-Whitman unveiled its draft environmental impact statement for the forest’s proposed travel management plan. That plan will determine where motorized vehicles (except for snowmobiles, which are exempt) can travel on about 1.3 million acres of the 2.4-million-acre Wallowa-Whitman.

The forest will accept public comments on the DEIS through Aug. 20.

After that, Ellis will read and consider the comments while he’s working out his preferred system for managing vehicles.

That system will be explained in detail in the final EIS, which is scheduled to be released to the public this winter.

We encourage people to send comments that are as specific as possible, even down to listing the roads, out of the hundreds involved, that you ride most often and would most like to have kept open.

Although at least 6,000 people have signed petitions urging Ellis to maintain the status quo and leave all roads open, that’s just not an option.

The DEIS does include such an alternative — it’s No. 1, the “no action alternative” — but that’s only because federal law requires that the forest study the effects of doing nothing.

Ellis can’t pick that alternative because it would conflict with the Forest Service’s national rule that requires all national forests to revamp their travel management plans.

On the positive side for ATV riders, Ellis has also said that he will not pick Alternative 2, which would prohibit cross-country riding, which is allowed in most places on the forest now, and close about 59 percent of the roads and trails that are open to motor vehicles.

That leaves four alternatives.

Alternative 3 strikes the best balance between the current situation and Alternative 2. It would close about 26 percent of the mileage of roads and trails. It would also ban cross-country travel except on 236,000 acres, mainly in Union County.

Alternative 4 would have the least effect on four-wheelers who stay on roads and trails, closing 3 percent of the mileage. It would, however, prohibit all cross-country riding.

Alternative 5 is more restrictive than 3 or 4, closing 53 percent of mileage and banning cross-country riding.

Alternative 6 is the most restrictive on motor vehicles. It would close 63 percent of road and trail mileage and ban all cross-country riding.

Here’s the key, though: Ellis said he won’t choose any of those four alternatives in its entirety.

Rather, he will assemble a sort of hybrid strategy which includes parts of some alternatives as well as, potentially, suggestions he receives from the public.

What this means is that commenters who want to influence Ellis would do well to scrutinize all four alternatives and pluck out the parts that most closely mimic how they use the Wallowa-Whitman.

That’s precisely what a group of Baker County volunteers did.

Those volunteers traipsed around, looking for roads that were cloaked with thickets of trees or otherwise had obviously not being traveled on by motor vehicles probably since the Reagan administration.

The Baker County group’s work was made part of Alternative 3. We think it’s the best of the four that are in play.

In particular we subscribe to the notion that riders won’t suffer if Ellis closes roads that no one’s riding on anyway.

Alternative 3, or a strategy very like it, would close a significant number of roads and so achieve the Forest Service’s goals of protecting wildlife habitat and water quality.

But that strategy also would leave open a network of roads, along with limited cross-country riding, sufficient to ensure that ATVs remain a viable method of traveling through the Wallowa-Whitman.

Seems fair to us.