October 1999 Bioregion Spotlight: Great Burn Roadless Area

Assault on Fish Lake

Multiple, ever-widening tracks betray the recent incursion of ORVs into the Great Burn Roadless Area.
Here a new track is visible to the right--a detour around a small puddle in the left track.

One weekend in early August, approximately 80 ATVs--motorcycles and 4-wheelers--besieged the Fish Lake/State Line Trail area of the Great Burn. Fish Lake is just west of the Bitterroot divide in Idaho some three miles inside the roadless area boundary. Later in August a volunteer documenting impacts of these abuses saw 31 ATVs and 19 motorcycles in less than two days. The impacts from this level of use are not going unnoticed by the Clearwater National Forest who have received numerous calls from concerned citizens throughout the region.

The United States Forest Service (USFS) maintains that the trail to Fish Lake is open to ORV use; conservationists are currently questioning the legality of that. The Great Burn is a wilderness study area (WSA) and by law the USFS must keep ORV use at levels that were occurring at the time WSA status began. That is not the case on the Clearwater. In fact, it seems that the Forest Service is encouraging this new level of use. The USFS has installed port-a potties & wooden docks at Fish Lake, making the lake more comfortable and inviting to more and more users.

The entire State Line Trail that runs through the Great Burn is off-limits to motorize use. Unfortunately, there is much evidence pointing to the fact that it is regularly used by ORVs. The recent rash of abuses seem to be a concerted effort by the ORV community to "take-over" the Great Burn thereby helping to exclude this area from wilderness consideration.

The Great Burn is slated for protection as wilderness through the passage of NREPA. It serves as critical grizzly bear recovery habitat and is home to several listed and sensitive species including wolf, wolverine, bull trout, and westslope cutthroat trout.

Voice your disapproval of the ORV abuses in the Great Burn, call or write the Clearwater National Forest.

Clearwater National Forest Supervisor
12730 Hwy. 12
Orofino, ID. 83544

208-476-4541

For more information, contact Bob Clark, AWR Outreach Director

A new dock on Fish Lake... maybe they're planning to return with jet skis?

 

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