On September 5, 2024, the Sierra Club met with the U.S.  Forest Service (FS) at the National Forests and Grassland in Texas (NFGT) offices, in Lufkin, Texas, to discuss hiking trail protection.

Those present included the Forest Supervisor, Assistant Forest Supervisor, the three District Rangers, and several other staff officers.  The Sierra Club asked for this meeting after attending a meeting about proposed Hurricane Beryl salvage logging in Sam Houston National Forest (SHNF)

The discussion revolved around the need, from the Sierra Club perspective, to provide additional protection for hiking trails in the NFGT when proposed projects, like logging, etc., are planned and implemented.

The Sierra Club sent an email on August 16, 2024 to the Forest Supervisor stating concerns about the failure of the FS to use Forest-Wide Standard and Guidelines (S&G) which require a scenic corridor along hiking trails and which deal with scenic resources and has mitigation measures that can be used for hiking trails.

“The Sierra Club would like to understand the FS position about its project-level site-specific environmental analyses (SSEA) and the issue/concern of hiking trails protection as it relates to the FS understanding of its’ responsibility for implementation of S&Gs that are found in the 1996 Forest Plan.”

The 1996 Forest Plan, which the NFGT operates under, has forest-wide S&Gs which include FW-158, which states:

“d. Designated trails will have a management zone corridor up to 300 feet as/or appropriate for type of trail use; these corridors are to enhance the recreational experience and will be determined through site specific analysis.”

The Sierra Club stated that it hadn’t seen this forest-wide S&G in proposed projects where hiking trails are.  The Sierra Club asked why this S&G wasn’t being used and why if it wasn’t used the FS didn’t include with its’ proposed projects a deviation statement as required by the 1996 Forest Plan.  The FS didn’t answer these questions.

The Sierra Club used the Montgomery County Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project (MCWHIP), because it was recently decided, as an example of how the FS uses excuses like the hiking trail needs to dry out faster, as a reason to not create a corridor and to log the hiking trail and or possible corridor.

The Sierra Club thanked the FS for opening up trails after Hurricane Beryl, and continued to ask about the use of forest-wide S&Gs to protect hiking trails via SSEA.  The Forest Supervisor stated that SSEA was the intersection and nexus of the project purpose.  The Sierra Club asked what definition the FS used in the NFGT for SSEA for project-level actions.

The FS stated that only in implementation do we get to fine detail via writing a prescription.  The Sierra Club stated it would be helpful to be alerted ahead of public scoping so that the public hand an opportunity to visit an area over and provide SSEA that might help the proposed project avoid problems.

It’s when the FS doesn’t say what the SSEA is and what the mitigation measures are that the Sierra Club objects because the FS hasn’t heard it, and the Sierra Club knows there will be a discussion of SSEA in the objection process.

The Sierra Club said that it would like to collaborate with the FS so that proposed projects aren’t just one purpose but have several, including hiking trail erosion control, within the project area.  The Sierra Club was told that the FS had been told to get away from multiple purposes/needs projects because when you have several purposes/needs its’ easier to delay the entire project when one of those purposes/needs is controversial and people oppose it.  The Sierra Club said that it believed in the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act and the National Forest Management Act and that the FS should use them.

The Sierra Club brought up the requirement for visual quality objective (VQO) maps found in most management areas.  The Sierra Club has never seen one of these maps and the FS doesn’t provide them during the NEPA process.  The FS stated that timber contracts had VQOs.

The Forest Supervisor stated that what the Sierra Club wanted was for the FS to recognize hiking trails as a resource on the landscape.  The Forest Supervisor stated that when the NFGT in the future has a proposed project where a hiking trail is, that the FS will put in the scoping letter that the hiking trail is there and that the hiking trail will be treated as a resource.  He said that he would leave it to District Rangers to determine how to deal with the hiking trail resource in the proposed project.

The Sierra Club continues to fight to provide protection for hiking trails when logging and other potentially damaging forest practices are proposed.