PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #49: Restoration of Public Lands.
Presiding: D. Gordon
Wednesday, August 7. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Mohave Meeting Room, TCC.
A cooperative approach to road closures and landscape restoration.
SKROCH, MATT*,1, SHAFIQULLAH, SALEK*,2, HARE, TREVOR1, 1 SKY ISLAND ALLIANCE, TUCSON, AZ2 CORONADO NATIONAL FOREST, TUCSON, AZ
ABSTRACT- The ecological impact of roads on wildland landscapes carries severe effects that can impair the functionality and health of whole ecosystems. The Sky Island Alliance, a regional non-profit organization, and the Coronado National Forest cooperatively work to assess impacts of roads in southeast Arizona on landscape and site-specific scales then work to close and restore roadbeds that are found to be detrimental to environmental integrity. Since 1998 over 400 volunteers have logged in excess of 15,000 hours surveying Forest roads, photo documenting and taking notes of erosion, use, purpose, and location of each road. Results show that over 20% of all roads surveyed are non-system, unmapped roads. This correlates to 1000 miles of undocumented, user-created roads on the Forest landscape, or an average of over 2.5 mi/mi2 on roaded portions of the Forest. In response to this burgeoning transportation system and its effects on biological and geomorphological integrity, the Sky Island Alliance has meshed volunteer organizing and education with landscape and restoration ecology to guide closure and restoration projects. These projects include closure of roads, decompaction of road surfaces, propagation of revegetation, and erosion control. The result is a cooperative, volunteer based process that uses grassroots organizing in combination with restoration ecology to restore and protect the rare biological processes present in the Sky Island Region.
KEY WORDS: roads, revegetation, fragmentation, grassroots organizing