by Kirk Johnson, Executive Director
Friends of Allegheny Wilderness
Protecting wilderness in America’s federal public lands under the Wilderness Act of 1964 is of course every bit as vital and relevant today as it was when Pennsylvania conservationists Howard Zahniser of Tionesta and The Wilderness Society, and Representative John P. Saylor of Johnstown, shepherded the bill to fruition in the U.S. Congress more than 50 years ago, establishing America’s National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) for present and future generations to use and enjoy.
Efforts to see wilderness protected in Pennsylvania date back to the early 1970s when members of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Sierra Club and others began researching the possibilities for the Allegheny National Forest (ANF) in the northwest part of the Keystone State. Pennsylvania Senators Hugh Scott and Richard Schweiker subsequently supported the Sierra Club’s efforts by initially including 30,000 acres of the ANF within the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act of 1975, which ultimately designated more than 200,000 acres of 14 eastern national forests as part of the NWPS. Unfortunately, local Congressman Albert Johnson blocked inclusion of the ANF acreage as part of the landmark bill, so that prime opportunity was lost.
One of the most notable areas that the Sierra Club identified for wilderness designation, and that our Senators then supported, was a sprawling 9,700-acre undeveloped roadless tract located along the eastern shore of the Allegheny Reservoir straddling the Warren County-McKean County line known as Tracy Ridge. Cloaked by a remarkable unbroken maturing forest of hemlock, white pine, and hardwoods, it is the largest and perhaps the most obvious wilderness candidate area in the entire ANF. It contains dozens of miles of hiking-only trails, including a nine-mile segment of the North Country Trail – a national scenic trail like the Appalachian Trail.
View the 1973 Sierra Club wilderness proposal for Tracy Ridge:
http://www.pawild.org/pdfs/TracyRidgePratt1973.pdf
Though other important areas of the ANF, known as Hickory Creek and the Allegheny Islands, were finally designated wilderness in 1984 under the Pennsylvania Wilderness Act, regrettably to this day Tracy Ridge still lacks this critical level of protection. This despite the fact that no management or developments have occurred in the area since the Sierra Club’s 1973 proposal – meaning, axiomatically, that through the inevitable process of natural succession the area has grown only more wild and untrammeled in the intervening 40-plus years, and therefore nothing but increasingly qualified for wilderness designation under the Wilderness Act.
Areas of federal public land protected as wilderness are highly natural, “untrammeled” by man as the Wilderness Act states, and are to be left unmanaged in their natural condition in perpetuity. There are no roads, no permanent developments, and motorized and mechanized uses such as ATVs and mountain bikes are prohibited. Wilderness areas are in essence rare sacred nature reserves in which Leave No Trace principles must be practiced and only the lightest touch we can muster in everything that we do should be applied.
In 1993, ANF personnel embarked on a major trail analysis for Tracy Ridge to determine which trails could be upgraded, and, importantly, they also asked whether or not mountain biking should be allowed in the area. During the subsequent public comment period, essentially everyone who wrote in supported the Forest Service’s efforts to upgrade the Tracy Ridge hiking-only trail system – including the North Country Trail – for hiking use only. All of the major hiking groups, including Keystone Trails Association (KTA), opposed mountain bike use in the area.
In his Tracy Ridge comment letter, former KTA president Hugh Downing wrote “I especially support your proposal to exclude mountain bike use of the trails in this area. There are numerous forest roads within the ANF suitable for bicycle use. Please keep them off the hiking trails.” In a later letter, following the agency’s decision to not allow mountain biking in Tracy Ridge, Downing wrote “I’m in full support of your decision to exclude…mountain bike use on these trails. I’m sure you’ll receive complaints, but I’m also sure that there are other areas of the Forest where their presence would be acceptable.”
North Country Trail Association (NCTA) executive director Patricia Allen also wrote to express her concerns on behalf of the NCTA, stating “We sincerely appreciate your efforts to upgrade the trail and for designation of the section for hiking use only. This is consistent with our efforts to assure that the trails for hiking be built and maintained so that they will not need constant repair due to erosion.”
Locally well-known leaders of the Allegheny Outdoor Club (AOC) Merl Caldwell, Donald Dorn, and others, also contacted the Forest Service on behalf of AOC in opposition to allowing mountain biking on the hiking-only Tracy Ridge trails. AOC co-president at the time Marcia Ziki wrote “I would strongly urge you not to consider allowing use of the trail by mountain bikes.”
The ANF agreed with the reams of public comment received on this project, and ruled mountain biking (and horseback riding) on the Tracy Ridge hiking-only trails untenable, due primarily to concerns over erosion issues and user conflicts. ANF Bradford District Ranger Stanley Kobielsky wrote in his June 10, 1994 decision notice that the “soils and topographic conditions of the area will not support equestrian and mountain bike use…the channeling effects of tire tracks would create additional erosion problems. These effects could be mitigated but not without extensive shoring up of our sideslopes and hardening of the tread with additional surfacing material. These actions would be expensive, are likely to change the character of certain trail segments, and would add additional maintenance costs to the system. I also believe that adding…mountain bike use to the existing trail system would increase the number of user contacts, which in turn, would adversely effect the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, (ROS), class of semi-primitive non-motorized, (SPNM). Such changes would not be acceptable. Based on these factors, equestrian and mountain bike use will be prohibited on designated trails within…Tracy Ridge.”
A bit later, in 2001, Friends of Allegheny Wilderness (FAW) was formed specifically to advocate that as much acreage as possible be identified for wilderness designation as part of the ANF’s formal 2003-2007 Forest Plan revision process. Our detailed Citizens’ Wilderness Proposal for Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest (http://www.pawild.org/pdfs/CitizensWildProp.pdf) objectively delineates more than 50,000 acres that should be made part of the NWPS, including the wildly popular Tracy Ridge. Of the 8,200 public comments the agency received during the Forest Plan revision process, more than 6,800 – greater than 80 percent! – specifically supported wilderness designation for Tracy Ridge, FAW, and the Citizens’ Wilderness Proposal in general.
KTA strongly supported FAW and the Citizens’ Wilderness Proposal during this Forest Plan revision. In 2005, Hugh Downing stated “Keystone Trails Association and Friends of Allegheny Wilderness share the same values when it comes to preserving land for minimal-impact recreational purposes. One of the nation’s premier hiking trails, the North Country Trail, traverses the ANF. That’s just one of the reasons Keystone Trails Association is happy to join Friends of Allegheny Wilderness in advocating the preservation of these unique areas of the ANF.”
See the 2005 joint KTA/FAW press release:
http://www.pawild.org/pdfs/Keystone_Trails_Association.pdf
When the Forest Service published the draft version of their Forest Plan in 2006, Tracy Ridge was included in their “preferred alternative” as a recommended wilderness area. Naturally, they found that it was highly qualified for wilderness designation. In the final Forest Plan published in March of 2007, however, to the surprise of most wilderness consideration for Tracy Ridge had been arbitrarily and capriciously removed by the agency. Not because it was not qualified for wilderness designation, but simply because some special interests wanted to retain the possibility of establishing uses in the area that are not consistent with wilderness designation.
FAW is of course not opposed to mountain biking in general in the ANF. Over the years, FAW, The Wilderness Society, and others have made concessions to and agreements with mountain biking groups such as the Northern Allegheny Mountain Biking Association and the International Mountain Biking Association for important areas of the ANF.
For example, we have back-burnered advocating wilderness designation for the Morrison Run area because the Morrison trail is now used and maintained for mountain biking. We have adjusted our proposed addition to the Hickory Creek Wilderness and proposed Allegheny Front Wilderness to accommodate mountain biking on the Tanbark Trail in those areas. We also publicly support the proposed Jake’s Rocks 40-mile epic mountain biking trail that is not far from coming to fruition.
Unfortunately, we have recently learned that another group is now preparing a proposal for mountain biking on the hiking-only trails within the proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness. Once mountain biking is established in this important area, designating it as wilderness would become far more difficult because mountain biking as a mechanical use is (correctly) not allowed in wilderness. Also, the erosion and user conflict concerns identified by so many experts in 1993 are still relevant and applicable today.
So far the Forest Service has not started any planning on this mountain biking proposal, but if and when it moves forward (quite possibly in early-to-mid 2016), there will be formal scoping and a full NEPA process. It would be better if the idea of mountain biking on the hiking-only trails in the proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness was simply withdrawn and never even gets to the point of formal planning.
You can help! Please contact the ANF’s Bradford District Ranger Rich Hatfield a.s.a.p. and respectfully impress upon him why permanent wilderness protection under the Wilderness Act for the entire 9,700-acre Tracy Ridge is so important to you, why the hiking-only character of all of the trails in the area should be perpetuated, and therefore why he should no longer entertain mountain biking ideas for the area. Mr. Hatfield has only been on the ANF for less than six months, so may not yet fully appreciate the vast and deep-rooted love for Tracy Ridge and the North Country Trail that is out there. That is where you come in!
Contact info:
Bradford District Ranger Rich Hatfield
29 Forest Service Drive
Bradford, PA 16701
814-363-6098
rhatfield@fs.fed.us
Thank you very much for taking action on this important issue!
Kirk Johnson is executive director for the Warren-based non-profit Friends of Allegheny Wilderness, www.pawild.org, and a board member for the North Country Trail Association, www.northcountrytrail.org.
Read The Pennsylvania Chapter of The Sierra Club's response HERE.