Wilderness Watch and Heartwood are pushing back against a U.S. Forest Service (FS) plan to reconstruct, and in places construct, a road in the Lusk Creek Wilderness in Illinois. At issue is access across Wilderness to 87 acres of private land that borders the eastern side of the Wilderness, which only a handful of owners have been permitted motorized access to since the area’s 1990 wilderness designation. The FS proposed a categorical exclusion (CE) that exempts review under the National Environmental Policy Act.
This CE is problematic for several reasons. Based on limited information the agency provided the public, the number of special-permit users accessing these 87 acres seems to have exponentially grown. Some users also have created their own off-road vehicle (ORV) routes to their property, and the Forest Service has proposed road construction for some of these illegal user-created routes. Finally, when Lusk Creek was designated as Wilderness, the entry gate to this route had been locked with keys for the special-permit users. Through either the fault the Forest Service or the permit users, this gate has been open for years, during which motorized users have created a network of illegal roads in the Wilderness. The motorized abuse that has gone unchecked makes the Lusk Creek Wilderness look like an ORV playground, as observed by Wilderness Watch and Heartwood members who visited last fall, and who documented washed-out roads, extensive erosion, and other damage to the Wilderness.
Our joint comments urged the agency to drop its road construction plan. The Forest Service needs to protect the Lusk Creek Wilderness by closing the existing access road in the Wilderness and directing private land access through non-Wilderness land or evaluating the feasibility of purchasing the 87 acres to add to the Shawnee National Forest.
Unfortunately, in early January the agency decided to approve the road-building plan without any environmental review. Wilderness Watch is evaluating our next steps.
Photos: Lusk Creek—a Wild and Scenic River candidate by Karen Frailey;
Access road in the Lusk Creek Wilderness by John B. Wallace
