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Mission 28 · Monongahela National Forest, WV

Monongahela road permit

Monongahela National Forest

The agency files it as “Issuance of a Special Use Permit for Forest Roads 223 and 249”

Timing

The agency stopped taking comments on September 21. What you find still counts: it backs the formal objections from people who did comment, it goes to the lawyers on the fight, and it is the story.

The sentence we think is wrong

“would run parallel to either the South Fork Cherry or North Fork Cherry Rivers (candy darter critical habitat) for approximately half of their routes (often within 100' feet of the rivers).”

The agency wrote that in its own document, under Alternatives Considered but Not Analyzed in Detail. Nobody has been out to check it. A dated photograph either backs it up or ends it.

How you settle it

Walk Forest Road 223 where it runs along Bear Run and photograph how close the road bed actually sits to the water, including any place where bare road drains straight toward the stream. Photos showing the road surface and Bear Run in the same frame, close enough to judge the distance between them.

The decision

The Forest Service is proposing to issue a ten-year special use permit to an applicant for use and maintenance of 27.2 acres of National Forest System land along existing Forest Roads 223 and 249. The project is on the Monongahela National Forest and will be analyzed under an Environmental Assessment. Written comments are being accepted through the posted deadline.

Read the whole thing, and write to the agency about it

How to record it so it counts

  1. 01Find where the road is supposed to start. Photograph it from the junction, with anything that identifies the spot (a sign, a gate, a milepost).
  2. 02Walk it. Photograph the surface every few hundred meters and at anything that would stop a vehicle: a washout, a slide, a fallen tree, a stream with no crossing, trees growing in the road.
  3. 03Photograph the far end the same way.
  4. 04Let your phone record a GPS track if it can (any tracking app). A screenshot of the track is fine.
  5. 05Write down whether a pickup could drive it today, and why or why not.
What would count
  • Start, middle and end, with the track. A single photo of brush isn’t a road that doesn’t exist.
  • The reason a vehicle could not pass, in a photo.
  • The date. Roads change with a season.
All of it, with the phone settings, in the field guide
Are you going?

Say yes or no. It tells the next person whether anyone has this ground covered, and it is the only way we know a request was answered rather than just read. You can change your mind any time, and nobody follows up.

Join, then say you’re going

Nobody has answered yet

Before you go
  1. Public land only. Plenty of land inside a national forest or park boundary is privately owned, and that is not yours to walk on. A gate or a closure sign means stop. Check the rules for the specific place you are going, because they differ.
  2. Don’t touch survey stakes, flagging, equipment or anything a crew left. Photograph it; leave it.
  3. Don’t approach crews, contractors or agency staff about the project. Don’t interfere with any operation.
  4. Wildlife at a distance. No drones in wilderness or anywhere they’re prohibited. Stay off closed roads and trails.
  5. If you’re not sure, don’t. Weather, terrain, water, fire and people are your call, and yours alone.

More Than Just Parks doesn’t direct where you go or what you do. Terms.