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The Forest Service Mad Rabbit Scandal continues We reported last month about the continuing scandal surrounding the Mad Rabbit Trails Project. Briefly:
· The Mad Rabbit EA (Environmental Assessment) was formally approved by the Forest Service in early April. · In the Final Decision Notice, the Forest Service substituted an altered AMP (Adaptive Management Plan) that removed numerous wildlife and habitat protections that they had previously developed in concert with DNR and CPW and subsequently presented to the Steamboat Springs City Council. · Colorado DNR and CPW reinstated their objection to the project after finding these changes in the final document. The scandal just keeps growing. The City Council has now delayed a formal vote for Mad Rabbit funding until June 17th. What is remarkable, is there seems to be little interest in finding why the Forest Service misled the State of Colorado, DNR and CPW, the City Council of Steamboat Springs, and the Routt County public. We find this counter to good government. If a private contractor had misled the City and State in order to be awarded a $1.6 million dollar contract, there’d be holy hell to pay. More than one councilor seemed to think that this type of dishonesty was acceptable when practiced by the Forest Service. They voted to not have presentations to get to the bottom of this scandal, but rather to proceed with a simple “up and down” vote on funding instead. Furthermore, we don’t believe that the upcoming funding resolution is even legal. The 2013 2A ballot referendum clearly stated that only trails included in the STA (Steamboat Trails Alliance) proposal could be funded. We have Forest Service documents explicitly stating that many of the Mad Rabbit trails are not from the STA list. However, the City is using a tenuous legal theory called “functional equivalence” that allows them to spend funds outside of the STA list approved by the voters if they declare those trails as functional equivalents. For example, there is a “Hiking Only” trail listed in the STA proposal across from the Ferndale area that the City is declaring to be “functionally equivalent” to building a hike, bike, and horse trail around the Meadows Campground miles away. So, now we are in the bizarre situation that trails approved by the voters (like the Core Trail extensions) will not get funded, but trails never approved by the voters will. In a recently released video, we highlighted excerpts from the November 19thCity Council Mad Rabbit NEPA meeting showing the Forest Service misleading the City Council about the Adaptive Management Plan, about what would be in the final Decision Notice, and about their existing authority independent of Mad Rabbit to rehabilitate unauthorized trails. We invite you to watch this 7-minute video of what the Forest Service told the City Council, and what actually happened.
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