Now let me provide a little background and explain why Lyle Laverty is more
than just a mere threat to the parks.
TEN YEARS AGO, Westword published an article about Laverty which I've
provided below. It was titled "Forest Bumps" and began with these words,
"Environmentalists warn that the Forest Service’s new Colorado mogul
could be dangerous."
Here's a pull out quote from that article:
This article is ABSOLUTELY GREAT. When I read it 10 years ago, it
opened my eyes and, quite literally, changed the course of my life. Ten years later, it is impossible to deny that the future
predicted in that article has become today's reality.
I believe the President's selection of Lyle Laverty for the #3 position
within the Department of Interior represents just about the worst possible
choice. "Disaster" does not begin to describe what we can expect if he is
confirmed.
“If Laverty is going
to push recreation
like we think he will, it could be a disaster.”
-Environmentalist Jasper Carlton
The nation’s top outdoor-recreation official, Lyle Laverty, isn’t scheduled
to take over the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region until November, and
Colorado environmentalists are already howling like a pack of wolves.
“Recreation is the new game,” says Roz McClellan of the Southern Rockies
Ecosystem Project, “and as a result, [the Forest Service] has thrown ecological
values out the window.”
Environmentalists like McClellan see Laverty’s arrival as a harbinger of the
Forest Service’s increased emphasis on recreation, which they feel could turn
out to be more detrimental to public lands than even their perennial pet peeve,
logging. “Are we better off with Honda and Kawasaki or Louisiana Pacific and
Stone Container?” asks McClellan. “[Damage from] timber harvesting will be
invisible twenty years from now, but the effects of recreation will last
forever.”
However, Ed Ryberg, the Forest Service’s Colorado-based winter-sports resort
coordinator, says Laverty shouldn’t take the blame. “The Rocky Mountain region
has always been a recreation-based region,” says Ryberg. “It’s never been a
question in our minds that in Colorado, recreation has eclipsed everything else,
including logging, as the biggest revenue-generator.”
And generating revenue, says Ryberg, is a key factor in determining the
Forest Service’s course of action. According to the agency’s latest resource
planning report, logging isn’t paying the bills like it used to.
Laverty says that by the year 2000, 75 percent of the agency’s contribution
to the gross national product will come from recreation.
“Because of this,” he says, “our focus has shifted from timber, because the
reality is that if we continue to harvest timber at the rate we have
historically, recreation will suffer. Recreation is the moneymaker, but the
catch is that without a healthy forest setting, people are going to spend their
time elsewhere.”
He should know. The Forest Service’s national director of recreation since
1992, Laverty was responsible for developing recreational policy throughout the
U.S. But after five years of “balancing” the agency’s land-use policy against
environmentalists’ wishes, Laverty says, he’s ready to get back into the woods.
He’ll be bringing his political skills with him. “The main thing we have to do,”
he says, “is instill an ethic in people who use the land so that they treat the
forests in a positive fashion. It’s going to be a huge learning curve for me,
but I’m anxious to get out there and start talking to people.”
And he’s eager to hit the slopes. An avid skier, Laverty calls his relocation
to Colorado from Washington, D.C., a “delightful benefit” of his new job.
Laverty will be replacing Elizabeth Estill, who will take over Forest Service
operations in the southeastern U.S. Local environmentalists aren’t sorry to see
her go.
“Estill’s record was miserable,” says Jasper Carlton of the Biodiversity
Legal Foundation. “She was the most difficult regional forester in the country
and was totally uncooperative, along with being a pusher for off-road
motor-vehicle use and encroachment into undisturbed wilderness lands for
logging.
“But,” adds Carlton, “if Laverty is going to push recreation like we think he
will, it could be a disaster.”
Not for the ski industry.
“We’re thrilled to have Lyle coming out here,” says Sam Anderson, an attorney
for the National Ski Areas Association, which lobbies on behalf of 325 ski
resorts nationwide. “Lyle’s attended our last two national conventions, and as a
result, he has a tremendous insight into our industry’s challenges and the
direction we’re going. The only negative is that we’re going to be losing him on
a national level.”
Off-road enthusiasts are just as happy about Laverty. “Last year we lost
sixty miles of road open to off-road vehicles,” says Adam Mehlberg, land-use
director of the Colorado Four-Wheel Drive Association. “But from what I’ve
heard, [Laverty] understands the way to balance environmental concerns without
limiting motorized recreation. And from our standpoint, the fact that he’s got a
recreational background as opposed to being an ‘-ologist’ is a good thing.”
Outdoor enthusiasts like Laverty used to be seen as friends of the
environment, but conservation groups increasingly contend that the growing
demand for outdoor recreation is wreaking havoc on national forests. They argue
that ski-resort construction, off-road vehicles and mountain bikers not only
drive reclusive animals out of their natural habitats, but also create trails
that irreversibly damage soil and plants. “There’s no shortage of favor for the
Forest Service from ski resorts and the like,” says Rocky Smith of the Colorado
Environmental Coalition. “Sometimes it seems like the Forest Service is acting
as an agent for the ski areas, especially since the Forest Service has been
promoting this sort of industrial-strength recreation.”
Colorado environmentalists are already firing warning shots at Laverty,
sending letters of concern and other documents to his D.C. office.
“I don’t have a problem with ski resorts or recreational trails,” says Jasper
Carlton, “but we’re afraid that Laverty is going to allow all-out development
and the forests won’t tolerate it.”
McClellan points to the impact caused by the 100,000 mountain bikers she
estimates visited Vail last summer.
“The mountain bike is dangerous,” she says, “because of its potential to get
people further into undisturbed backcountry--the last refuge for reclusive
species like the lynx and wolverine. Where a hiker can maybe get ten miles into
the backcountry, a biker can get forty and an off-road vehicle one hundred. When
you throw in skiing, the result is a year-round gridlock of recreation, which is
a greater threat to our lands than logging ever was. Twenty years from now,
forests harvested for timber will have grown back, but a trail will always be
there.
“If this kind of proliferation continues, which it looks like it will when
Laverty gets out here, I predict that we’ll have uniform saturation [of Forest
Service land] within two decades.”
Laverty wouldn’t call it “uniform saturation,” but he does speak of big
numbers.
“We estimate that by the year 2045 we’ll have 1.2 billion recreational visits
to our national forests,” he says. “The question we have to address is, how do
we prepare for that kind of use while making sure that the resource which draws
these visitors is protected? We’re going to find limits on what the land can
sustain.
“I look at it like an opera house. There are only so many seats available,
and when you exceed that, you’ve got to change the seating structure. Are we
going to turn people away or build stadium seating?”
BLOG 
If confirmed as Department of Interior Assistant Secretary for Fish
Wildlife and Parks, Lyle Laverty would set recreation policy for the National
Park Service and other Interior agencies. If confirmed, the triumvirate of Dirk
Kempthorne, Lynn Scarlett and Lyle Laverty would comprise the dream team for the
American Recreation Coalition and those special interests aggressively promoting
the commercialization, privatization and motorization of the Great
Outdoors.
