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By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun

Thirty years ago, Olympic National Forest's vast network of roads bustled with big trucks loaded with fresh-cut timber.

Today, hundreds of miles are rarely used and serve little purpose other than to burden the forest's managers with maintenance costs they can no longer afford.

Olympic is poised to undertake an ambitious road closure project that could — at the very least — block vehicle access to about 700 miles of road.

That's about 35 percent of the forest's 2,020-mile network.

A new report on Olympic's roads has identified 676 miles that are "not likely needed." That means the roads are not meeting recreational and logging access needs, or they may be too expensive or damaging to the environment to maintain.

"A lot of the roads we have were built to support logging, but logging's at a much lower level," said Stephen Baker, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service's Northwest region office. "The situation is just not sustainable."

In the 1980s, Olympic was producing 400 million board feet of timber each year. Recent annual production has fallen to about 20 million board feet. Olympic's budget has suffered a commensurate decline, shrinking the funding available to keep roads in shape. With much less money flowing in, the maintenance backlog has swelled.

According to Olympic's Forest-wide Travel Analysis Report, deferred maintenance costs have stacked up to $42 million.

Annual maintenance costs are about $4.5 million. Annual funding is much less.

"Over the past five years, (Olympic) has only received about $550,000 per year for road maintenance contracts and work on the ground," Baker said.

National forests across the Northwest are dealing with the same problem. Many roads were built in the 1950s, and have long exceeded their expected life spans. Without repairs, the roads crumble and dissolve, sending soil and other runoff into lakes and fish-bearing streams. Besides diminished water quality, the roads increase landslide hazards and the spread of invasive plants.

Olympic National Forest forms a segmented ring around Olympic National Park, which is almost entirely designated as protected wilderness. As roads close, the national forest may take on more of the characteristics of the national park, making it wilder and as it becomes less accessible for humans.

A "wilder" national forest isn't a bad thing, say several conservation groups.

"There's not reason to keep a road open if we're not using it to extract resources," John Woolley, vice president of the Olympic Forest Coalition, said shortly after the road assessment process was announced.

In 2013, the forest's managers had estimated that about a third of Olympic's road miles might need to be closed. The new report's more conservative estimate is tempered by the high cost of closing roads.

Decommissioning roads can cost between $60,000 and $120,000 per mile. Closing nearly 700 miles might require $60 million. Add to that the cost of removing or fixing dozens of culverts and other fish barriers, and the price of a much-reduced road system could reach $70 million.

Where that money would come from is unclear. The forest service hopes the report will help steer future funding and road management decisions.

"There are no decisions that come directly from the document, but we think it will be a good guide for future decisions," Baker said.

Olympic's managers expect people using the forest for outdoor recreation to weigh in on the process. The roads provide access to trails, campgrounds and other recreational areas used by hikers, hunters, anglers, horseback riders and mountain bikers. Olympic's management priorities have tilted away from logging and more toward recreation and forest preservation.

Public comment on roads management was gathered over the last year and an additional comment period will follow any road closure proposals.