Resource Name (Heading 1) - USDA Forest Service - US ...

Summary of Public Comments - Managing Recreation Uses in the
Upper Segment of the Chattooga Wild and Scenic River Corridor EA
conflicts that may threaten OR values or the Wilderness resource. The alternatives in the
Environmental Assessment, Managing Recreation Uses in the Upper Segment of the Chattooga
Wild and Scenic River Corridor combine groups of actions to address these issues from existing
use or the reintroduction of boating. These actions include a mix of direct and indirect use
restrictions.
Existing uses can be managed without use limits through monitoring of parking occupancy to
indicate whether capacities are being approached. For the reintroduction of boating, direct
measures on flow, time of year, and reach were needed to prevent user conflicts.
The monitoring and adaptive management described in all alternatives will assess whether
existing or new uses are causing resource impacts. Monitoring will indicate whether capacities or
other management actions need to be adjusted. The Forest Service notes that there are daily
boating limits on several WSRs (including the lower segment of the Chattooga WSR) but no
analogous daily limits on swimmers, anglers, or hikers.
J) Alternative 15 considered increasing visitor capacities, but this alternative was not considered
in detail because during the Limits of Acceptable Change process there was a general opposition
of increased recreation use levels. Alternative 2 did consider decreasing visitor capacity.
All users are considered in the visitor capacities including boaters. See Appendix D of the
Environmental Assessment, Managing Recreation Uses in the Upper Segment of the Chattooga
Wild and Scenic River Corridor for the estimation of capacities and encounters. Backcountry
capacities and encounters were derived from manager’s estimates in the Use Estimation
Workshop (Berger and CRC 2007). “Logical calculations” in the Capacity & Conflict on the
Upper Chattooga River (Whittaker and Shelby 2007) were used to estimate potential boating use
and encounter rates on days when both boaters and other users might be present. The capacity for
the entire segment refers to all users, and is designed to prevent use from exceeding typical
current peaks. Because existing use levels generally do not exceed those capacities, boating
alternatives generally try to prevent boating from adding use on days when existing uses would
already be high. See Section 2.3 Monitoring and Adaptive Management in Chapter 2 of the
Environmental Assessment, Managing Recreation Uses in the Upper Segment of the Chattooga
Wild and Scenic River Corridor for information on how all uses will be monitored to identify
changes and management actions that will be triggered if capacities are exceeded. Boaters are
identified for a self-registration system (as on the lower segment of the Chattooga), but all uses
will be monitored and boaters are not singled out for permits that would limit use.
K) See Appendix D of the Environmental Assessment, Managing Recreation Uses in the Upper
Segment of the Chattooga Wild and Scenic River Corridor for the estimation of capacities and
encounters. Backcountry capacities and encounters were derived from manager’s estimates in the
Use Estimation Workshop (Berger and CRC 2007). “Logical calculations” in the Capacity &
Conflict on the Upper Chattooga River (Whittaker and Shelby 2007) were used to estimate
potential boating use and encounter rates on days when both boaters and other users might be
present. Some alternatives in the Environmental Assessment, Managing Recreation Uses in the
Upper Segment of the Chattooga Wild and Scenic River Corridor include boating prohibitions
(assuming a social values conflict), while others vary the proportion of days with boating
(assuming “face-to-face” conflict). For boating alternatives, the primary issue is reducing the
level of conflict by separating uses by space, time, or flow. After conflict issues have been
addressed, boating alternatives consider use limits to prevent backcountry encounters from
exceeding the desired condition. All alternatives are trying to reduce user conflicts and maintain
certain recreation experiences as described in the purpose and need of the EA.
L) As discussed in the Capacity & Conflict on the Upper Chattooga River (Whittaker and Shelby
2007), “no survey data estimate the relative numbers of users who see the boating issue in terms
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