The Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board is proceeding on its own to develop a travel-management plan for the forest, following an effort to work with the state on a more comprehensive recreation trails program that one board member labeled "an absolute waste of time."

Chairman Tom Blair of Deadwood said during a meeting Wednesday that the Black Hills National Forest needed to have a travel-management system in place by 2010, under a U.S. Forest Service directive. The plan would provide travel options and off-road recreation while protecting natural resources.

The board, which is charged with developing a plan for roads and trails in the Hills to submit for Forest Service approval, must move ahead without waiting for involvement by the state, he said.

"We are under a federal mandate to make this thing happen," Blair said. "And we don't have another year to make it happen."

The advisory board has already waited a year since a separate task force appointed by Gov. Mike Rounds turned in its recommendations on the issue. They included a trails program similar to but more expansive than the current state snowmobile trails system, both in the Black Hills and in other areas of the state.

The state Game, Fish & Parks Department manages the existing snowmobile trails system, which receives funding from snowmobile registration fees and a portion of state fuel taxes. Board members had hoped the 2008 Legislature would help establish a statewide trails program, possibly with a funding source. That did not happen, in part because of concerns raised by the governor and others about adding fees or taxes to support the plan.

Without support from Rounds, any proposal for the 2009 legislative session would likely be "DOA" - dead on arrival at the capital, Blair said.

Board member James Scherrer of Rapid City said the governor's task-force process did little to advance work toward a cooperative trail system.

"The bottom line is it was an absolute waste of time," he said. "And we're back doing our own thing here in the Black Hills."

That means working on something much less than "a 6,000-mile, gold-plated, state-of-the-art, all-interconnected trail system," at least in the next year or two, Scherrer said.

Contacted after the meeting, Game, Fish & Parks Department Secretary Jeff Vonk of Pierre said he could not say whether there would be legislation for a statewide trail program during the 2009 session.

"I think we're all interested in doing what we can to work with the Forest Service on their plan," Vonk said. "If at the state level we're able to come up with a consensus bill that gets passed and brings resources to the table, we're clearly interested."

But paying for the system and its operation and maintenance remains a key question, Vonk said.

"Clearly, the challenge is to find an acceptable funding source. We need that, really, to do anything on this issue," he said.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com