decision in this case and i want to direct the court to what this case is not about my clients are not demanding more miles in the forest not to mind demanding more routes in the forest nor are they asking for a veto power over the forest services decision rather what this case is about is whether the forest service must in a case like this in which there are such significant impacts whether the forest service must truly coordinate and cooperate with the counties and whether they must consider a reasonable range of alternatives as they make their decision because they feel to do that in this case the forest service failed to meet new post when goals of inform decision making and informed public participation and we asked the court to set aside the tree the forest service is decision this case in remand for a proper proper analysis i agree with you that coordination you think key issues what specifically should the agency have done to coordinate with the local entities you're not suggesting that the agency must grant the wishes of the comm they met with members of the committee well what more should they have done yes the forest service met with the counties and other individuals and as it said in its brief it did so with all interested parties  but the travel management rule itself requires more from counties they're required to coordinate and to answer your question directly coordination means harm and we think that means that there when there are different alternatives available one of which would be consistent with both the services goals and with the county's goals and one of which may be inconsistent with the county's goals we think that the service has an obligation to use the former and to use an alternative to designate routes that would meet both the goals of the forest service and the goals of the counties can you give me an example yes in particular the counties  the broad concern was to have been a continued integrated road system beginning outside inside to be able to travel in through the forest and in particular one particular reason is for emergency services and in response to a comment about the closure of many of these routes the service said that the emergency fire departments could use any routes that were available but of course since many were closed they were it was illegal to maintain them so they could use them if they were still open but they had to hope for they would be open and the service further said that if any routes had become significantly impacts the county's ability to provide those services for its citizens and frankly for everybody one additional concern which relates to the fire is that a number of routes that have been  closed had been used for logging purposes and for people in the area to secure player with to heat their homes the inability to do that not only for that if people from heating their homes it also allowed  significantly more fuel for forest fires to remain in the forest and so forest fires have been worse because of the services decision to close down routes which previously had been what evidence do you have of the well  the that the there is significant we have evidence that there are significantly more fuel left in the forests but you're saying you know significantly more fuel left in the forest because people are not gathering firewood correct and how much evidence do you has to how much firewood was was gathered and how much is now gathered i don't have a specific number and that's what i thought yeah no no i guess i sorry didn't mean to you because i understand in the abstract the more fuel there is on the ground the more severe the fire can be a rut if you're telling me we're running serious risks of increased forest fires because of the reduced harvesting of firewood by private persons i'm skeptical of that claim and i'm asking after how much evidence you have and sounds like you don't have a correct and base but again i would add the point about the the closure of the routes which prevents the fire departments from considered that but i disagree that it shows coordination because again the world heritage as it were available that would have been consistent with both the services goals in the counties goals of a more interconnected route  system within the forest and the words of the well the evidence is that the it part of this in this goes to our claim on the reasonable range of alternatives the service in this case had originally there were eleven hundred miles of documented routes that could that were considered for final designation service we know that down to four hundred miles or so but we believe that  process was improper and the reason we say that is based on the evidence in the first and second cut spreadsheets which shows how the service winnow down from the eleven hundred to the four hundred miles and among the route that the service did not give a detailed review to were things like debt and spurs and routes that were off county roads dead end spur think of a cul de sac but the service itself recognized that many dispersed recreation activities depend on motor vehicle access to these birds and that the closure of these routes would preclude public access and and these first and second cut spread sheets you'll see that many of the routes that service looked at the benefits and the access of the routes and also considered the concerns and risks of continuing the use of those routes but with respect to the dead and spurs and the cut off county roads and things like that no such analysis was done and so in those cases not only did the service not consider whether those dead and spurs and off county roads would have provided the dispersed recreational option opportunities for which the service undertook this analysis but the service also didn't consider whether the use of those birds would have lessened the environmental impacts and so again we don't suggest that the service should have necessarily selected more routes or or more miles but the winnowing process to get from the eleven hundred miles down to the four hundred summarily removed from the detailed analysis a number of routes which may have provided more question as far as the like until i don't see the one between what i read and as for fire safety well we believe that the forest service closed too many routes that prevented sufficient interconnectedness of the routes and so it is to the record the point part of the record that you pointed to where the service said that  the fire departments could use any routes that were available that's true but again that the counties were prevented from maintaining those routes because they had been designated for motor vehicle use and if they become overgrown a ccess to those routes becomes much more difficult and the fire departments would need to do those through those routes in the case of an emergency and so we believe that had there been more coordination with the counties the services to point out that the in this case the winnowing process down from eleven hundred to four hundred again the emphasis there is that a number of trails were removed from detailed analysis which could have allowed both additional recreation opportunities have lessened environmental impact and we believe that those additional routes should have been considered or additional plans within the force should have been considered and because there were additional routes  towed from the department of justice i represent the defendants apple ways united states forest the district court correctly held that the forest service when designating motorized routes for motorized recreation on the plains national forest complied with and the two thousand and five travel management rule both by considering a reasonable range of alternatives and by satisfy its obligations to coordinate and cooperate with the counties now i'd like to start with what what judge nelson identified as a key can concern a consideration of this case coordination with the counties my friend suggests that the court nation has to have some substantive meaning but that's that's really never been the case in any of the  environmental decisions where this court has interpreted a word coordinate in a statute or regulation it's always been an understood to have a procedural meaning and this is the case here is well it's demonstrated that coordination is a procedural obligation both by the text of the regulation itself and by the preamble to the two thousand and five rule now this regulation merely says that the respons coordinate with the local government entities when making a designation so it doesn't say it has to coordinate with the goal of making the system or that it has to choose a particular outcome here it leaves gord ordained she means to be meaningfully engaged in the administrative process or do we get this the the department of agriculture's in deciding the administrative appeal here identified the term coordinate and then although said well it's not defined but here's everything that was done and listed all the different ways that the forest service coordinated with the counties here including providing opportunities for public comment and just as long as well as with the rest of the public  making a final decision i understand they listened did they accept anything yes they did i mean one example in particular they did except the suggestion to designate as part of this decision  redefinition of roads this isn't the trails these are roads where previously they were limited to passenger vehicles they re designated for miles of roads so that they could be used both by passenger vehicles and b vehicles at the same time now the county wanted the counties wanted more miles to be re designated but the four service explained that to do so would have to conduct engineering and safety studies because after all they're allowing off highway vehicles which are not typically street legal to share the road with with ordinary passenger vehicles but that was an example where they took one of the suggestions and did in fact make a substantive modification to their decision as a result  so to focus in particular on the this narrowing process i think my friend has it wrong when he suggests that the court has to start for the touchstone of reasonableness with the eleven hundred miles of on authorized routes those were those were user created routes and the more proper focus when determining the reasonableness of alternatives and whether different combinations of of routes should have been added to what the forest service considered in detail is the number of authorized routes that were previously on the forest and that is as previously one hundred thirty miles this decision more than double that too by adding two hundred thirty four additional miles of to the official transportation network and the reason that one hundred thirty is the starting point for understanding the reasonableness of what the forest service did is because the rule specifies that you don't have to go and inventory all the unauthorized routes before you do this have a designation that's made clear in the preamble to the rule in a couple points provide the record citations there it's the supplemental excerpts of record one zero one and one to leaven their federal register pages sixty eight thousand to sixty nine and sixty eight thousand to seventy nine of the federal register notice for the final rule and it's specifically says that the forest service need not inventory the routes before it makes the designation so what we're left with is the the official bank of authorized routes before the decision process was undertaken and so you're looking at it in terms of how many more miles of forest service considered is that of how many of the authorized they did make an effort to explain under your definition of corinth are you saying if they had raised a concern and you just  connecting making a rational connection between the facts found and the conclusions made that's the general state farm standard of review under the a p a and we we agree that compliance with the regulation is reviewable under those terms and i do agree with that that the explanation that you cited is the evidence that for service provided as to why the concerns were not material here the access by firefighters by law enforcement and pursuit is the same today as it was prior to the two thousand and five rule with us but it won't be tomorrow or all i'm saying metaphorically might not be in ten years of some of those rules or overgrown because i think the points are valid one if they're overgrown and your alternative to get through there is to use a bulldozer well thanks a lot that's going to take a while to do now i don't read the comment to say that this is a good solution i view this is akin to responsible dozing as a recognition that that's actually going to be a maintenance was an issue before the two thousand and five rule there were so many roads unauthorized routes in the system that they could not possibly maintain all of them that bears upon environmental concerns because you may have off roaders who are using the trails to do degradation the environment or it may have concerns with trails that didn't go maintained before because there weren't enough funds for the forest service and they're still not maintained today but for a different reason they're not designated as part of the official network i think the response the the solution to that is for the counties to identify route said they believe under their local police powers which you know it's their primary responsibility to protect and police for the safety of their local communities identify the routes that they believe ought to be added as fire rockets this is a decision is not really it was not really intended to be the vehicle for that type of engaged coordinated planning process but there certainly are  options for the counties to engage in for service and that type of plan there is a provision in the regulations that a recall hours for revisions of death designations more designations can be made and the county can always petition under the a p a for wool making if it if it feels like it can go to the forest service informally and force the forest service to respond to its reasons on the record there so there are other avenues to address this concern which i recognize it's important to the communities and it's a concern as well to the forest service of maintaining the ability to defend nearby and intermingled communities on these national forests from the risk of catastrophic wildfires so  it is an obligation of the forcers take seriously thank you for just a few points with respect to the unauthorized routes my friend suggested there were one hundred thirty five designated routes which is true but previous to the travel management designation here all of the eleven hundred miles were lawfully used even though they hadn't been designated yet the designation process is something that began in two thousand and five with travel management rule they mean jane to some extent that that need but is not addressed and the substantive result of the forest service is decision here but two points first we believe that the substantive result is evidence of whether or not the forest service truly coordinated with the counties that we that the lack of coordination is shown in the final result and we also point to bennett v sphere where the united states supreme court said that discretion as to the substance of the ultimate decision does not confer discretion to ignore the procedural requirements of the decision making with respect to the services comment that it took into consideration the counties ideas council mentioned that they added four miles again  the forest has eleven hundred miles of routes in this case and they added four miles with after the counties suggestion and yes it's true that in the future the counties can petition and this and the service  brief some of the examples it gave on page twenty nine of its brief as examples of coordination and we're actually communications that happened after the decision had been made and so yes a petition can be made in the future the service did continue to talk to the counties after the decision had been made but the coordination requirement existed before the obligation had to be done before the decision was made not afterwards  and finally again that the purpose of this designation was to provide dispersed recreational alternatives and the need to process again we believe the winnowing process improperly failed to take that into consideration  completes argument for today thank you very much