The Allegheny National Forest supervisor has backpedaled, for now, on her July draft decision to open up 12.5 miles of hiking only trails to mountain biking in the remote Tracy Ridge area of the forest.

Several environmental organizations oppose that proposed trail use change, which was controversial because it would have allowed bicycles into the forest’s biggest and most remote roadless area, a decades-long candidate for designation as wilderness, where mechanized transportation is prohibited.

Sherry Tune, supervisor of the only national forest in Pennsylvania, announced she was withdrawing her earlier decision to expand mountain biking trails in a one-page letter dated Jan. 26. She cited as reasons the need to consider additional trail management perspectives, as well as a new national focus on timber production.

“At this time, I feel the best course of action for the forest is to place a pause on the project while we gather additional input and ideas from local user groups,” said Ms. Tune in a forest service release.

And the new priorities placed on timber production have stretched the forest’s resources. “We are being asked to focus our efforts on timber volume and the number of acres treated as national priorities,” she said in the release.

The forest’s 9,700-acre Tracy Ridge area is located in the 513,000-acre national forest, along the east side of the Allegheny Reservoir, about 15 miles west of Bradford and 150 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The area has 34 miles of hiking-only trails, including 10 miles of the North Country National Scenic Trail.

Before the proposal could wheel forward again, Ms. Tune said the forest service would need to do a new environmental assessment and she would issue a new draft decision notice, which would again be subject to public review and comment.

There is no timeframe for reconsideration of the trail redesignation, said Kathy Mohney, an ANF spokeswoman. The decision to withdraw the expanded biking proposal comes a little more than a year after the legal notice for the project was published.

Ryan Talbott, executive director of the Allegheny Defense Project, one of the forest and trail advocacy organization that challenged the trail redesignation proposal, said it’s suffered a significant setback.

He said he attended a meeting with the ANF supervisor and other stakeholders in December where the forest service recognIzed it would need to construct new trails to connect to existing trails and create a biking loop, but the construction wasn’t part of the environmental assessment.

“It’s possible it could come back to life, but in its current incarnation it’s been withdrawn. And any other project would have to go through another round of study, proposal, decision making, and public comment and objection,” Mr. Talbott said. “I hope they see that the forest’s largest roadless area and largest remote area is not the place to put a mountain bike trail.”

The forest has only 9,000 acres of designated wilderness, or about 2 percent of its total area. There are 109 million acres of wilderness in the U.S., most of it in western states. The average amount of wilderness in national forests is 11 percent.

Kirk Johnson, executive director of Friends of Allegheny Wilderness, an organization that has campaigned for more wilderness in the ANF for two decades, called the proposed trail redesignation an “ill-conceived anti-wilderness, anti-North Country National Scenic Trail project.”

“The entire 9,700-acre proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area should of course be permanently protected under the Wilderness Act of 1964 from all forms of development,” Mr. Johnson said, “similar to what the Allegheny National Forest itself had proposed in the Preferred Alternative of their Draft Forest Plan in 2006.”

The ANF has about 170 miles of hiking-only trails, and 30 miles of joint use — hiking and biking — trails. Mountain biking also takes place on more than 100 miles of all-terrain vehicle trails including the new 50-mile Jakes Rocks Trail.

Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey

First Published: February 1, 2018, 11:00 p.m.