Stretching across 284,000 acres of rolling hills in southern Illinois, the forest encompasses diverse terrain from lowlands to scenic stone bluffs. It is a hub of biological diversity, with more than 500 wildlife species, seven of which are on the list of federally threatened or endangered species. For this reason, the 85-mile-wide stretch of countryside from the Ohio River to the Mississippi holds unique value for environmentalists, equestrians, hikers and biologists. The groups’ interests and philosophies have sometimes conflicted with the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the area. Three major issues — logging, all-terrain vehicle use and horseback riding — have led to a series of legal battles over the past 20 years.

U.S. District Judge Phil Gilbert has presided over these disputes, at one point even taking to horseback to referee a disagreement about horseback riding. In a 2005 opinion he referred to the years of contention this way:

“The Court can attest to many bitter and heartfelt disputes between those believing timber harvests or oil or gas leasing should take precedence over recreationists’ desires to enjoy wandering under the canopies of old growth forests or environmentalists’ concerns for maintaining the habitat of endangered or threatened fish and birds.”

John Wallace, who said he has been involved with environmental activism in the forest for 20 years, remembered protesters occupying the Fairview area for 80 days in 1990 in an attempt to stop the clear-cutting.

Though he described the Fairview outcome as heart-wrenching, Wallace said he believes his and the other protesters’ efforts were far from wasted.

“In the end, it turned out good, what we did. We made people aware of what was going on,” Wallace said. “Injustices have to be exposed.”

When aspects of the Forest Service’s forest management practices are called into question, much of the legal focus centers on a single document.

The agency monitors, manages and maintains the forest and its resources according to a Land and Resource Management Plan. Federal law requires the Forest Service seek input from wildlife experts and community members before publishing such a plan. The plan has to be revised at least every 10 years.

After the 1986 plan was challenged by environmental groups and struck down in court, Congress got involved. It passed the Illinois Wilderness Act of 1990, which designated seven wilderness areas which are exempt from logging, motorized vehicles and mining. The areas, which take about 26,000 acres or about 10 percent of the forest, include: Bald Knob, Bay Creek, Burden Falls, Clear Springs, Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek and Panther Den.

SIU President Glenn Poshard recalled the time-consuming effort that led to passage of the law, his first legislative accomplishment as a member of Congress.

“God only knows why I decided to take it on, because I had no idea what we were getting into,” Poshard said. “It was the most sensitive thing in the world.”

Poshard said he tried to act as a mediator between the Forest Service and environmentalists, traveling among the southern counties and holding public meetings that often became so heated people had to be escorted out.

He said some residents feared they would be kept out of the proposed wilderness areas.

“The meetings were packed. I mean, they were wall–to-wall, because people thought they weren’t going to have access (to the forest) any longer,” he said.

Poshard said he also spent parts of two years walking the entire forest so he could see for himself what the environmental groups found so valuable.

Poshard said he remained very proud of the law, of which he keeps a framed copy.

“No one else would touch (that bill), and the Sierra Club and Audubon Society … were the only supporters I had in that whole thing, but you know what? Today, I talk to a lot of my friends and people that I’ve known for many years down in those counties. … They appreciate the wilderness concept, because they’re used to it now, they know how beautiful those areas are and they don’t want them destroyed,” he said.

Donham supported the bill, but thought Poshard could have done more. “We always didn’t think he went far enough,” Donham said.

Two years after Congress passed the Illinois Wilderness Act, the Forest Service adopted a revised plan for forest management. It called for 286 miles of newly designated trails for ATVs. In April 1994, RACE and the Sierra Club filed a suit challenging the 1992 revision, including the designation of those trails.

Judge Gilbert ruled in favor of the environmental groups on some issues and the Forest Service on others. He wrote that the Forest Service had “failed to support” its claim that other federal agencies that allowed ATVs “had few problems with use outside authorized areas or criminal activity associated with” ATV use.

Gilbert required the Forest Service to revise its analysis of the environmental impact of the ATV trails on the Shawnee and ordered the Forest Service not to make any decisions on ATV trails until it had finished the environmental analysis.

Instead of immediately conducting the ATV analysis, the Forest Service chose to rework its environmental analysis when it revised the Land and Resource Management Plan beginning in 1998. A 2002 plan emerged, but it was challenged by a group of recreational organizations, including the Shawnee Trail Conservancy and Illinois Trail Riders. These groups, which favored ATV trails, maintained that the Forest Service had not begun to analyze the ATV trails and had failed to maintain “user-created trails.”

“The plaintiffs believe the Forest Service has essentially ‘packed its bags’ and and refused to pursue any decision on the issue,” Judge Gilbert wrote. In June 2004, Gilbert dismissed the suit, saying the court did not have the authority over the Forest Service to command the action sought by the plaintiffs.

Even though he dismissed the suit, Judge Gilbert wrote that he was, “disturbed by evidence showing that the Forest Service is not making use of the volunteer manpower offered to it in regard to trail maintenance … willing but idle hands are a waste. It is a shame that volunteers sit idle while trails decay because bureaucrats cannot find the appropriate supervision or secure the appropriate approval to put them to work.”

In its most recent management plan in 2006, the Forest Service did not allow ATV use, but that hasn’t stopped the ATV enthusiasts.

“In terms of enforcement, there’s still a lot of illegal ATV damage being done to the Shawnee,” said Sam Stearns, who has represented himself in many lawsuits against the Forest Service during the past 20 years and founded the local environmental group Friends of Bell Smith Springs.

But Stearns said the situation is improved from the early 1990s and “at least … the Forest Service is not condoning this activity.”

In 1999, local environmentalist Joseph Glisson filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service because he was concerned about improper equestrian use in the Lusk Creek area.

Unregulated horseback riding — particularly from large guided tours run by private campgrounds and outfitters in the area — caused erosion, harmed plants and created deep, wide ruts where so many horses had walked, sometimes in mud, Glisson contended.

As a result of the case, the Forest Service began to implement a permit system for equestrian campgrounds and outfitters. However, only one campground obtained an equestrian permit before the case went back to court, according to documents.

Stearns and Wallace, who took over Glisson’s suit, asked the court to hold the Forest Service in contempt because there had not been significant change.

A series of hearings convinced Judge Gilbert that the differences between the parties were “exacerbated and their agreements were masked by their real inability to trust and communicate clearly with each other.”

In an unconventional decision, Gilbert decided to step down from the bench to become a mediator between the parties.

He began by riding on horseback through the Lusk Creek area with a group of environmentalists, equestrians, Forest Service personnel, U.S. Marshals, government attorneys and court staff. Court records include Gilbert’s anecdotal account of the day.

“(I) saw damage to trails and areas near them … mud (frozen at the time) that had been churned up by horses, rare plant species that had been trampled by horses, trees that had been damaged by horses tethered close by and spots where the lack of vegetation (from horse traffic and other causes) had allowed significant erosion,” Gilbert wrote in a 2005 brief.

Using experience he gained from 12 years on the bench presiding over 17 cases involving the Forest Service, Gilbert brokered a compromise between the equestrians and environmentalists setting up a new permit system and guidelines.

The system created several permitted trails in the Lusk Creek area, but prohibited commercial horseback riding anywhere but the permitted trails.

Permit holders were prohibited from riding between Dec. 1 and March 31, as well as any day in April, May, September, October or November when more than one inch of rain had fallen.

Gilbert wrote that he did not believe the plan was perfect or would solve all the problems between the conflicting interests.

“Nevertheless, it is the Court’s opinion that regulation is required to assure the preservation of Lusk Creek Wilderness … for generations to come,” he wrote.

Wallace said he was happy with the results of the decade-long legal struggle. “In the end, what happened was we didn’t win. Sam, Joe or I can’t say, ‘Yeah we won this case,’” he said. “But we can say that Lusk Creek won and that’s a really cool outcome.”

Steve Hupe, coordinator of the forest’s natural resources management program, said the most recent forest plan calls for maintaining oak and hickory trees by thinning the tops of trees that block sunlight.

He said the plan, which he and other members of the Forest Service spent years crafting, also calls for prescribed burns in parts of the forest.

Oak and hickory trees are native to the region, while softer woods such as maple and pine trees provide much less food for wildlife. If the forest were not maintained to keep the hardwoods dominant, the region would lose the ecological diversity that makes it so valuable, he said. Because young oak and hickory trees need sunlight that is often blocked by the forest’s canopy, logging and burning are necessary, Hupe said.

While Hupe said thinning out the canopy is an improvement over the clear-cutting practices used in past years, Donham said he is not impressed by the 2006 plan. “The 2006 plan is bogus, it’s illegal, it doesn’t represent the people and we want it reopened,” Donham said.

Though members of Donham’s group participated in public meetings and offered their comments during the development of the 2006 plan, Donham said their input was largely ignored. He said the plan allowed increased logging and burning, and added that he believes the Forest Service has outlived its usefulness.

Wallace said he had mixed feelings about the most recent plan.

“I think that in many ways, (the Forest Service officials) want to continue on the same road that they’ve traveled so many times, in that they allow commercial interests to have too much influence on management,” he said.

Stearns said he too had mixed feelings about the Forest Service. He wanted to work for the agency when he was a child, but said his trust in it waned during the 20 years he has spent battling various Forest Service decisions in the Shawnee.

However, he said he found fault with the agency’s bureaucracy, not its employees. “Some of the best and most useful information that I have gotten to help us on our side has come from people within the agency,” he said.