Administration’s Proposed Budget Cuts Could Cause Closure of a Part of Forest

There’s a one-year plan being debated in Washington that may have a far greater effect on users of Cleveland National Forest than the 50-year management plan being considered by federal land-use planners: the 1986 federal budget.

If Congress agrees with the Reagan Administration’s plan to reduce funds for some national forest programs, local Forest Service officials fear they may be forced to close the northern half of Cleveland’s Trabuco District to the public, said spokesman Bill Pidanick.

The Trabuco District, which comprises 28.5% of Cleveland National Forest’s 567,000 acres, straddles the Orange-Riverside county line from Sierra Peak, between Anaheim Hills and Corona, south to Camp Pendleton, about 3 miles into San Diego County.

Demand for facilities in Cleveland National Forest is at its highest level ever, Pidanick said, and is projected to continue to increase dramatically as nearby open areas are developed and Southern California’s population continues to boom.

On private lands next to the forest, between Corona and Lake Elsinore alone, plans are being made for more than 40,000 new homes, Pidanick said.

The Forest Service is already unable to keep up with the vandalism and normal wear to its signs, roads and other improvements in the Trabuco District, he said. The rangers have neither the money nor the manpower, for example, to replace thousands of dollars worth of damaged and stolen road and trail signs.

And the district has only two rangers to patrol the fire-prone northern section, from Los Pinos Peak, about 3 miles north of Ortega Highway, to its northern border near the Riverside Freeway, Pidanick said.

The area is closed temporarily during the high-risk fire season, Pidanick said, but the budget cuts could make the temporary closure indefinite.

That’s partly because the rapid growth in eastern Orange County and western Riverside County will create not only a greater demand for recreation facilities, but also a greater need for the Forest Service’s fire protection, he said.

“The threat to life and property . . . has to be the No. 1 priority” of the Forest Service, Pidanick said. “. . . The more people you have adjacent to the wild lands, the more fires you have.”

But proposed federal budget cuts would slash the Trabuco District’s firefighting force from eight engines to five.

Crew Would Be Eliminated

It also would eliminate its “hot-shot crew,” a crack team of firefighters used to establish fire lines in the national forest’s most rugged terrain, Pidanick said.

The Forest Service has already closed its Tenaja Station at the south end of the district and plans to close its Trabuco Station on Oct. 1, Pidanick said. The ranger district’s Corona Station may also have to be closed, he said.