Opportunity and motive, commitment of a crime generally requires both elements. It's what detectives look for in solving a case of wrongdoing.

Ironically, opportunity and motive are just as important in restoring crime victims to wholeness and good health.

The road networks in many watersheds are a crime. Overabundant, ill-conceived, ill-constructed and ill-maintained roads are commonly the greatest ongoing source of degradation in watersheds with road networks.

Fortunately, it's a crime we don't have to solve. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." People built the roads, and in most cases, where we have triggered an event of geomorphic scale, people can abate the problems.

We committed the crimes. And, because I started my career surveying routes for new logging roads and calculating cuts and fills, I emphatically include myself in this "we". But, we should not be about blame; we should be about enlightenment, necessary change, taking advantage of this historic opportunity to do great things for the future and improving the watershed legacy we leave to our children.

We, including all my old friends in USDA-Forest Service engineering, should now be about restoring the victim watersheds to wholeness and good health. People that designed and built roads have the skills we need to put the bad roads to bed, obliterate the ones that are environmentally obsolete, and bring the remaining roads up to standards where they cause a minimum of NPS (nonpoint source) water pollution and watershed degradation. As you'll read in these pages, watersheders are developing the experience and technology to put these engineering and construction knowledge, skills and abilities to best use for watershed restoration.

The opportunity and motivation to restore watersheds is ascending. Road building, particularly forest road building, is in steep decline. The age of healing is at hand. If not us, who? If not now, when?

The road restoration iron is red hot. So is this oversized issue of the Watershed Management Council Newsletter. Read it, discuss it, and then let's all us watersheders, engineers, biologists, dozer operators and everyone else who can lend a hand strike while the iron is hot and improve our watersheds via this golden opportunity to do road restoration.

And now that you're stoked, don't forget that the Watershed Management Council is an all volunteer organization. There are lots of jobs that need doing "to promote the art and science of watershed management, most of which can be done from even the remotest of locations. So if you'd like to take charge of one of these tasks or help out in anyway, please contact me and we'll set you up. Also, let me add that the WMC quarterly executive board meetings are open to any member who would like to attend or address the WMC board via conference call. Instructions on the numerous ways you can reach me are listed in the last paragraph of the Name Streams and Tributaries column in this issue of the WMC Newsletter.

"Write me a letter. I'm out in the jungle. I'm hungry to hear you."
-Clay