USFS Travel Management Bill

LenSatic wrote:

rehoppe wrote:

I talked to Udall's office

Sorry, my friend, but you can not trust a Udall nowadays. I knew Mo Udall personally when I worked in Tucson television in the early '70s. He and Barry Goldwater would fly down together in one of their private airplanes to do interviews. Barry had a Beech Bonanza and Mo had a Piper Cherokee. They were good friends as well as good adversaries.

The young batch of Udalls are not cut from the same cloth.

LS

You are correct. Can't trust any of them.

However if a suprisingly small number of people make contact. They start to pay attention.... especially if they are coming up for re-election.....which now days, is all the time, it seems.

rehoppe wrote:

I talked to Udall's office

Sorry, my friend, but you can not trust a Udall nowadays. I knew Mo Udall personally when I worked in Tucson television in the early '70s. He and Barry Goldwater would fly down together in one of their private airplanes to do interviews. Barry had a Beech Bonanza and Mo had a Piper Cherokee. They were good friends as well as good adversaries.

The young batch of Udalls are not cut from the same cloth.

LS

My 'Dog House' is across the Arkansas River, from the newly established Brown's Canyon National Monument.

I talked to Udall's office and the staffer indicated that there would be NO change in the FS roads accessing the area. I'm hopeful that he was correct. The area has been a 'Wilderness Experimental' area for some years now so could be.

Monument status looks mostly like protection against mining, logging, etc.

hoping so.

Not so much in favor of the pending bill, as it looks to be a bit of an overreach? But maybe I didn't spend enough time reading/understanding?

edit; On rereading the bill I have to agree with it 'generally' however.... we have seen a bunch of two tracks closed here in the Rockies. Not comfortable with that, and it is a trend that needs to be reversed.

I understand erosion problems. But closures to restrict 'dispersed camping' are not acceptable. As I'm not able to hike great distances (the VA sends $s monthly), so I need my PU to access most of the National Forest Areas.

I will be contacting my Congress peeps to start paying attention. Again.

Thanks Dan. I appreciate polite conversation. We are all on this forum because of a common interest but it would be an unhealthy place if we all had the same opinion.

Whereas you cite the USFS would have their hands tied I feel they are tied now trying to fit us all in a one size fits all program. There appears to be quite a few sides to this coin. While I don't want state control I do want local input. I don't see that conversation happening with the USFS. Not genuinely.

My wants are simple. I have 900,000 acres right out my front door and 95% of it is essentially closed for 1/3 of the year. Winter camping has been declared off limits to all but a few of those acres. I haven't seen any new roads. I see roads being plowed up, bermed and bouldered off. I don't think its the right course of action. The fences are getting too close for comfort.

I sincerely hope you don't drive 200-300 miles one Friday to your favorite camp spot only to find it gated off. I think the danger of that is quite real. In the meantime enjoy the ride.

I need to add one thought -- although not all of us reading the bill support it, I applaud Calisdad for bringing it to our attention and sparking the discussion. In the days before the internet (which I clearly remember), there was no way for affected citizens to discuss issues like this. You could write a letter to the editor of the local paper, but the editor would often refuse to publish viewpoints that he or she disagreed with. And there was no "national" paper, except maybe the New York Times, and good luck trying to get them interested in the concerns of boondocking RVers!

In the far West, the declined FS revenue from logging has also reduced allocations from congress for maintenance of roads and recreation. As roads deteriorate and become dangerous they become candidates for closure to avoid liability. In our ranger district, in the past ten years access to two main roads have be closed for that exact reason.

I believe the push to move federal lands to state or private ownership is to relieve the cost of supporting non-revenue generating functions of the government and allow the large resource extracting companies to fight it out with ill equipped smaller state government entities.

greenrvgreen wrote:
...

The National Forests were NOT created to serve the localities (hence the word "National" in the name)...

In his autobiography Teddy Roosevelt explains his views on why he removed the forest preserves from Interior to Agriculture and created the Forest Service. The primary reason was to support local and rural economies.

Green has it right -- it's all about balance. It's one thing to have some wilderness -- it is quite another when there is so much wilderness designation that no one can access any of the land without backpacking for weeks, as Earth First seems to advocate. It is one thing to allow prudent use of the national forests, such as careful timber harvesting. It is quite another when unsupervised irreparable harm is done to public land over large areas. I think all of us can agree on that. The trick is in striking the right balance, which inevitably involves compromise.

profdant139 wrote:
Dave54, I have to admit you are right -- if you have ever visited the Cal Fire Demonstration forests (Jackson, or Mtn Home), they are in great shape -- the forests are thinned, and the trees are healthy. The Calif State Parks? Not so much.

I read the CA state forests not only pay for themselves, they actually have a ROI of around 8% -- making a profit for the state treasury. The Forest Service used to. The FS at one time was considered one of the best run government agencies, returned a profit to the US Treasury, and the forests were healthier. Then the so-called 'environmentalists' started taking over, running to friendly federal judges, inflaming public opinion with false propaganda. Now the agency is a mess and the forests are a slow motion train wreck. I know, I retired from the FS.

CA intentionally unfunded their state parks when the depression hit and the state was teetering on bankruptcy. Still playing catch up with the budget.

I agree with Dan, and I never thought I'd say that in a political context.

The National Forests were NOT created to serve the localities (hence the word "National" in the name), the State Parks were. When each state was admitted it was endowed with substantial state lands, the income from which was to be used to fund the public schools. Of course, most states squandered their endowments and sold them off for a pittance to the Bundys of their day, and levied income taxes instead.

While I'm no fan of Big Government of any kind, the NFS has done a GREAT job of managing the land trust, balancing local, commercial and national interests. If you want to see a miserably-managed land trust, just look at the NPS and its rotting portfolio, much of which is hidden from public use.

IMO, the real issue isn't the MVUMs, those can and are being revised with additional public/local comment, and the process in place for doing this is fairly robust. More important (IMO), is that the bar be raised for setting land aside as "wilderness". This process has been subverted by scorched-earth radicals who routinely lock land away from ANY discussion of road-building, even for the most benign public access.

As for Nevada, I think it's a shame that a criminal who has trespassed for decades and now thinks that gives him ownership rights can find a public voice among the gullible rabble, but Earth First and similar eco-terrorists have demonstrated that that's a viable course.