Bitterroot Dispute
Heated Forest Use Meeting Results in Investigation Into Threat
By Matthew Frank and Courtney Lowery, 1-10-08
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A public meeting Wednesday night on the Bitterroot National Forest’s travel management plan—which governs motorized use—got heated enough that local Darby law enforcement is now investigating a threat overheard against one conservationist.
“It was pretty contentious—a lot of tension between the people of the Bitterroot Valley and the Forest Service,” said Shawn Woods, a deputy marshal for the town of Darby.
Woods said when a woman spoke in favor of conservation “there were some boos and things like that,” but he didn’t hear the alleged threat. “If there were threats made we definitely did not hear or witness those,” he said.
“We will be doing an investigation,” he said.
After the meeting, word traveled quickly of the alleged threat, which several people at the meeting said involved something to the effect of “put a bullet in her head.”
Jim Miller, the president of the conservation group Friends of the Bitterroot said when he walked into the meeting, “the atmosphere was just hostile.”
As a regular at such Forest Service meetings, Miller said they tend to get controversial, “but when people start using the F-word …”
“This was the worst I have ever seen,” Miller said.
Miller said most people giving public comment were respectful, but there was a group of people in the back who were heckling and booing other members of the public and the Forest Service employees.
“All of that is absolutely inappropriate behavior,” said Dan Thompson of the Ravalli County Off-Road Users Association, which, along with the Bitterroot Ridgerunners Snowmobile Club, had run a series of ads to encourage motorized use proponents to attend the meeting.
The groups’ intent was to convey to Forest Service officials that many citizens of the valley want them “to relax their closure agenda a little bit,” Thompson said. “Obviously the public wants access to their forest; the fact that 200 people showed up is evidence of that.”
“Unfortunately, there were a few people there”—none associated with Thompson or his group, he said—“that didn’t behave themselves.”
As for the alleged “put a bullet in her head” comment, Thompson didn’t hear it. “I’m not questioning that it happened, but I’m appalled that it did.” He added: “I did hear most of the young woman’s comments and they were good comments.”
Another meeting on the travel plan was scheduled for Thursday night in Stevensville but Forest Service officials cancelled it Thursday afternoon, citing space problems.
Stevensville District Ranger Dan Ritter said a larger-than-expected crown turned out for Wednesday night’s meeting in Darby and that the venue in Stevensville wouldn’t be able safely hold a similar sized audience.
“It’s a facilities issue,” he said, “a fire marshal issue,” and not the result of the confrontational nature of the meeting or the alleged threat.
The next meeting on travel management plans on the Bitterroot is scheduled for January 15th, at the Bitterroot River Inn in Hamilton. The Forest plans to announce the time of the meeting early next week.
After that meeting, the Forest will reassess the need for a third public meeting.
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Comments
Just cool it.
This is the first time I've heard of an attempt to do anything about it.
And the fact is that it isn't just blowhards traveling from bars to the meetings. These kinds of attacks on conservationists are deliberately organized by multiple use groups; the ORV groups are particularly bad about it. The perpetrators may be drunk or half drunk but that doesn't make their actions any more spontaneous.
I'm surprised that law enforcement at the meeting didn't arrest the hecklers for disturbing the peace and public drunkenness, at a minimum.
It does not surprise me law enforcement did not act. As with most of the counties the law is usually not natural but slanted toward pro-motor, ag interests, and keeping the ‘enviro’s' in check. I know first hand. I have been involved in many contentious issues revolving around public lands. I happen to leave such a meeting of sportsmen opposed to increased motorized access only to find a Sheriffs car in the parking lot spotlighting and recording license plate numbers of the participants. I have also witnessed this bias behavior in Madison County. Maybe officials in Ravalli County are truely concerned but my experience leaves me skeptical.
I would have to agree with your assessment. This is a particular problem that conservationists have ignored, hoping the problem will go away. I only see it getting worse here in the West; we are slowly seeing the last vestiges of democratic process slip away. I think in the future that we are going to have to demand that the agencies provide security for these meetings or challenge the refusal of the agencies to do so in court. Failure to secure these meetings is clearly a violation of our civil rights.
Further, I have long argued that conservation in the West is the equivalent of civil rights in the South. What we are dealing with is little different from the KKK. Understanding this would I hope lead to changes in strategies and tactics of conservation.
RH
But Ravalli County will probably take this seriously. It is a different sort of place, and, to me at least, it is one of the New West's cutting edges. I love it, and it was good to me for over fifteen years. It is crowded now with people who have fled other places - I'm not talking about everybody, but a big group-- and those folks have a different way of looking at the world than people who come TO a place, in optimism and in exploration. In that threatening crowd in Darby you will not find exactly what you expect- not the mariginalized poor who want to ride their snowmobiles or ATVs. You will find the extremely well-heeled, who have fled places where their destructive antics are no longer acceptable (California's Desert Protection Act)....you will find the people who have narrowed themselves down into anti-everything in response to the changes in the places they come from..folks whose only defining energy is anger and negativity, and who have found a convenient outlet with the Forest Service, whose employees are forced by their jobs to listen to their rants.
And you will find a Sheriff's Dept that experienced the Cal Greenup siege, the militia threats against Judge Bethel, the plots, etc. They will probably not be "on the side" of white-lipped motorized use advocates who want to threaten and injure those with different opinions. It's not small town enough for that anymore.
Here's to hoping it can be worked out-- the motorized users can find or buy some private land for their "challenge riding" where they can pay fees to mitigate the damage they cause, and for the responsible riders, the thousands of miles of logging roads that are already open can provide endless hours of entertainment. Skalkaho Falls was once a wonderful destination for a long cross country road ski, now it is a wonderful destination for lines of 'bilers...that is okay, we all have to give up something in this world...I could go on forever about the places (Elkhorn Hot Springs and surrounding trails...!) where 'bilers have eclipsed every other use, and I could write a long list of the places I used to hunt where the ATVs drive by all day long now, and the resident elk herds are all moved out, and a big muley buck hasn't been seen in ten years (although hunting reg changes have helped on that one)...the landscape of the US is estimated to be 98% accessible by road and motor. It is bizarre to me that anyone would threaten violence against a person who argues that the last 2% of the public lands without motorized use should be opened to those without the wherewithal or motivation to go there otherwise, when almost the entire world is open to their desires. Rather than adults acting like adolescents, the advocates for more motorized use are adults acting like spoiled three year olds.
Given the current state of the world, as I wrote on the other post, it is not a mystery to me why the motorized folks are so angry, or why they threaten violence. The great mystery is why the non-motorized advocates are so preternaturally peaceful, even as they watch everything they say they love being taken from them once and for all.
Civilized people are more peaceful than barbarians. Unfortunately, barbarians usually win unless confronted forcefully. The question is, will the law carry out the confrontation, or will someone else. It seems to me that we are rapidly approaching the latter course.
RH
Not all foot travelers are paragons of virtue, and not all motorized users are dangerous creeps. But it's looking like waaay more than "a few bad apples" spoiling this barrel.
I thought, when that happened, that it was the beginning of something new, that would grow increasingly unpleasant, and that the prosecutor missed a valuable opportunity to draw a line.
http://blog.hcn.org/goat/2007/09/09/felony-assault-charge-against-off-road-driver-dropped-in-plea-deal/
Eventually, a group of aggressively-inclined enviros will begin doing the same kind of subversive cut-throating that eventually led to stokes' downfall. These idiots don't understand that if you try to intimidate people for along time at public meetings, something greater is at stake, and eventually people will swing back a little harder than expected.
You ORV folks in the root... the ones who like to intimidate... it's a real shame for you all to assume all us enviros are pacifistic whimps who only like to bitch at public meetings and then go home to our whimpy liberal dope and hippy beads and lava lamps. Many of us don't fit into this stereotype, and are looking forward to aggresively dealing with these kinds of threats in a way that won't visibly discredit the environmental movement.
It would be most appropriate if the extreme ORVers began to look over their shoulders as much as they want us to.
The fact of the matter is that the Forest Service was at the meeting in the full force, including Supervisor Dave Bull. Did Supervisor Bull once rise up during the meeting and call for calm? No. The fact is that law enforcement was at the meeting. Did local law enforcement rise up and call for calm? No.
The fact of the matter is that state Sen. Rick Liable was at the meeting. Did Sen. Liable rise up once and call for calm? No, and according to one of the Forest Service’s own district rangers Sen. Liable’s comments at the meeting served to inflame the situation.
The same can be said for leaders of the new Big Sky Coalition: Environmentalists for Common Sense and numerous off-road users groups in the Bitterroot Valley. Did any of these leaders rise up and call for calm? No.
The reality that many of us in the conservation community have faced for decades and decades is that there is a distinct double standard. When that double standard effectively prevents some from feeling safe about participating in the public process, it’s an issue that we as a community should take very seriously.
Just how bad was the meeting in Darby? Here is what one of Bitterroot NF’s own district rangers (who is relatively new to the Bitterroot Valley) wrote me yesterday, “In 22 years of public service this is the closest I have ever been to this sort of virulent hate mongering. It is shocking to me I have led a sheltered life I guess where all humans are respected and treated with dignity regardless of differing view points. This is just sad.”
Sad indeed. Sad because this type of behavior keeps happening in the Bitterroot Valley and nobody seems to do anything about it.
For more on this, check out this letter written to Supervisor Bull and Darby District Ranger Dan Ritter yesterday by a long-time Bitterroot Valley conservationists (who, in addition to the details provided below, also happens to have numerous bullet holes in his cabins from past attacks.)
From: Larry Campbell [mailto:lcampbell@bitterroot.net]
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 12:45 PM
To: ;
Subject: Darby Travel Plan meeting
Hello Dave and Dan,
I am writing to let you know that I did not speak up at the Darby
meeting because of the intimidation tactics used by many people sitting near and behind me. When I distinctly heard the “Put a bullet in her head” comment behind me, directed at Carol Jahns, I decided not to speak. My decision was in no small way swayed by my past experience with BNF law enforcement. When I had my life threatened and was surrounded by a mob right there at the BNF Supervisor’s Office I received no protection. BNF people stood looking through the windows. There was absolutely no investigation or follow up by the BNF.
I find it very ironic, but not amusing, that a great show of law
enforcement, armed and with flak jackets, was highly visible at the release press conference for the Middle East Fork EIS. That theatrical show was aimed at polite, law abiding conservationists. Then you organize a meeting in Darby, after fanning the flames with op-eds in local papers, and provide a very low profile law enforcement presence that stayed in the background while incredibly rude and illegal behavior occurred.
I am sorry that you, Dave, were so set upon. Maybe the experience will increase your empathy for those of us who have been threatened and actually assaulted over two decades simply for speaking up.
What sort of behavior do you think will happen when those same rowdy, rude people are in the backcountry and are asked to follow regulations and trail etiquette? Turning these people loose with ATVs on public lands is irrational and seems to amount to knowingly aiding and abetting vandalism of public property.
Larry Campbell
Once the context has been limited to who's use is superior, all other forest values are lost in the controversy. It marginalizes the debate, and the analysis. Motorized transportation is not the only issue the FS has deliberately isolated to avoid fully considering cumulative impacts to important values like water, fish and wildlife habitat. The programmatic, cumulative impacts of oil and gas development and grazing are seldom, if ever, analyzed in an integrated forestwide planning process.
The agency's purpose is clear and simple: Congress funds controversy. Follow the money. As long as it can play monkey-in-the-middle (of warring factions), the money will flow to pay for salaries, equipment (including excessive amounts of motorized toys) and make-work projects.
Same as it ever was. Structural reform of the FS might get everyone agreeing on something for a change.
The bad point is it allows discussion of the real issues to be derailed, such as the Missouliar focusing on a mean sound bite rather than the actual numbers of trail miles closed, any documentation of genuine resource damage, a discussion of the difference between use conflict and USER conflict, whether or not facilitated roundtables are truly an effective means of public input and participation.
The good point is these sort of explosions show how utterly dysfunctional things are. Get a big-enough crisis and perhaps the politicians responsible for this mess -- yo, Congress -- will smell the smoke.
In the Munich beer halls putches by bullies led to the rise of Herr Hitler.
In Nevada the Sagebrush Rebels blew up a Forest Ranger's office--and his home.
In Montana the great unwashed--the unemployed lumberjacks aboard their snowmobiles and ATVs are in league with the constabulary crowd to regiment life in the inland empire according to the lights established by Neo-Conservative political thinking...
Our state F&G;biologists, forest managers, etc are being stripped of any decision making ability by these corporations that are using high powered lawyers and eastern "friendly" judges to control things they have no business being in control of.
I for one am very concerned. How did these unelected, non representative people get so much control over our lifestyles and our lives?
If there were threats, those are unacceptable and should be dealt with. If the organizers did not anticipate and plan for this reaction, well that's a 'horse' on them. Native Montanans do not like outsiders restricting their way of life and enjoyment. There is a volatile few that respond to such a threat with objections delivered to the message carrier. They tend to make their communication to the message carrier very clear and unvarnished. Without question, these people are wrong to do so. HOWEVER, it is very predictable and the organizers should do a far better job of designing the forum structure with appropriate security present to immediately deal with such situations.
For the rest of you who think someone from Boulder should have no say, remeber it's the Bitterroot NATIONAL Forest.
The disfunction, as noted by Steve Kelly, is part of the purposeful dismantling of the USFS and the other land managment agencies (want to write a Forst Plan and make it categorically excluded from NEPA analysis, anyone?) It's a win-win for the Mountain States Legal Foundation crowd -- either "we" get to handcuff land managers with anti-environmental policies, or we tie them up with years of litigation that, even if we lose, at least has sucked up the budget and time of the agency in the interval. Oh, yeah -- and then we get to cry "analysis paralysis" and call for gutting NEPA.
---Forums should have much better pre-planning given the expective sensitivity of attendees to outsiders.
--Forums should have the right security in place to handle threatening situations.
--Using far left Boulder political logic to blame 'unwashed' Montanan is an insult and misses the problem and the simple fix.
If there were 'outsider' federal officials delivering the message that may trigger raw, unvarnished reaction, I would have federal law enforcement officials present and have one of them present to address the crowd before the meeting reminding people of their likelyhood to be arrested and charged with a federal felony for threatening or inciting violence. Then, carry through if there is a situation.
George, remember, an 'ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.' It's not any harder than that. Blaming Bush is a distraction for political purposes only.
Besides, it isn't our place to "stand up and call for calm" at a public meeting to which we were not even a party. That's up to law enforcement and good breeding. Good luck with the second part.
I concur that some people in this valley could use better manners, not to mention more respect and tolerance for the other person's viewpoint.
Jay
http://www.bigskycoalition.org
There is no excuse for anyone to exercise violence, nor threaten it, by the same token it si time for the newcomers to share with those of us who have lived our lives out here.
We are now a nation of 300 million humans and expected to grow in the next 40 years by another 100 million. Ever increasing human number will require ever increasing regulations & laws. Otherwise the land will become so polluted & degraded that it will support no one. Yes, I would prefer Montana as my great great grand parents found it: full of open spaces and clean air & water & full of promise but this is not to be. Unless you are a native American, you have no "beef" with the newcomers as you or your ancesters were once newcomers. As Wendell Berry wrote: "everyone eventually becomes a "redskin". And for better or for worse the one contant in life is "change".. What this world does need is more civility & ethics!!!!!
Look at the names enviros use for those they want to lock out of "their" land, rednecks, hoodlums, lazy bums, greedy ranchers, on and on. They think of themselves as caring and deserving of free access, while the others do not pay enough.
You and I both know that most folks do not bury and burn their waste, and I agree, that would be ideal, unfortunately that is not what they do most times. However those same people do not feel it is a problem for them since they are jsut one person, but when you multiply that by the millions who are tromping around out there, it becomes pretty significant. I read an article once about how Half Dome reeks from all of the people climbing and using it for a bathroom. That is shameful, but no one seems concerned because it is environmentalists who are using it that way so it is fine.
My concern with lacking the majority of people out of public land is not "just" the ATVs, and snowmachines, it is all motorized access.
Local working families are shut out of a Sunday afternoon picnic or fishing area because all of the roads have been closed to accommodate those who feel they should not be bothered by other people.
Those who feel others are not "good enough" to share the land feel others are not paying enough for any use they may be allowed, but that environmentalists are entitled to free access.
Again this is far more about what is best for the land, of course there have to be some controls, but the land must be shared for all use.
However, the fact of the matter is that state Sen. Rick Liable is a Big Sky Coalition board member. According to a first-hand account from one of the Forest Service’s own district rangers Sen. Liable’s comments at the meeting served to inflame the situation. The same was said about the comments of Tom Robak, who is the founder of the Big Sky Coalition. Seems like the Big Sky Coalition leadership was well represented at the Darby meeting.
Senator Laible (not spelled liable) is clearly his own man, an elected representative with duties that don't necessarily include the Big Sky Coalition agenda, such as serving his constituents.
This meeting, and Senator Laible's presence, had zero to do with our organization. Furthermore, Tom Robak was simply exercising his right to free speech. His comment about road closures was apropos given the meeting context. Only you seem to have a problem with this, which is odd given your predilection to inflame and entrench.
A single inflammatory outburst (an aside, really) does not a war make. Nor do comments from civic leaders and elected officials. If you need to blame anyone, blame the overheated chap who let his temper get the better of him.
Naturally, the leadership of Big Sky Coalition condemns threatening, unruly behavior at public meetings by anyone in Montana, be they common-sense environmentalists or not.
But more to the point of this comment, we won't attempt to undermine the reputations of the leaders of the WildWest Institute or other organizations in public fora because it is counterproductive to our stated focus on forest management solutions and maintaining a working dialog with all stakeholders.
And truth be told, it would be in poor taste. If we are to create a better world, someone needs to rise above the mud-slinging party and get to work creating it. Best way to do this is to keep one's head down and never sling any.
Jay
http://www.bigskycoalition.org
That certainly good to heaer. However, how do you explain the fact right now on the Big Sky Coalition website (http://www.bigskycoalition.org/2007/10/letters-of-support.html) you have a letter of support from the Western Institute?
This is the same Western Institute that on December 10, 2007 wrote an article stating, "[Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell] also has promoted, not canceled, the whoofoo program, and deliberately burned down millions of acres of forest in her own Region in her very first year. That kind of malice aforethought with no regrets afterwards is pure evil, treason, and certainly a hanging offense, in my opinion. Gail Kimbell should be indicted, tried, convicted, and incarcerated for the rest of her natural life, if not put to death by lethal injection, in my opinion."
This is the same Western Institute that on December 9, 2007 wrote an article that stated, "By fascist, authoritarian, non-democratic fiat Gail Kimbell has declared war on the private property owners of America. Who does that FASCIST PIG think she is?"
Furthermore, you're website has other information and articles and letters of support in which inflamed rhetoric such as "radical environmentalists," "extremists," and "extreme environmentalists" is used.
My point in bringing this information to light is to highlight that the Big Sky Coalition is making some pretty bizarre connections with people and organizations, all the while saying they want to bring people together to find common ground and solutions. How the Big Sky Coalition brings people together when their site has articles and letters of support that call us "radical environmentalists" and "environmental extremists" and when they highlight a letter of support from an organization that has called for the chief of the Forest Service to be put to death is a real mystery.
Certainly doesn't appear to me that the BS Coalition is "maintaining a working dialog with all stakeholders."
As for how the land is used; this is being determined by HARD Science and NOT selfishness, arogance or how it "use" to be. Several people in this blog have mentioned the simple fact that "IF" majority rule of ALL the nation were the law - YOU wouldn't like it. As long as you see these issues as; "Just Me's - Environmentalists or whatever "other" group" you choose to name - there will be NO winners to the issues and the LAND itself Suffers the Physical and Quality harm! So - name calling aside; it isn't a matter of "good enough", but one's respect for the GREATER good of ALL and that requires Compromise, so some people will NOT be completely satisfied. There also comes a pt. where compromise NO LONGER works and an absolute must be drawn!
That was a fine job of dredging for out-of-context dirt. For those of you that want to get the full context of the Western Institute for Study of the Environment, you can pop on this link which will take you to the Gail Kimbell item Matt cribbed from.
http://westinstenv.org/sosf/category/federal-forests/page/2/
As for you, Jay, don't you dare say it ain't your dog in the fight. You guys want to build coalitions, don't sit back when your potential allies in promoting forestry, responsible motorheads that like green forests, are having their heads served up. Your dog is involved, and when it comes time to pull the sled, it'll be easier the more dogs you can lash up.
You don't need "Bullet" the mean dog, but there are good dogs out there. I suggest you sniff around and find them.
That said, I don't support over-the-top "bullet in head" commentary, especially in public where such rhetoric usually derails impressionable journalistas from the real story; nor do I appreciate rhetorical flourishes posted to the Net where kids like Matt can twist them beyond recognition, the sick fact is that people don't usually behave like that unless they are seriously unhappy.
The guy that runs WISE is a fine forester, passionate about the landscape and its history, AND its future. The policy he's ranting about is about USFS's "open space" program, where the agency, which is utterly screwing up its own ground, hopes to create a new role as advisors for owners of private "wildlands" using the ideologically laden themes of conservation biology to create "linkages" and whatnot.
I would prefer the agency get its own house in order first, and then consider other pathways. That it has gone this direction merely underscores how feeble the leadership is....all the way up to President Bush.
Only if your name is Straw Man.
I won't rebut your points because this isn't the place and, more importantly, it isn't our fight despite how many words you put in our mouths.
If others reading this are gullible enough to take the bait without reading the full article, I can't help that. But I hope they do because the fiction you are cobbling together here is patently ridiculous.
There's little bandwidth to have a working dialog because you're hogging the mic and overlaying the trail management meeting discussion here with a slurry of interrogatory and innuendo about our organization. Stop the attacks, will you? The very thing you claim to abhor is the thing you are doing.
You've been at it all weekend via email and comment board.
Are you drunk on endless double mocha lattes?
Perhaps what you fear most is being ignored.
Dave, thanks for the insights. Right on. We do have a dog in the hunt, just not on this particular outing. Sounds like quite the stir, wish I'd have been there.
We know the value of good dogs...but we're definitely treading carefully because we're the new pup in the pack.
I have a dirt bike and a backpack. I prefer the backpack. There are enough ORV trails in the BRoot. There are enough open roads in the BRoot.
Not far from where I live, in Loma, Mt. there is a big "motor ranch" where people can pay a small fee to raise hell in the gumbo, and have a great time riding every kind of ATV. I think it is one of the best ideas I've seen in a long time. Bitterroot Valley riders who want to "challenge ride" could band together and buy a property and set up a similar recreation area. If they just want to ride, there are thousands of miles of logging roads open to them.
But to ask for new public land areas- beyond the mazes of logging roads already open, and the areas like Camus Peak where real snowmobile challenge riding is available, where you can avalanche yourself, high mark, do it all, (I can name a half dozen other high country places open to snowmiobile challnge riding- and I'm glad they are open, hard core snowmobiling is great, difficult, wild, there should be places open for it on public lands) is just asking too much. It does not matter that you have all of these industries making and selling all this gear, behind you, or that you do or do not encourage the kind of displays of intimidation that everybody who has ever been to a public meeting on this issue has seen, first hand. You cannnot say you are not a part of it. You are a part of it, and so are the manufacturers of these expensive toys.
You are just asking for too much as far as the public lands go. Your use is too exclusive -- too much impact on other uses, from hunting to watershed and weed control and hiking. And you are never, ever satisfied. Ever notice that? No amount of land open to riding is ever enough.
Snowmobiliers totally dominate a drainage when they are challenge riding, especially. That is fine with me. But you are asking for too many of the drainages. Skiers don't have near the impact, no noise, no trash, etc. But its no fun to ski a drainage that is cut up by bilers, and roaring with the noise of their engines from cirque to cirque. You pretend that you have no impacts, but that is not true, and anybody who has tried to share the woods with you knows it. For you to have what you want, too many other people have to give up what they want.
I've always valued the freedom offered by the public lands, and I have never wanted to see more regulations placed on those of us who use them almost every day. But what you are asking for takes away my freedom. And I've already lost hunting places, skiing places, hiking places, fishing places to NEW motorized use. Twenty years ago, nobody rode there. Nobody I knew ever had the money to buy these expensive toys, most of them still don't. You have a real bad image problem, based on the trash I've seen, the chainsaws we had stolen from our work camp by 'bilers, the wrecking of good game country by people on ATVs, and on and on. Maybe there are responsible riders out there, but I don't see them. And every time a responsible rider advocates for more use for him/her and their responsible friends, all I see is a new place open to the riders that I am very familiar with, and they are NOT responsible. We lost the use of the state land behind my house in Corvallis to them (you should drive up and see it). The list of places lost on the public lands is long, sir.
I do not mind sharing the public lands. But you cannot have them for your exclusive use, to ride to every lake, high mark every peak, spread weeds and beer cans and toilet paper on every trail, shoot every mule deer buck and be home for supper. You are asking too much. I think that is obvious, and I think that is why your followers, or whatever they are, are so belligerent at the public meetings.
thanks,
Hal
I'd love to see you say "Darby is full of hollow-minded pussies" in Darby, in public. That'll go over smooooooooooth, I bet. Of course, you'll probably whine about feeling, um, "intimidated" afterwards.
Keep up the good work.
And you "morion" types, oh, THAT'S real civil. If you people want to be insulting, let's see a little less hollowmindedness and a skosh more creativity and a larger thesaurus, okay?
How come your "sharing" never includes "sharing" the good stuff? How come nobody ever raises, as I did fifteen long years ago, the idea of rotating closures on even/odd or five-year cycles as a means of mitigating conflicts while still allowing access and multiple use? Rest-rotation in a fluid manner across the landscape is a fundament of good land stewardship yet nobody ever seems to get it, or is afraid to recognize it. What a shame.
I find the argument "I support multiple use, just not HERE, and HERE, and THERE, and OVER THERE, and back UP HERE" to be specious.
Your quotes are incorrect, except for the "hollow-minded" pussy part. You apparently have no problem with that one.
Nobody in Darby intimidates me, except for the owner's daughter at the Sawmill. But I like that.
Good observations otherwise though. After shaming a couple of ruffian ATVers out of where they should never have been, tearing around in the wilderness near where I live, I concur.
A few bad apples...
"The environmental movement has been waging war on rural residents of the West for years. It's about time they realized the animosity building up. People are tired of having their homes, properties, forests, and watersheds incinerated. Tired of wolves stalking their children. Tired of their economies and livelihoods undermined. Tired of extremists who sue to kill.
So they are getting some negative feedback re all that. They shouldn't be all that surprised."
I don't listen to Rush, but ditto.
PJ,
If you ever said what you said in public, a lot of people in Darby would do their best to intimidate you. And you better keep your crush secret now. Bad move. No PJ for you.
Jay, I agree about the ruffians, done it myself. They belong in the pound with Bullet.
and Craig, thanks for the belly laugh. I needed one. Leaky. I get it. Snrk.
If these Rural residence don't wake up and see the Long term future - they will be Pushed out by the Developers (just like the Indians were starting 150 yers ago) and not the recreationist/enviro's!
I'm not completely clear on what you are saying, there.
But "multiple use" is no longer a term that means anything. It's like the term "conservative" as used by Tom Delay.
Commodities become more valuable as they get more scarce, is an obvious rule of economics.
I just feel strongly that there is an enormous preponderance of real "multiple use" from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border, from the Atlanstic to the Pacific, and we have been blessed to have these last unroaded landscapes, in the public domain, and they are extrememly valuable- priceless even- because of those facts. Motorized use dominates an estimated 90-someodd percent, some say 98%- of the modern American landscape. Is it unreasonable, given what any one of us can see happening in the world today- India, China, Atlanta, Seattle, Missoula, etc etc etc,
to say that motorized users already have enough? And that for them to ask for this, too, is just too much?
You know, Dave, I never thought I'd live as long as I have. And I never thought that my country would be like it is. I think that I have simply outlived my time-that I live now in a time when most older people don't value any place where they can't get back to the air conditioning in a half hour or so. And the younger ones just see the place as a canvas for their "extreme" antics, a wooded skateboard park without rules. Where people who love the wilderness and the freedom of it, or of any place where you have to really struggle to get to-- are considered idiots and wimps, goofballs to kick around. I remember when it was the opposite of that, and where the folks who had to have motors carry them everywhere were considered weak, or not worthy of the big deer or elk.
I also remember a time when things were not so polarized, when I was sawing or planting south of Darby and we didn't talk much about enviros while drinking at the Sawmill (and renting a room upstairs). Or when my buddies and I could come down from skiing Trapper or Tin Cup in the spring and have a hellraising time at the same bar, talking to people who didn't ski, but didn't hate us because we did. We shared a knowledge of and love of the country from the Blue Joint all the way to Johnson Peak and up to Mud Creek Saddle or the upper Lost Horse, or the strange no-mans-land of the Overwhich. Now, for the most part, the skiers and the climbers and the hikers pass on through the town without stopping.
I think it was better when you could hike up to the saddle on Jew Mountain and check to see if the elk herds were moving through there, without having a half dozen ATVs buzzing through the saddle while you were standing there, all sweated up, and looking at the emptiness. I know, I know, "look at that bonehead who walked all the way up here! Doesn't he know we pushed the elk out of here a week ago? He must not be much of an elk hunter!"
It just ain't as much fun anymore. That's a loss, isn't it?
Jay, sorry I misunderstood your position, there.
This whole thing has kind of left me depressed.
Hal
I think my kind of people are in decline. Maybe we didn't have enough children, or we let them watch too much television, or we simply got outnumbered by the throngs of citizens who just don't much of a s**** about anything. Except their "rights" to dominate a meeting or threaten people or rip around like little punk kids on dirt bikes though the last of the wild country.
They might be angry, but that still don't mean they are right.
Sorry about that last paragraph above- I thought I had deleted it, but guess I didn't. I was trying to be evenhanded in deleting it.
Hal
http://www.brandens.net/files/Sounds/CLIPS/Tarzan.wav
That ought to stampede the ATV's out of the mountains.
Some things will NEVER be compatable, so segregation will happen; since compromise doesn't work: Buffalo Pass,CO - Snow Range,WY- Rabbit Ear Pass,CO + Hundreds of other places!
We Can't and WON't ignore you; you stink too MUCH and are TOO LOUD. You DO stop me from doing what I want/like/love; have Peace and QUIET in the Mountains! Does this help you see your point from MY perspective?
As she neared the top, she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her. In her haste to escape, the lady slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her private parts.
In considerable pain, she hurried to the nearest country doctor. Being a hunter himself, the doctor listened to her story with great patience and then told her to go into the examining room and he would see if he could help her.
She sat and waited for three hours before the doctor reappeared.
The angry lady demanded, "What took you so long?"
He smiled and then told her, "Well, I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a recreational area and I'm sorry, but they all turned me down."
Just a reminder that we do employ a civility policy around here, so keep this discussion respectful and civil.
If you're not able do to so, be prepared to have your comments removed from the forum.
And, if you think someone is out of line, don't hesitate to let me know.
Just a reminder...
We Can't and WON't ignore you; you stink too MUCH and are TOO LOUD. You DO stop me from doing what I want/like/love; have Peace and QUIET in the Mountains! Does this help you see your point from MY perspective?
Go Grow your weed in a different forest and Take your hippie a$$ back to California
There was a group active during the thirties who were studying how lesser mentalities might have been eliminated by selective breeding.
Perhaps it is not so much that there are just too many people precisely--as that there has just been too much indiscriminate breeding...
Next time you stumble onto a patch in the Roots, tell me where it is, I'll get off my Darby barstool where I would be contemplating just exactly what a "goldie cox" is (because I'd already know what a loudmouth sledneck is), I'll walk away from my Moose Drool, and I'll go remove it for you. Happily. On foot. And I'll be singing some kind of hippy song, maybe CSN. I might throw a little Y in my CSN. I dunno yet. And I'll be wearing tie-dye. And my hair will be long. I'll have some kind of dog named after a mountain, too. And I'll definitely stink like an incense shop. Or is it patch-ooly-ooly But no worries, I'll get er dun for ya.
Because everyone that doesn't ride some kind of ORV in the mountains is a hippy, right Bob?
pectiniculus
[edit] Noun
pendejo m.
1. A pubic hair
2. (pejorative) A stupid person; a dumbass; creep.
3. (Argentina, Uruguay) punk (an adolescent who presumes to be an adult).
The several DOZEN surveys done acroos the WHOLE Nation - has ALWAYS has over 65-70% of the WHOLE US pop. against what you do in the THEIR lands!!
So- again - I won't ignore you, but now I know i can't work with you; so I WILL work AGAINST You!! I hope veryone thanks YOU for another middle of the roader - driven to the LEFT by YOU!!
JDiah, way to show us your real heart. Had you been around in the thirties, I suppose you would support eugenics programs or their bastard offspring, Aryanization. After all, yer so smart and good lookin and well edjoocated you'll never be affected.
As for CS, the problem was, the Jews DID accept the Nazis until it was too late for them. That's a lousy bulwark for your argument, which is factually feeble considering that in terms of recreation, about two percent of USFS RVD's are non-motorized, and a fair number of THOSE are hunters.
Finally, Hal's 98 percent might be true nationally, but we're talking the Bitterroot. Or western Montana. Over HALF the Flathead National Forest is full-blown wilderness, contiguous with 98 percent wilderness-managed Glacier National Park. You really want balance, then look to other landscapes to "rewild."
Open up the last of the non-motorized lands to the owners of these new toys, because in a strictly local sense, there's plenty of room left, in this one small place, for them to play, and have their impacts, and make it like everywhere else?
That seems like such small thinking, and it seems so sad, the idea that no place is ever unique, or protected, from anything. It seems so greedy.
Even though a whole lot of what we're talking about-the non-wilderness areas- the logging roads, the many trails, are already open to the desires of this one group? We should all, from coast to coast, just say "shucks" and give up the last of the non-motorized use places? Even though the land is publically owned?
I just really think that there is already huge opportunity for those who want to snowmobile and ride ATVs on the public lands. Challenge riders, hill climbers, etc, should do their thing on private land where they can help bear the costs of their sport.
Bilers have a good argument- alot of the high country is public, and that's where the great high marking places are. So the bilers get a few good canyons and cirques to rage in. They've got that, I think (I'm not positive- some of the B'roots, alot of the Pioneers?). They should arrange for their own Search and Rescue, perhaps, so we don't get a repeat of the Copper Creek tragedy down by Lincoln, with all that public manpower being brought to bear (not that anybody who went out there to help ever complained) on a situation where some folks had just decided to slap the tiger and keep on slapping him.
But to get all furious about not being allowed to ride ATVs and snowmachines everywhere on public land, in this day and age, just seems incredibly infantile to me.
But like I said, I think I'm a minority.
Take the human powered game cart. They are used in the fall when grasses have gone dormant. They cause far less harm then dragging the animal or even using horses as carts do not tear through the surface, but merely roll over it. When I begin to see examples of rational shared use and rational decisions about human powered devices like bicycles and game carts I might moderate my judgment.
people who want to do that are small, and your impact would be less. You hit the nail on the head, sledhead. In days gone by, there were no ATVs and powerful sleds..there were horsemen and wagon handlers, and they had to know what they were doing. There weren't thousands of people sitting on ATVs ready to ride into the forest, park in the hunting country, fish out the last isolated creeks, do hill climbs on the alpine tundra. What worries land managers is the numbers of people that are using the public lands as their private playground, without regard for the impacts. Do you know how much money it would take to "open some here, close some there" ? and how contentious that would be? Why would the taxpayer in say, Kansas, want to have their money go to pay Forest Service employees to manage all that motorized use, when they could just say, "No, we don't want the motorized use on the public lands. It causes too many other problems."
Motorized users have gained a huge amount of land- or have started using new areas-- in the past ten years- I don't have to look at the maps, I have seen it with my own eyes, as I have been run from one elk hunting spot after another.
Where I stand is that people like yourself, and like myself, should count our blessings-all of us who hunt and wander the public lands, something you can't do anywhere else I know of in this world. I would ask motorized users to recognize how much is open to them, and accept road and trail closures to protect isolated places for big game security, and wilderness and non-motor values, and so that land managers don't have to spend taxpayer money monitoring motorized impacts to creeks and hunting and timber stands, and fire, weeds, rare species, etc. Accept some limits, knowing that you and all the rest of us are getting to enjoy the last of the last of it on this whole planet, that generations to come might look back in awe that you got to ride all those logging roads, high mark some of those peaks, without paying a single solitary dime. Without signing your life away, or being fingerprinted or whatever. We've got it all right now, and the hollers for more more more-no rollbacks, never give an inch, are going to kill it for sure.
To make sure it goes on, man, there has to be limits to motorized use. And if there is currently a real rollback, it is because there has been a big roll forward in motorized use in the past ten years. like I said, I've been there. It's been in my country, which is also your country.
Argue over closures, but pick your arguments carefully, not just out of anger or spite, look at what other people might want, or might stand to lose-protect walk-in access to creeks and rivers, to excellent big game and cat hunting country. Recognize that it's not any fun for skiers to follow highmarkers, or for horsepackers to get back into Piquett Creek and have somebody drive by on a four wheeler, waving hello at seven in the morning, scattering the elk.
Recognize that sleds can pollute the snowpack and have an impact that skiers and snowshoers never will. And that users are responsible for that- where is the non or less-polluting sled, the sled that is quieter? I know alot of people who feel like things are being taken away from them-and they are, all kinds of freedoms, being lost every day, and one of those freedoms for me, is to have country to roam in, where it takes some effort to get to, where there aren't that many people who want to put that effort out, where there's good hunting and blue grouse in the trees that would have been killed off long time ago if there were more access. Gullible cutthroats still in the creeks, silence, selfsufficiency without a motorized escape route if it gets dicey.
And it does not cost any money. It's available to everybody, poor or not. And it is lost when the ATVs start coming in.
That's what I'm asking, is that you walk a little bit in somebody else's shoes, and think about why somebody might ask for some of these closures. This whole thing has degenerated into some kind of low grade war, and one of the results is that the people who want to get rid of the public lands are going to use it to justify a great big sell-off. That is something to consider in all of these arguments. Then, you and I will both be paying top dollar, or going without, something priceless that we have now for nothing. Ask Ted Turner or Roxanne Quimby if you can high mark on their property. I'll call them and ask if I can hunt. We can meet back here and see whether we got what we asked for.
In the meantime, let's try to work this thing out in a civil manner. It can be done.
Both sides have an all or nothing attitude about use. Even the 'coalition' groups are built from like kind thinking people. If the coalitions had opposing thought members then their measures would be more moderate and inclusive of the diverse interests. Polarization = gridlock. Both sides have valid points but tend not to recognize those other points. Rather, each merely dwell on the rhetoric that paints the other side as a (your choice) demeaning pejorative. Not a formula for moving forward. Both sides require some validation and flexibility from the other so that rational and meaningful compromises can be sought.
=The mechanical device itself is neither a plus nor a negative to the environment on existing developed roads and trails. Harm emanates from the mind set and actions of reckless users.
=Exploring and enjoying wild, public lands is about personal freedom.
=ATV users don't have just one eye in the middle of their forehead and drool on themselves.
=ATV extremists are no different than green tree spikes or arsonists. Extremism is shared burden on both sides.
One student asked when MT will secede from the Union and start the NEXT Civil War - obviously the MT Militia didn't do too well?!
Please keep going and teach these folks how the "common" mind works!
That "common" mind stuff is cool, too. Be sure to teach the students that they are the elite, reporting on the idiotic passions of us backcountry boneheads, then rendering their judgements at the end of the day over a nice soy-milk latte.
That will make them the real valuable kind of journalists, the ones that really "understand" the issues, based on that knee-jerk smart set urban concensus that is a carefully nurtured balance of pure cynicism and abysmal ignorance.
Or they can study what they think is the "common" mind, using our comments, pattern themselves after it, eat a bunch of lead paint, and make good money "reporting" for Fox.
A brilliant future awaits, either way.
I guess that's what snarls me most about this all, is the loss of freedom on public lands...or even on Plum Creek after the HCP was implemented. I remember being able to explore....without a map, it was a wonderful thing. Priceless. Gone.
Unless I'm hunting or bushwhacking into some fishing (not so much that any more since everything got fished out in the early 1980s), I'm not interested in hiking. I like the exercise, but I can get exercise skiing or on a motorcycle. Lots of exercise. I can get home at the end of the day a shuddering pulp, cover a lot of ground, see a lot of things, and not leave a mark. The level of concentration needed to avoid injury or worse also has a certain way to clear the mind of detritus.
Hiking for its own sake is boring, stultifyingly so. I'll hike for getting a photo angle, or to get into game, whatever, but just to hike and commune with nature (hmmm, maybe that explains the political driver behind environmentalism) drives me kooky. It doesn't relax me at all, just bores me. I usually end up thinking of work and business. Ick!
I'm not alone. America is a movement society. And all the USFS studies show an increase in demand for mechanized with relatively flat "quiet" use, if you don't believe me look up the NVUM survey on the USFS website. Fascinating data about the uses and their nature and their demographics.
PJ, I'm not in the least interested in Mexico. It's a corrupt country that can't seem to get its act together, hot, far away, that doesn't allow guns, has a feeble rule of law and lots of crime. I like their food and chiles, tho. But I prefer America, especially the West and its people. There's plenty here to hold my interest. And in America...we speak English. It's good we have people like you with a sweeping command of Spanish to help new immigrants learn the language and assimilate. Or did you stop when you got the Seven Dirty Words el Espanol?
Finally, Jay J.'s comment makes me sad. I guess you teach in an urban district that isn't Montana. I can't wait until your victims start stringing distortive, stereotyped items out into the leftstream media. That'll be REAL helpful for civilized discourse. What a pro.
What are the valid points on the ATV side..?
By Marion, 1-15-08
Bingo, jed, you just demonstrated the "my way or the highway" mindset.
No Marion. What I did was ask a question. You provided the mindset...
=Populations are growing and humanity is sprawling. Unless some parts of nature are protected they will be overrun.
=There is value is maintaing 'wild' state as close as possible so that future generations can see it, touch it, and smell it. It connects the past to our present and has lessons for the future.
=Nature is fragile.
=Nature is beautifu.
=Nature gives us solace and peace away from our neighbors to provide the opportunity for clear thinking
=Nature is unable to protect itself.
As was stated earlier by someone; Many of the statements here aren't engendering allies, but opponents to the various causes and yet these people just go on and on with their rants! One thing an Intelligent person does is, look at their opponents pt. of view and construct a response to THAT statement; NOT just call a town or person a name or PRESUME the persons origins and habits! Some of you here need to be careful about mixing; facts, satements, peoples view pts. or attacking their typing skills!!??
If there is anything you are anxious to tell us about yourself, please do and start with your full name. You last name has more that one letter I presume. Perhaps you could write you resume as a limerick. Make it a class project and report back.
Can I add:
Mechanized use has quantifiable impacts to public lands that require an employee to be paid to monitor them
Employees must be paid to draw up 'travel plans" etc, to deal with mechanized use and its impacts. No mechanized use means less public money spent, or required to address this impact.
Mechanized use impacts soils, plants, wildlife, watersheds, etc. in ways that non-mechanized use does not. Undeveloped public lands are often some of the last redoubts of wildlife and plants, and mechanized use endangers that refuge of biodiversity through destruction, and introduction of invasive weeds.
Watershed protection, from drinking water and irrigation, all the way to sufficient quantities of water for shipping has been one of the reasons for National Forest designation from the beginning. Increased mechanized use increases impacts on the watershed, and roads and trails cut by mechanized users erode into tributary creeks and change and erode the natural delivery qualities of the system. This can be mitigated with- good, paid employees to monitor and mitigate these impacts. Money again. But mechanized users on public land don't pay anything to offset their added impacts and requirements for mitigation.
Increased mechanized use results in loss of hunting opportunities, and a degradation of the trophy animal resource, as well as less quantifiable aspects like "solitude" or "experience" that many hunters cite as reasons why they hunt in the backcountry. Over time, people quit hunting, or reduce the importance of hunting, reducing game department revenues. I know that many will argue that ATV access increases hunting revenues...in my opinion that is not true, but I understand the argument.
Mechanized access results in degradation of fisheries (as Dave calls it "fished out"). More public money is needed to stock, or to monitor, or to accept as loss in revenues from the people who used to buy licenses and tackle, etc.
And is it not as plain as the nose on our faces that more mechanized use results in more people, and more impact, and more needs for mitigation, on the last un-mechanized public lands, in a world where these things are the absolute norm?
Some of the mechanized advocates here act as if there was some lost golden age, where they rode free and wild on the public lands, and the goal is to recapture it. I am here as a witness to tell you that the ATV boom on public lands is less than a decade old. And the impacts, new and increasing, cannot be ignored. That is why there are now 88 comments on this story.
There are a million arguments, pro and con for mechanized use on public lands. I know that. But the advocates of mechanized use choose to ignore the multitudinous and valid arguments against what they want. That is the problem. It's a common one, but no less troublesome for being so.
And Dave, I am sorry that walking is boring to you. But if you want to argue for increased mechanized use on public lands, and for the taxpayers to pay for its impacts, because so many Americans are too weak and bored to walk around, well that is just too pathetic to contemplate. Times will change, perhaps, and the current iPod, Doritos, Grand Theft Auto game, carry-me-everywhere (ever watched the movie "Idiocracy"?") culture will give way to a more self sufficient, aware, physically fit culture, maybe in response to war, or to economic troubles, something. but we are not always going to be sliding down into flabby puddles of apathetic TV addicts, and when we wake up, we are going to need some unroaded public land to roam around and notice all the stuff that actually makes the world work, and that you can't see from behind a tinted visor, and that you can't hear over the roar of a motor. The worship of machines is part of the great abstraction of modern culture, and at some point there is going to have to be at least a small return to consciousness-where does clean water come from? How do you kill an elk? How do you travel from point A to point B under your own steam? How much food do I need to walk all day and be in a safe place by dark? This kind of knowledge, to me, is the key to freedom. This is the kind of knowledge that mechanized use ignores and erodes. There have to be some places left where it can be pursued. And if it means that we all save money, and we don't have to have a trout stream full of silt, and an endless knapweed field with starving elk munching at it, and that part of the woods is silent enough that we can hear the wind in the tops of the trees, or the distant roar of meltwater coming down off the high country, wouldn't that be okay?
Jed, I gave you truthful answers. Did you bother to read?
This is your truth, Craig?
Surely you jest?
By Craig Moore, 1-15-08
Valid points by ATV users:
=The mechanical device itself is neither a plus nor a negative to the environment on existing developed roads and trails. Harm emanates from the mind set and actions of reckless users.
The presence of internal combustion engines is Anathema--anti-natural. Operation by irresponsible thugs simply adds insult to injury
=Exploring and enjoying wild, public lands is about personal freedom.
Not on an ATV. Then it is an active and irresponsible affront to public lands.
=ATV users don't have just one eye in the middle of their forehead and drool on themselves.
<i>The presence of an internal combustion engine on public lands is an act of desecration. ATV users may well be mild-manner milqutoasts in their la-z-boys; but in the saddle of an ATV they are malignant destroyers of the environment.
=ATV extremists are no different than green tree spikes or arsonists. Extremism is shared burden on both sides.
That is just what I've been saying
Co-operate with Europeans--end up in concentration camps.
Co-operate with ATV thugs--end up with no no natural landscapes...
There are calm rational people, both ATVer's and naturists, that will work towards comprehensive solutions so long as the threats from name calling and polarization, 'my way or the highway' are put aside. Each has to accept the other as a partner and respect their perspecitves.
I think most people care for others and would be uncomfortable causing them harm. Thus the big groups have had to promote the idea that those who are going to lose something have to be bad. If they are not bad, what would that say about those causing a loss to those people?
The fact is motorized use of the forests in a responsible manner is probably no more harmful than hiking. Certainly we have no good long term information on damage caused by folks in the back country leaving their waste behind, tons of it every year. The expense of cleaning up wilderness area campsites, hauling trash left behind etc has to run into a lot of money.
Perhaps leaving the present roads intact, restricting new roads except for specific purposes would be a help. Perhaps it would be good to limit some of the wilderness to only professional management uses, this would provide more protection for some land rather than continuing to ask only one group to sacrifice. It would also give researchers a chance to compare the effects of hiking use compared to actual wilderness designation.
In other words give a little to everyone and prevent a back lash against all you want.
If any of you have read the Billings Gazette today, and saw the following article about environmental groups bragging about preventing coal powered electric plants. It is getting pretty evident that folks are fed up with people who have nothing invested and no responsibility insisting on having all of the control.
The bottom line is the biotic and botanic makeup of the landscape is a human artifact. That needs to be recognized.
Fire is not a random natural event, but a function of fuel conditions. Indians set prescriptive fires so the fires would generate the correct (human-beneficial) outcome.
Even the Great Plains had to change once the Indians figured out what horses were for. Were those horse-based Indians natural, or not. Was their adaptation a good thing or a bad thing environmentally?
Come on, JD, you know all. Splain that. Also, I'd like you to explain how there can be no natural landscapes when 104 million acres of wilderness have been set aside already. Montana itself is something like 93 million acres total.
And again, what the heckfire IS natural? Before Indians? Before White Guys? Before Jedediah?
As for civility...nobody's brought this up yet, but when it comes to beyond-the-pale behavior, what about Delylah the buffalo gut lady, or Loser the fishgut tosser, or those yahoos that roped themselves off that log truck a couple years ago? Oh, they were just expressing their first amendment rights?
Never mind that none of them seems to have been productive enough prior to have anything to lose.
As for user pays, Hal, what with no logging going on, which USED to cross subsidize recreation of all kinds, what is your solution for wilderness trails, not just motorized access? Are you going to hump in your handsaw to deal with jackstrawed burns, or gasp, carry in your 044?
Friend of mine has done a landscape assessment on 200,000 acres in Oregon, of that area, there were only two locations with significant resource damage from ORV use, one was a play area toward which riders were directed by agency staff.
Seems to me the "impact" is way overblown, along the lines of deceptions such as Sierra Club using a dried reservoir bottom to represent logging practice.
I'm sorry there are people that have lathering hissy fits should the sound of a motor kiss their eardrums, although the sound of the beep when their cell phone connects them to the ranger station is music, as is the sound of their Subaru or Volvo firing up after they've gotten back to the trailhead....you know, the rig that hauled all their metal-and-petrochemical lightweight, high-tech gear imported from China.
I have not studied the motorized impacts in a systematic way, and I guess I will, now, that I am aware of my lack of knowledge of it. I have mostly based my observations on my experience over the past twenty years or so. The impact on the places I have hunted, fished, walked, etc. have been significant, not in any kind of absolute wreckage of the place - although there has been enough of that, as I mentioned, the state land I used to use for most of my shooting (I picked up after myself) is a mess, and I think it may even be in the process of being "divested" or traded because of management impossibilities- it's wrecked, and the seasonal creeks are in bad shape from all the challenge riding. There is trash everywhere- it became a 4 wheeler party spot extraordinaire, and one of the partiers whacked the only nice muley buck I'd ever seen there, chopped off his head and threw the body over a little cliff....there was a even a murder up there a few years back, some dead enders getting rid of a used up buddy.
Okay, that's only one little spot. There are lots of others- places I used to hunt, that now have too many people in them who ride in on ATVs, and I meet them, and I can tell you beyond any doubt that these are people who would not be there if they could not ride in on an ATV. They don't like walking either, and they aren't equipped mentally or physically, to be off on their own, on foot, in the woods. So I lose some of my hunting places. Way out on the prairies, I spend a morning trying to close on some antelope, and a 4-wheeler comes buzzing up the ridge-this happened this year- and runs them all the hell out of the district. Same guy-or one just like him- parks at the head of the coulees, and practices his ultra long range work on the young mule deer bucks, with the result that no matter where you go, the place has been shot out. There will never be a mature buck there, and I'm talking about a huge part of the 400.
Remember the fishing on Kelly Creek before it got so popular? See what I mean? Checked out Panther Creek hot springs in a long time, with the all baby diapers and what not? Tied to compete with the guys on 4-wheelers while hunting horns in Corn Creek? the first time I went there, there was no ATV use of the area. None. Nobody could imagine that, now.
I don't begrudge the highmarkers that Camus Peak Bitterroot country, but it does get hit really hard, and there's alot of oil and gas you can see in the hard packed snow, and the place screams with noise on the weekends, and it is very far back, not far from the Wilderness boundary, and I can't help but wonder what the wolverines that we used to see the tracks of are doing with all that traffic and noise-I know, I know, that is a personall problem, alot of people don't give a rat's ass about whether a wolverine has a peaceful place to live or not...and a lot of them would probably rather see the wolverines disappear than have any restrictions placed on what they can do in the wolverine habitat, I know that, I've been around that kind of thinking all my life, and no matter how often I encounter it, I still think it sucks, that it is greedy and small minded and repulsive. See, I'm letting my values show.
Again, I'm just telling you about the impacts I've seen over twenty years--its not scientific. On the other hand, I do tend to trust my own eyes and experience. I'm not practicing deception, just relating what I've seen that pertains to this argument. I don't have a a lathering hissy fit when I hear a motor in places where I only saw walk-in hunters and fishermen or whatever, but I do hang my head a bit. I've tried to explain why that is.
And that was what I was asking you, earlier in this debate, what about that idea that everybody just do whatever you want, that everywhere is fair game, since a person can't decide what is "natural" or not, why not just rip the place up and pave it over?
Think about the question so hard, with so much historical context brought in, that the answer is- Shhheeesh, let's just do whatever we want, the landscape is altered forever anyway, let her rip! I mean there's a point where ideology justifies anything, and where nihilism rules. The values of the heart and the soul are just cast aside. I know, I know, that is because those values are not universal...one man likes quiet, another loves to hear the thump thump thump of a tuned Harley or a sled, or a 044 or an H&K;MP5. I got some of both in me, so I'm not beyond understanding either side.
I don't think it is a legit argument to say that just because somebody drives a Subaru and has Chinese made gear that they can't have values that include wanting to leave a little part of the world untrammeled by motor vehicles. I think that's a cheap shot, and that it avoids the issue, and that once again, it is deliberate, because the real arguments for more motorized use don't hold up.
I can't help but feel, too, that I see a huge amount of nihilism in those arguments, and I wonder what produces that, it is such a tired, old world way of looking at things. Or else it is just a means to justify doing whatever one wants to do anyway. It is fascinating to me, and that's why I'm still here.
We're beyond that. Way beyond. Ignorance rules policy, no matter who is ostensibly in charge.
I think the best thing that could happen would be to allow states to bond themselves to buy the federal ground. Since the states can't print money, they'd have to profit. You'd see user fees for access, and those fees would fall upon users, and nobody else. I could go for that if I had a reasonable expectation of a worthwhile product.
Of course, that will never happen unless things boil up so badly and the crisis is so undeniable that a consensus is reached that there needs to be a complete break from the past before the future is lost.
Hal, I don't think it's a cheap shot. Yvon Chouinard is a sterling example of two-facedness. His OIA would throw away all of rural Utah's economy so his REI clients can keep their illusions. Here's another. Winifred. Summer. Late Evening. Subaru rolls into town needing gas to get back to GTF. So the call is made from the bar, the owner shows up, fi dollah pumped and away they go. That's the New West economy, no wonder the folks in Winifred and other places so dearly cling to the Old.
Of course!--Preventing harm to the environment--which is where we all must live--can be harmful!
Sure!
How can anybody argue with that kind of logic?
The more posts I read, from the Pro-ATV crowd, the less willing I become to accomodate myself to any of their reasoning processes.
I can't see any way accomodate my thinking to theirs.
Hal on the other hand has apparently decide Rousseau may have been correct after all--all we need do is wax poetic and celebrate the romance of the natural world to win over savage beasts.
Reading his posts, I am swept up in almost the same reveries I enjoy when I read Greg Tollefson's columns in the Missoulian.
Would we could reduce the disagreement to those terms..!
Far as I can tell, there are currently 1,500 miles of roads on the Bitterroot forest open to motorized travel. Thousands and thousands of more miles of roads are open to motorized travel on neighboring national forests. Yet somehow these numbers are ignored and people can get away with saying that they are being pushed out of the forest.
Seems like the motorized-users already have a large share of the pie, especially when you also factor in all the "bad apples" riding their motorized toys illegally in wilderness areas or just ignoring closures and gates. Or the "bad apples" running over hikers in Idaho with their motorcycles or running over a one-legged, former LAPD officer near Lake Como with an ATV. Or the "bad apples" illegally going off-trail and ripping up high mountain meadows. Or the "bad apples" who illegally create new trails on public lands.
There have been quite a few incidences of 'backpacker' mischief and crime in the back country. Examples: murder, theft, littering, property destruction..... Does it really elevate one side over the other to get 'holier-than-thou?' IF I applied your logic then I would be arguing to bar backpackers because of their sins. This is a loser comparison for advancing the ball. People have to meet each other eye-to-eye to have a fruitful discussion.
Please provide links to documentation for this statement. Stories about the two local hikers run down by motorized users have appeared in the newspapers and on newscasts. Photo evidence abounds for the damage done to public lands by motorized use. No one needs to make unsubstantiated "there have been quite a few" type statements when condemning these documented acts.
When both sides are pregnant does it matter to argue about it, point fingers, and claim moral superiorty?
You attempted to denigrate backpackers who advocate quiet-use by associating them with an entirely different element, Craig, in order to assign wrong-doing to them. Just calling you on that.
That is the hidden crux of this issue. There is a widespread and extremely well-funded ideology out there that views the public lands of the US as a failed socialist experiment and an obstacle to development. The leaders are some of the most prominent Republican politicians - our own conrad Burns was one of them, before he realized that public opinion was against him. PERC's Terry Anderson wrote the seminal study in, I believe, 1999, "How and Why to Privatize all Public Lands Now," before he was appointed by Gale Norton as an interim advisor to Interior. Bernard De Voto wrote about the threat in the mid 1950's, saying that the push to give states control of federal lands was a startegy to bring the lands under control of smaller entities that can be coerced in a way that the federal governmment could not.
In an interview in 2000, I asked several state agency directors what would happen if, say, Nevada, were to take responsibility for its public lands. "There would be a fire sale," was the answer. No state has the budget to manage even one forest fire, and the lands would be sold to the highest bidder, which would be very very low.
Keep it in mind, as we fight about all these management questions. When PILT payments are cut, when Mark Rey suggests selling "just 300,000 acres" you are watching the visible edge of a huge power, waiting to divest these lands, both in the name of profit and in the name of ideology.
So, sledhed man, glad you had a good day out there. Did you remember to count your blessings? Reckon you could find some private land where the owners would let you ride 85 miles?
I think it would be one of the best things New West ever published if Dave would write a formal editorial for them outlining that plan for letting the states buy the National Forests, and what the future would look like if that happened.
I just got this on my email. A discussion of privatization potential, written by an economist in 1983, spurred by Reagan's election, and Reagan's encouragement of public lands divestiture advocates. (Sagebrush Rebels, but they didn't want the lands sold, really, they wanted just wanted full control of them, while everybody else paid the costs- sagebrush rebels were the cowboy-hat wearing pawns in that game).
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/123456789/3054/1/08020215.pdf
And here is Anderson's work on privatization, from the Cato Institute.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa363.pdf
Reagan, Anderson, Burns, etc, et al, are true conservatives, sledhed. And if you'll look closely, true conservatives want the public lands sold to private interests. So be real careful what you ask for in asking for conservatives to be your public land managers.
Dave, you going to write your piece?
The states don't want and are not equipped or budgeted to manage the forests. Divestiture is just a next step away from what you describe.
I think people who complain all the time about the Forest Service or the BLM are forgetting just how good we have it, right now.
I have almost no hope that the public lands, as we know and enjoy them now, will remain intact in my children's lifetimes.
Too much anger, too much demand for high impact things like more motorized use. We are a bunch of three year olds, fighting over the toys, breaking them out of spite, and soon, "grown-ups" who have their own giant ranches, or never stop making money long enough to go outside, the Reaganites, James Wattites, Gale Nortonites, Terry Andersonites, whatever,(there are a million of them, tirelessly working in the service of "conservative ideology") will step in, take the toys away, and sell them at a flea market to their multi-national friends.
Then we'll really see some Wise Use, some good ol' multiple use.
And all the ex loggers and the ex-snowmobilers and ex-hikers and everybody else can get jobs waiting tables and cleaning out the septic tanks at the new resorts owned by Saudis.
Read Terrry Anderson's piece (in the link above) and see what you think would happen if it were implemented. Imagine who would benefit. Look into who is behind this movement, what they say they believe, who they fund, and who funds them. It's powerful stuff.
All sounds VERY selfish to me. Good to hear that some of you support; Elk Foundation, Trout UL and so forth though - still ,it doesn't make up for else you want/propose!!
Reality isn't always FUN!
And I don't think we should get exhausted by the conflicts. Conflict means there is something good left to fight over. With your interests, though, make sure that your allies in the conflict don't turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing.
Freedom is conflict. People forget that.
One of the things I've most enjoyed about all these comments is how many people - motorized or "naturists" as Craig calls them- obviously love being out on the public lands and out in the open, and are willing to stand up.
Conflict is a given. Let's don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Aren't you confused?
I'd really love to hear what you OHV advocates think those rights actually are...
How did these groups get so much power? If roads are closed off it is that much more difficult to fight fires and other management imposed by these groups make that much more likely. Then what? The forests burn and the environmentalist will take no responsibility at all.
You could do better reaching and educating people in a different medium.
GG
I was playing with Caterpillars today, am now home and thawed.
I like your suggestion. I took econ from the evil three at Bozeman (Anderson, Stroup, Baden) when they were trying some of their stuff out on punk kids before throwing it at grownups. So I've seen Anderson's paper, and it seems "fair" if not optimal.
And I should say that for a long time, I was a closet socialist when it came to federal forests. I liked a government program that created jobs and actually made money (supposedly) for the Treasury, I don't think that was as big a lie as it has been made out to be. I liked that I was part owner of this here mighty Flathead National Forest and I didn't need to ask permission to play hard just so long as I behaved reasonably.
It is only in the past couple of years that I have personally decided that the agency is beyond redemption, dysfunctional beyond all reason, staffed with a too-high number of John Weavers, Dave Parsons, Sara Jane Johnsons and Gloria Floras with the same ideologies, just a bit more restraint in expressing their views anywhere aside from an EIS.
The fact that these are currently "national interest" lands, which means the decisions get made by clueless politicians looking to score Sierra Club Seattle/New York/ Norfolk Chapter votes no matter what the Commerce Club in Timberville thinks....the situation is so short of the greatness that could be.
I am not interested in privatization. However, I think states can in fact finance a purchase of the federal forest estate under reasonable terms. I believe they CAN in fact manage these lands in a responsible manner, socially, fiscally and environmentally. States already do so, as do tribes that can't print money.
The main point, however, is that state government would be far more accountable to those most affected than the national leadership now is.
Right now, Western issues are NOT on the presidential radar in this campaign. Not at all. Congress is not interested except maybe Nicky Joe and George Miller when they want to take a cheap shot. But by golly, I could get down to see the Land Board or even chain myself to the doors of the Capitol in Helena and it might actually get noticed -- relatively, anyway. Try any of that in DC, and it's Gitmo for you, boy!
The notion that natural areas could serve any purpose beyond short-term income for out of work lumberjacks is nothing but pie-in-the-sky.
What this nation has been doing for the past 400 years has served us so well we ought to keep right on doing it--until the soup begins to taste like urine, I mean...
Mr. Skinner....I don't think so. One just has to go to Oregon and see the freakin charlie foxtrot that Oregon's state "forests" are in. Trashed out, atv rutted, logged to max pieces of crap. I'd rather hunt and fish in a federal forest any day.
Missoula Independent
http://www.missoulanews.com
01/17/2008
The scene at last week's Forest Service travel plan meeting in Darby gave conservationists a lot to think about this week, as they saw an unruly mob effectively shut down a public discussion.
A 50-person meeting hall crammed with over 200 people forced participants to stand along the sides and back of the room. The meeting became heated quickly, many raised their hands to speak, and comments continued for some two hours until one local woman was finally recognized and given the floor.
There was no podium, so she stood up while surrounded by some of the room's most aggressive advocates for off-road vehicle use. Despite seeing numerous speakers ridiculed and taunted, she ventured to talk without preparing any notes, and spoke in favor of public lands and conservation. Though mild mannered and calm, she stumbled at times as a constant barrage of laughter, heckling, and spontaneous shouting threw her off.
She occasionally wrung her hands to shake off the nerves, but moved forward with her statement. Ginny Tribe, the professional facilitator contracted to moderate the meeting tried unsuccessfully to quiet the heckling.
But the mob at the back of the room wouldn't back off at all. The speaker was just going on too long for some.
"Put a bullet in her head," said a younger man seated among a thick crowd.
"Did you just say, 'Put a bullet in her head'?" asked Gary Milner, a bystander.
"Yeah…You're all just a bunch of fucking liberals," the man replied.
"Did you hear this? Can you write this down?" Milner asked a nearby Forest Service official.
"What is your name, sir?" one of them asked.
"Will Blocker," the man replied, as the official jotted down the notes.
Over 20 bystanders overheard the exchange, and the meeting continued-with the heckling unabated.
I do not know how environmental groups got the power they have, lots of untaxed money to buy power I guess, but we need to get back to a democracy and sharing for all, not an autocracy catering to a few and make the rest work harder to support them.
The public lands as enviisioned by Roosevelt, Grinnell, etc, were part of an American idea, and an American ideal -- Roosevelt always saw in the rampant destruction of the land, the buffalo, the timber, a metaphor for the eventual destruction of the American civilization, that ideal of liberty and the balance between government and the rights of the individual.
And ideals, and idealism, as you may have noticed over the past seven years, aren't real healthy in America today. The freedom embodied by the public lands gets in the way of profit. In fact, liberty itself is an obstacle to the plans of economists like Anderson- and I don't mean the liberty to go out on public land and cut all the trees down, or build your outhouse over Fred Burr Creek, I mean real liberty, where a person who doesn't have much money can shoulder a rifle and walk for two days looking for an elk or a bear. Where a man who may or may not own his own house can ride for 85 miles on his snowmobile, soaking up the sunshine and the powder.
That kind of liberty is offensive to some very powerful people in this country. It makes the peons real uppity. It can make them late for work, or even make them feel like they don't have to be peons.
So hang in there, man. Population pressure, influence of the economists like Anderson, who just tell the rich what they already want to hear, and good homegrown heartland rageaholics, who seek the answers for their bewilderment in right-wing ideology, will make it all happen.
ATV use is totally out of control, and it's caused serious damage to natural resources throughout local forests. Apine meadows throughout the Pioneers, Pintler, and West Big Hole have been torn-up by the motorheads. ATVs routinely cut new routes ("troads") for cross country travel wherever they want to ride or kill an elk.
There is plenty of access to the Forest. But the lazy ATV riders don't want to get off their butts and hike.
'Bout time the Forest Service tried to put a lid on ATV abuse.
Marion - you keep asking how these groups got the power they have -my class see's the problem creating its' own power base.
"If the people were Stewards of the land and NOT exploiters/abusers - Environmental groups Couldn't excist; there would be NO need for them" Wrote one of my students!!
I HAVE been to Oregon state forests. And tribal holdings on closed rezzes in Oregon and Washington. I was impressed. Were it not for forestry, for example, the Tillamook wouldn't even exist, much less be slated for victimization as "reserves" as in Measure 34, or 37 or whatever the heck it was, which was voted down by leftie Oregon. There were NO seed sources after the jinx fires from 1933 to 1951.
As far as a CF is concerned, the million-plus acres of FEDERAL smoking craters in Oregon well-qualify as such.
And Jay J., the power base came not from the grassroots, but from uber-rich foundations looking for ways to spend money and feel good. What better cause than "saving the planet?" Environmentalism derives much of its power not from the average American (only one to two percent of voters polled rate the environment as a top issue behind health care on one side and immigration/economy on the other) but from a comparatively small number of family trusts and foundations. Those foundations in turn operate with considerable anonymity and the laws are such that the money is tax-sheltered as well as basically secret. For example, Sierra Club gets a lot of its operating money from the Sierra Club Foundation, a 501c3 that basically flips the money from foundational grants and other large donors making sheltered, de-facto anonymous contributions. It goes to Sierra as "educational" and therefore exempt, non-political money -- even though in practice, every cent has a political outcome.
That's just one case, of thousands. Perhaps you should get your class a Guidestar subscription, and then Google the donor names or boards of directors you find. Fascinating.
The FS wants to shut off MORE roads and trails to ORV use and we need you to go to these meetings and tell them what you think.
Now, officially the Bitterroot ORV club does not condone what happened at Darby, but I have a real hard time believing that, in private, they're pleased as hell and got exactly what they wanted.
I'd enjoy taking such absolutist positions on anything--after the fashion of most religionists--but I have found my education--from 1942 to present--has enabled me to--at best--ask some relatively intelligent questions.
On the other hand, my questions may not be all that intelligent; because I have never received a single comprehensive response from a motorhead--or, for that matter, from any reactionary...
That they clear cut whole watersheds and canyons in the Santiam State Forest or the fact that there is a gravel road every 100 yards?
That they had to block off skid roads with house sized boulders to keep deviants on motors from fawking up meadows and waterholes.
Maybe you were impressed with the 100 million tons of trash and garbage that decorates Oregon's State Forests??
Yeah you don't have to worry about state forests ever burning down they already look like they've been "nuked"
Individually, they're mostly cowards (except for those big bull-dikes they hang with - they're pretty tough); it's only when they get together that any of them have the cajones to heckle or bash anything.
I was impressed with the boocoo game and good-looking trees and clear water. Mistakes were certainly made in the past, but the tribal and state professionals I was with sure learned their lessons well.
There were deer, elk and turkey all over the reservations I toured. Probably the best part of being an Indian is the sporting and subsistence opportunities being presented by deliberate, contextualized forestry. These people have done more for the environment than every professional enviro non-profit payrollee could ever imagine.
The Tillamook is the place where the book on post-fire salvage and restoration was written. The thing I find ironic is for decades after the restoration got going, the only people who gave a rip about the Tillamook were the motorheads, they were the only public visitors aside from hunters.
I'll admit there are low class motorheads, that do not respect closures. The Tillamook guys showed me some pretty impressive junkpiles they had to put up for seasonal wet closures.
But there are low-class Greens as well, PJ being the shining example du jour for this discussion, never mind Spiker....as well as those ripping Marion as "Morion."
So I can understand why Sledhead feels a little cranky. I can understand why "Bullet" barked too loud. I feel the same way a lot.
But back to TSF, it wasn't until the forest really got going again and turned out AWESOME that the ecos paid attention, and then they tried to take the restored forest for their own selfish recreation pleasure.
Furthermore, AJ, I don't need to tell you about the unhappiness of tribal foresters victimized by spill-overs and escapement from federal holdings, you wouldn't understand it anyway. I mean, do you LIKE what Santiam looks like now? Or the brushfields on Mineral Hill, or Strawberry Mountain? Are you really that bent?
Busch, it's what's for dinner.
Then I'll go to the Valley and bitch about how others are the source of my misery. I'll be the one with the ugly sledneck jacket and Jeff Gordon hat. I'll have to grow one of those stupid go-tees - you know, the kind all the dumbfucks have. Then I might stumble across the street to hang out with that miserable drunk Gary.
I'm the 6'3" 225 lb. gorilla, all by myself. You'll be the one cowering with the pack. I know your type from SoCal. Just like the Mexicans. Don't be shy now. Come one, come all.
Do you dare respond to the BRoot flier campaign, or do you just want to get in the dirt?
It is the same rhetoric on various blogs, even by different people. Is someone deliberately creating a divide between American citizens?
Perhaps it is simply a matter of perception, then.
Or are you trying to impress somebody..?
The problem with that kind of thinking is, it seems to me, by the time they die off; so will have the wilderness we wanted to save...
jed ,.... i was under the impression that the WILDERNESS is already safe ,.. unless you have any GOOD ideas on how to stop the wilderness from being distroyed due to FIRE ,... or BEATLE KILL ,.. .....maybe the occasional global killing meteor ,..or even those tree killing spotted owls ,.. other than that id say shes pretty safe
.... and what's with .............. all the dots ................... ?
jed: Lot's of people cut their own throats. The Wildwest boys are killing conservation, and the sledneck types are killing extraction. Maybe eventually we can all meet in the middle - when all the planets are aligned.
Nobody has yet weighed in on the BRoot ORV club's flier campaign to get big turnout from their ranks. The language in the flier did not particularly promote civility in opposition to the proposed changes. The language was kind of alarmist, probably intentionally so.
1 .................. you hold no weight in any intelligent conversation
2..................... anyone who does answer you .doesnt seem to answer you good enough and discredit it ...so why answer at all
3............ are you gonna start some sort of action to stop the dots just cuz they bother you ?
4....... your the worst basher in here well maybe except jed hes an idiot too
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Nobody in here holds weight in this conversation because it's entirely unintelligent. You can't polish a piece of shit. That's why I'm here. If I wanted intelligence, I'd go back to work.
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You just shaved your geek-tee, didn't ya? Good move.
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WOW! DOTS! NEAT!
DASHES TOO!
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LOOK! TILDAS. WOW!
What else could there possibly be? &&& MY GOD!! AMPERSANDS!
This is too much.
I assume you mean by yahoos, like yourself, who would tar an entire county by the actions of a few yahoos..?
Now all that is happening is Non-issue insults and personal attacks.
GIVE IT UP!!