So now some guy from Iowa is lord and master of all things roadless. THAT should work real well....

Haven't you heard Dave.

Doesn't matter where you live, its everyone's land. So even if you live in New Jersey, you can tell me how my State should be managed.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Makes sense to me too, fenske.

It is federal land that belongs to all Americans, not just people from a certain state.

This will definetly slow some things down here in Wyoming. I hope the areas that are wild and available as such are here for my daughters and their kids too.

Great news! Everyone in the U.S. owns that land, and should be properly heard.

Good news. The USFS recently testified against NREPA at a Congressional hearing, claiming that NREPA would upset Forest plans negotiated with local governments. As a participant in the Shoshone National Forest (Wyoming) planning process, which has been going on since 2005, that's true, which is why I support NREPA. The Forest hasn't listened to conservationists at all, especially about protection of roadless areas and Wilderness recommendations.

The Shoshone NF created a Government Cooperators Work Group (GCWG), made up of county commissions, conservation districts, and Wyoming state agencies to guide Forest planning. The public is not a part of this. Of the Work Group members, only the Wyoming G&F;Department has been supportive of conservation goals. The Governor's office even paid for the services of a sagebrush rebel consulting firm from Montana, the so-called Ecosystem Research Group, to develop pseudo-scientific documents in support of continued development of the Forest, particularly salvage logging in roadless areas. The county commissions and the conservation districts especially are intent on salvage logging in roadless areas.

The Forest has made a big deal of having public meetings, but having attended all of these meetings, it is clear that public participation is an add-on to the real work done by the GCWG. These days, the public doesn't attended the meetings, figuring, why bother.

In the current version of the Plan, only one area, known as the Dunoir, about 27,000 acres, is recommended for Wilderness. The Dunoir has Congressionally mandated Special Management Unit status from the 1972 Washakie Wilderness Act. All other roadless areas in the Forest are classified as "backcountry non-motorized" but are subject to salvage logging, which means roads in highly erodable terrain.

At this point, anything new that disrupts development in roadless areas is better than what we've got right now.

RH

Handsprings and cartwheels from the usual suspects, I see.
I read something last night, there will be a one-year "moratorium" similar to that implemented by the Dombeck/Wood gang, basically legal cover for a whole new rulemaking.
This time, Pew, Dombeck Roadless 1's prime political and fiscal sponsor, is ready with TRCP et al to score "sportsman" support it lacked.
Anyone want to lay down money that the end result will be an attempt at a rule that recommends all 58 million acres for wilderness?

Dave, I'll take that bet! What you got? I have some extra lettuce, potato, onions, garlic, pickled peppers and maybe an elk steak and some morels. I'd also lay down a Ben Franklin or two if you'd rather roll like that.

Then lets talk odds, Matt. My ten gets me what?

Great news indeed. We shall see what Vilsack can deliver. Logging and roadbuilding are dinosaurs of public land management, rightly relegated to the dustbin of history.

Meanwhile, however, Off Road Vehicle riders continue to shred these roadless wildlands with impugnity. For instance, the many of the trails in the Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area and the West Pioneers WSA in Montana are both open to extensive ORV travel.

In an effort to show the ongoing impact of these relentless machines, and to influence the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest's travel planning, we need volunteers to walk the trails in the West Pioneers this summer and systematically document the condition of the extensive trail network there. It's a spectacular place to hike, but machines are tearing it apart, piece by piece.

The Pioneer Mountains Need You! If you can help with this volunteer effort, please contact me at . We can provide cameras, GPS units, suggested routes and information on access and distances. You can spend anywhere from half a day to a week tracking the trails.

Thanks
Phil Knight
Montanans for Quiet Recreation

I think people are reading too much into this announcement. All "Roadless" projects..(and I use the word roadless loosely seeing all of the existing roads in these areas)...have been on hold anyways due to the current judicial stalemate. Until the Supreme court agrees to take up and rule on this issue we will continue in a holding pattern. If I was a betting man I would put my money on an outcome for all "roadless" lands similar to what has been approved in Idaho. What would be interesting to think about is the likely impact Judge Sotomayor will have on this issue if she is seated as is expected.

The ObamaNation plate is full. Stuff dropping off the edges. Vilsack is the closer, the fireman. He had to take some heat off the Cabinet. Roadless has been tabled.

The USFS is also in a holding pattern. They have no idea of their next step, as the dance masters are not yet up to speed, or confirmed.

My guess is the NRCS guy is going to count some beans of his own, and will want measurable results. Kimball is into more ethereal kinds of accounting and goals. Or whatever her minders in the NGO lobby need from her.

This country is bleeding out in terms of jobs. There has been no noticeable quickening of the jobs pulse from the Stimulus. When all the cheapo repo houses are gone, the real estate market will tank again. And, we have yet to see the real implosion of commercial properties. The Great Malls of America are next to fail. The new anchor store will be Goodwill. The current round of job losses are now going to be in the heart of ObamaNation voter strength, public employees and auto workers. Union jobs. And those are going by the wayside in transportation (fewer goods, fewer truck drivers, fewer dock workers, and no needs in railroad crews). The new spike in summer time gas prices will take more out of tourism and service industries. And they all once paid taxes, and now will demand unemployment. Entitled to unemployment. Entitled to welfare. Entitled to health care. Entitled to rent assistance. All dispensed by fewer public employees, many who will end up being clients of former work mates.

More than 500 teachers alone in Portland, Oregon, while city workers get raises, and the Public Employee Retirement System still gives Tier 1 workers a guaranteed 8% annual gain in their retirement income accounts. That system is now forecast to be broke enough that in 2011, the public employer of record will be paying 25% of payroll costs into the fund, which like many, has lost 20% or more of its invested value in the last year. Unaffordable union contracts with public employees will reduce their numbers as the tax collections dwindle further. The money is finite, and non-federal budgets are required to balance with no borrowing each year. There is a year or more delay in a recession before the entitled get hammered, and the hard hand of seniority in the job shoves good people out the door.

More job loss, and to good jobs, will jeopardize good home loans as money suddenly dries up, and more pressure hits the housing deal, and fewer cars are bought, and people learn to live with less, eat less, drink less and party less. Times be a changin'.

We got the Change....and things got worse. Now all we have is Hope, which the old hooktender told me was about wishing into one hand and puking into the other. Which one fills first? Or at all? And you know what? It would not be any better under a Republican. Economic conditions strike the healthy as well as the sick. Like the Monterrey two step, this too will have to pass. It takes time, and not a week or two. Like a decade, maybe. That was the Japanese experience. And none of their car makers are bankrupt. yet. I see new Tundra Toyota pickups around. Same size as a Ford, GMC or Dodge. People buy their small cars, so they can sell more big pickups. And then lose $9 Billion last quarter.

Roadless is not even an issue that will see the light of day for quite a while. No need. WFU will burn a lot of it. There is no lumber demand, with random length 2x4 at below $140/mbf. No pressure to cut timber unless it is to defend against conflagration. Fat chance. And the USFS budget will get hammered again, as will the NPS, unless Ken Burns saves their budgetary bacon with his new PBS series. Roadless and wilderness was taken care of with the Omnibus Bill, the legislative suppository for the health of the new administration. The roadless issue is dead for the foreseeable future. No vet is coming to revive that horse for a long time. The time and effort on public lands will be Pelosi, who has to find a way to water 37 million people in her home state, and defend the ESA while not allowing it to save Sacramento and San Joaquin river salmon runs. You can piss in the water needed for salmon habitat, and you can run that water and the fish in it out on the desert soils to desalinate the land enough to grow a salt tolerant crop using a whole lot of stolen water from other watersheds. Pelosi will steal your water bottle right out of your purse, just because she is a California politician who gets re-elected. And George Miller, and Henry Waxman, and the two menopausal senators, all will stand right with her. Stealing water is a right in California. Or Nevada. Ole Harry Reid has managed to sell critical BLM habitat for the desert tortoise to his buddies at Del Webb, et al, and claim all the undiscovered water under all public lands in Nevada with exception of the NE corner where the shovel brigade stopped the USFS land grab at Jarbidge. Those counties stopped old Harry at their county lines, with the help of the Canadian gold mining companies. Las Vegas needs water. Or it can't grow. Hell, right now it needs to sell some empty homes and get ObamaNation to not tell the world that companies should not go to Vegas for meetings and business gatherings. Harry is mending fences like a Mormon sheep rancher. Which is really what he is....with a law degree and a law firm of his children all getting government work. Life is sweet for old Harry. He isn't going to let roadless issues have a hearing in the Senate. And Nancy Pelosi will do the same in the House.

Gee bearbait, we haven't seen you this happy in weeks. How's your new job in vaudeville going? Pretty soon you'll be up there with Milton Berle.

RH

Hoskins: I didn't cause the problem. But I can see it every day. I can count the cars in the trains that go by my house. I see the scrap metal gondolas are fewer, and the rebar going south is less. I don't see chip cars, and the empty lumber cars going north are many more than the ones coming south with lumber on them. The paper box cars are fewer, and I have not seen a car load of logs in almost a year.

I don't know how many readers understand that an economy is built on resource use and conversion. Hydroelectric is created money. Timber is created money. Steel is created money. Selling insurance to the real estate owner can't happen unless a tree is cut, a brick is fired, cement is poured, a keg of nails is manufactured. And until those jobs are abundant and healthy, we are in a fix. Up to our economic asses in alligators.

Timberland is selling for a third of the price it did just three years ago. REITS and TIMO units go begging. And precious metals are hugely valuable right now. You don't see Senator Reid calling for the end to mining, because that is propping up much of rural Nevada. And is a force in other western states. Oil is going to hit $70 a barrel, and maybe a little higher, and then drop down to $70 and hover around there for a long time, which will drain more money from out economy. Just examine money values over the last decade and oil prices per barrel, and that $70 figure in today's dollar looks to be reality.

We can't grow government and government spending at a time when corporate and personal incomes are declining. You can tax the economy in any manner you want, but you can't create more money or business to tax without the money and markets to buy the product. All that has declined. Investments are worth 60% of what they were two years ago. Real estate, stocks, bonds, all the blue chips. That is the new market. We have to understand that. And work it out from there. We can't if we are stuck with union contracts that require raises. That puts state and local governments in the same box as the auto makers. Legacy costs will damp down the ability of governments to produce services. We are headed to the 40 student classroom of the 1950s. We are headed for the 1000 sq ft new home. Just as we are headed for the smaller car, the shorter vacation closer to home. It is called a contraction. A conservation of resources. The pie got smaller because the fluff in the meringue that was our economic growth turned out to be liar loans, junk bonds, rogue traders, ponzi pros, and unrealistic environmental demands on the producing sector of our economy. Much of what we eat, use, build with, comes from foreign suppliers not constrained by greenhouse gas concerns. There is no abatement in the problem, just a displacement of the source.

Tropical rainforest old growth is cut to finance revolutions. The US has to inject a moral and mores deal in our overseas commerce. The Chinese do nothing of the sort. Then they sell products from that wood in our markets here. In reality, we finance the revolution third hand, and the Chinese make friends and employ their citizens, and a profit from our finance, insurance and real estate vigorish. Only we outran our ability to be the financial alchemists of the world, and now we are broke.

The problems here are not the issues about not enough open space or federal land ownership paucity. The problems here are we have to cowboy up and use some resources, create some jobs, stop importing our daily lives, and pay our bills. I don't see that in any part of the roadless issue. The roadless issue does not address one economic issue of import to this country's survival. We have to create jobs, here, and employ people, here, who will pay taxes here, and buy stuff made here, and we might have a chance to survive as a strong, independent country. Roadless rules, and land designation are of no importance, and at the least, an impediment to our economic survival. Even the Chicago Crew understands that. The world changed. We all need to gain some sort of insight on what the demands of the new world are, and how to use our local resources and abilities to make this a better economic climate. Local food, seasonally is a good start. And that money avoids the tax system, and the vigorish extracted by the bureaucrats pushing paper for the sole purpose of looking busy. The grey market money will in turn buy other goods or services, and people with clever and agile minds and a work ethic will thrive. Maybe the future for the disenfranchised auto dealer is to become the rebuilder of used cars to new condition, and sell them a la Cuba. I have seen log trucks that have been originally registered as a 1950 Sterling become a Peterbilt, and then a Kenworth, looking just like new. The old engine, transmission and read ends are installed on a new cab and frame. And over time, all those components are replaced with new or rebuilt. And the 60 year old truck is still hauling logs, and not one original part in it. "Kitted" is the name for that.

It is a new game and a new time. Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" is more germane than ever. It is the economy. And I am happy. My dipping of toes into the new world of sustainable ag, and humics, treating the soil and having plant growth as an extension of soil health, all using far fewer chemical inputs, and no insecticides but Bt and crop oil, have resulted in glorious new growth this spring, with a great fruit set, provident weather to this point, and it is just dandy to see results from making my own sea change in horticulture. And the new important tool is a chemigation tank and pump system made in Colorado (infusing chemistry into an Israeli designed and made drip irrigation system) which allows me to introduce micro amounts of teas and the like, (yesterday it was calcium to give strength to cell walls in the fruit), all of which is being expressed by excellent fruit sizing and amazing plant growth. Even an old timber cruiser can play with the big boys in ag, and have some success with some really new approaches. And what is better, is that my crop advisor is from Wyoming, and had to move West because his wife could not take the wind, always the wind. He was a range specialist and I was a forest products guy. We are having fun tipping over the cart of traditional bomb material fertilization programs and plant care. I am not happy about fruit prices, but I am happy about how much money I save on inputs, and how good the soil is becoming, how the plants have changed, and the prospects of a good crop. Today I am off to plant sunflower seed at the ends of every row to feed native pollinators. Right now they are on my 60 ceanothus (Calif mountain laurel) plants by the thousands. From tiny miner bees to huge female bumbles, and maybe 20 species in between in size. The lavender plants will bloom later this month or in early July. This is too much fun!!!!

if i live in bozeman does my opinion count for how land is managed in the lewis and clark forest? beaverhead? gallatin? what if i want to visit idaho or colorado? am i SOL if i want to visit public land in colorado that has been ripped to pieces?