2.1 millon acres gone - Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009

[teotwaki]

I am trying to understand why people act as though every Wilderness designation is an irreparable loss to their recreational interests and personal rights. Most places where I have looked, Wilderness boundaries deliberately exclude preexisting roads.

I am learning from your examples, and a bit of my own digging, that there are some exceptions to this, primarily in the California desert, and in and around Death Valley NP in particular. I am trying to get a clearer understanding of those exceptions. Did someone, either during the writing of the legislation, or later administration of the act consider them to be too informal to exclude? Are they blocked because of their inclusion in the NP, not because of their inclusion in a designated Wilderness? There are, for example, backroads that remain open in Death Valley. The Saline hot springs and its access road probably is cherrystemmed out of any adjacent Wilderness areas.

Basically I am trying to get a clear picture of just how much Wilderness designations have inconvenienced backcountry expedition style travelers. That would include roads that I might be interested in driving, whether in my current cute-ute or something more capable (like a Tacoma). I am less interested in how various administrative actions (by FS or BLM) have limited the play areas open to ORV, especially ATVs that can leave roads and tearup mountain meadows.

If you look at this map that shows the "preexisting" route to the Salt Tram Cabin and over to Cerro Gordo you can pick out some of the 4WD marked side trails. There are more that are not shown. They are all closed with BLM wilderness "restoration" markers such that you cannot vehicle camp very many places, especially anywhere that is away from the "preexisiting" trail more than about 20 feet.

http://s100673777.onlinehome.us/xtras/maps/rr8/maps/inyo_crest.pdf

Basically they left the main route open but squeezed it heavily and it can be claimed that they did not really close any "roads" because cherry stems don't qualify as roads since they are dead ends, right? Next you know someone will protest the "excessive" trail erosion or the engine oil spills and the whole thing will be closed. Boiling the frog by degrees.

 

[paulj]

http://s100673777.onlinehome.us/xtras/maps/rr8/maps/inyo_crest.pdf

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Some of the lower elevations on this map (particularly where the marked route approaches Keeler) are in the Cerro Grodo Wilderness Study Area

http://www.friendsoftheinyo.org/foi/cgordo

I haven't found a map for the Inyo Mountains Wilderness which probably contains the upland areas on your map.

 

[paulj]

Here a collection of maps of BLM lands affected by the March Omnibus bill

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/blm_special_areas/NLCS/maps/2009_Designation_maps.html

This page has links to a map of BLM lands, with Wilderness, and Wilderness study areas marked.

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/blm_special_areas/NLCS/Wilderness.html

At this this scale you can't identify much about individual areas, but it gives a sense of relative proportions. I believe most, if not all, recently designated Wilderness area where originally WSA. That may even be true of the 1994 designations.

Of course this does not include FS wilderness areas. However I suspect most access conflicts occur on BLM lands. They are more likely to be open (grass lands and desert), and crisscrossed with mining roads and claims.

 

[paulj]

I found a website calls rs2477roads.com

It focuses on rs2477 fights, primarily between public access advocates and private lands rights. Apparently a lot of the cases where people are claiming public access under this Civil War era provision, it is against private land owners, ranchers and such, who claim such tracks are on private land. The public access side does not seem to be doing too well in the courts.

One case, mentioned in the Mother Jones article, is Barking Dog near Boulder Colorado. That's turning into an embarrassment for the public access side, since the latest evidence is that the road was originally put in by a mining company for access to their claim - so despite many years of public use, it does not quality under 2477. The initial 2477 claims were based on shoddy historical research.

 

[teotwaki]

Some of the lower elevations on this map (particularly where the marked route approaches Keeler) are in the Cerro Grodo Wilderness Study Area

http://www.friendsoftheinyo.org/foi/cgordo

I haven't found a map for the Inyo Mountains Wilderness which probably contains the upland areas on your map.

Thanks for the maps and the steady flow of relevant information! :sombrero::sombrero:

Based on the Wiki definition it really makes no sense that the area is a WSA as it has both roads and man-made structures. A WSA looks to be just another tool for closing areas down without much debate.

A wilderness study area (WSA) contains undeveloped United States federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, and managed to preserve its natural conditions. WSAs are not included in the National Wilderness Preservation System until the United States Congress passes wilderness legislation.

Map of BLM Wilderness Study Areas.On Bureau of Land Management lands, a WSA is a roadless area that has been inventoried (but not designated by Congress) and found to have wilderness characteristics as described in Section 603 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and Section 2(c) of the Wilderness Act of 1964. Wilderness Study Area characteristics:

Size - roadless areas of at least 5,000 acres (20 km2) of public lands or of a manageable size;
Naturalness - generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature;
Opportunities - provides outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined types of recreation.[1]

BLM manages wilderness study areas under the National Landscape Conservation System to protect their value as wilderness until Congress decides whether or not to designate them as wilderness. Wilderness bills often include so-called "release language" that eliminates WSAs not selected for wilderness designation.

Some WSAs are managed exactly the same as wilderness areas, and the rules for others permit activities that are generally excluded from wilderness. For example, some WSAs allow mountain bikes and off-road vehicles.

The BLM document of June 1988 is here
http://www.blm.gov/ca/pa/wilderness/wilderness_pdfs/wilderness_study_reports/CerroGordo.pdf
and it says that this should not be Wilderness. Something must have happened since then cause sure as heck all the side roads are blocked.

The link you provided says: Prior to 1994, Cerro Gordo WSA included 16,102 acres of land in the Inyo Mountains. After passage of the California Desert Protection Act (1994), most of the land in Cerro Gordo WSA became designated wilderness, save the 5,800 acres that today remain under WSA status

I smell a scam as this portion never made it into the official wilderness designations but somehow just enough over the 5k minimum acreage was kept to hang onto the WSA designation and lock out off-roading.

 

[paulj]

Various portions of the March bill released study areas. My guess is that released area was about 1/4 th of the newly designated area (i.e. areas transformed from WSA to full). That may have been part of the compromise needed to get local support for the respective sections.

While it takes an act of Congress to designate a Wilderness area, I don't know what it takes to release as WSA. I think most WSAs were setup up during surveys in 1979 or earlier.

I don't know enough about the 1994 act to say why this Cerro Gordo piece was not released or made part of the IM Wilderness. Maybe it was too close town, so the 1994 writers chose to postpone action on it. I don't know if its status was debated last year during the hearings on the Eastern Sierra Bill. Mono County officials seemed to be more cooperative on this matter than Inyo ones, so Rep. McKeon's staff may have just opted to ignore WSAs like this.

The 5000 acre limit may apply to areas that end up being Wilderness. I'm not sure it applies to WSAs or remnants of WSAs. I don't think additions to existing Wilderness Areas have come in 5000 acre blocks. Also the 5000 acre limit probably does not require that the area be in one contiguous block.

According to the Death Valley NP, its Wilderness area is broken up into 35 separate blocks. The blocks are separated by open roads.

Some of the map pages for the latest Eastern Sierra act note changes in the set back area around roads of different types. Local negotiations for that act may have resulted in a widening of the open road corridors, so as to address concerns like yours regarding access.

 

[paulj]

Here's a BLM report, apparently from around 1990, which recommends that the larger Cerro Gordo WSA not become Wilderness. It discusses the various criteria and how they apply, or not, in this case. There are also a couple of maps.

http://www.blm.gov/ca/pa/wilderness/wilderness_pdfs/wilderness_study_reports/CerroGordo.pdf

Here's a pro-wilderness description of Inyo Mtns Wilderness. At the end there's a map of the Wilderness area. Area boundaries at the south end appear to outline the road in your map. The map may not be distinguishing fully between the IMW and the CG WSA.


http://www.friendsoftheinyo.org/web-content/pages/publications/NATURENOTES/naturenoteinyos.pdf


Full text for the March Omnibus, HR 146 is here (via this BLM page http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html )
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/media...tion.Par.32579.File.dat/HR146enrolledbill.pdf