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

[Jonathan Hanson]

Regarding handicapped access, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Why allow a jeep in, but not make provision for a coach full of senior-citizens? How about the person who can't stand the jarring of a rough road due to a bad back? Regardless of what type of travel you allow or disallow, someone or other gets excluded. I have no objection to making rules, excepts or provisions for people with limited mobility to enjoy wilderness areas, but they should not be used as a trojan horse to allow indiscriminate use by others.

Well put.

 

[Ursidae69]

Lance, then I have a question: Are you now going to give up trying to get handicapped people to experience the outdoors, because of all the land that's now "locked up" as a result of this bill?

Or is it possible there are still hundreds of thousands of miles of trails, and tens of millions of acres of public land, suitable for such an experience?

I know you read the post I put up in another thread, but you seem to be dismissing or ignoring it: Wilderness is about putting the welfare of habitat and wildlife above our own recreational convenience. It's not about locking out everyone who can't backpack 60 pounds 30 miles. Trying to make that the issue won't work as long as I'm reading these threads. Go read the Wilderness Act if you think I'm making this up. It's not long.

I know you're not going to tell me handicapped people are incapable of recognizing a higher cause than their own access, so I really can't grasp the gist of your argument on a theoretical level. If you are unwilling to support the creation of any new wilderness areas, even some that might have relic roads in them, when science shows indisputably that it would benefit the habitat and wildlife there, then I submit that you are not thinking beyond your own desires and fears. That's absolutely fine if you're up front about it, but please don't tacitly accuse those of us who are in favor of new wilderness areas of being against handicapped people. We're for habitat and wildlife, period.

If you think we're losing access, as in a diminution in road and trail mileage, do a bit of research and compare for yourself the miles of roads and 4WD trails on all the public land in the U.S. now, as opposed to, say, 30 years ago. You might be surprised. Also, have you researched to see how many of the roads in these new wilderness areas were wildcat roads to begin with? Have you fallen into the trap of assuming that any well-used road or trail you see is a legal right-of-way? Thousands and thousands of miles of roads and trails on public lands are not. Are you willing to have illegal roads on public land closed down? If you are not, then you are overtly endorsing the behavior of anyone who droves off an established trail.

I'll make a blanket challenge: I don't believe anyone here will, in his or her lifetime, come remotely close to exploring all the existing roads and trails open to 4WD use in the U.S. - or even in one state. We're not running out of roads. We are running short of places where there aren't roads.

Thanks for addressing this Jonathan, I was going to, but no need now. Excellent post.

 

[paulj]

... but I have been to numerous wilderness areas where the roads have been closed.

Could you list some specifics?

At least in Washington I see evidence of boundaries drawn to permit continued use of roads. For example there's a forest service road on the north side of Mt Rainier NP that ends with a trailhead parking lot right at the edge of a designated Wilderness. Clearly the FS did not build the road just give access to the trail; even building the road to provide logging access right up to the Wilderness boundary does not make sense. No, the road was put in first, to provide logging access to an area that was later designated Wilderness.

There may be some exceptions in the newest Washington Wilderness, Wild Sky. But that designation was the result of a long fought battle. And the exceptions in that case are old mine access roads, not popular 4x4 trails.

On the other hand, it is easy to find roads that the forest service (and BLM) have closed for maintenance or administrative reasons. They commonly close roads that are no longer needed for logging, fire fighting, or trail access. Road may be decomissioned - e.g. culverts and bridges removed, and replaced with waterbars and ditches that will allow drainage without much on going maintenance. Roads may also be closed seasonally, for example to protect wildlife during breading season, or to reduce the spread of plant diseases, or to reduce road damage during the wet season. Roads may also be closed to reduce fire danger, or vandalism.

http://www.elementownersclub.com/forums/showpost.php?p=284254&postcount=9

McGruder corridor in Idaho/Montana is a classic case of a road running between wilderness areas.

 

[1leglance]

going to do some more research....but don't worry I'll be back

 

[Jonathan Hanson]

going to do some more research....but don't worry I'll be back

Uh-oh . . .

 

[1leglance]

I guess one thing that confuses me around here sometimes (while I am doing my research)......
In the thread about the Rubicon trail closing many of the same people who in this thread are happy to see areas closed said that closing the Rubicon is a bad thing.
Is not protecting wildlife & nature the same regardless of how famous an area is?

I am not in favor of destruction, I would be happy to see permits, training, increased fees and whatever else folks can come up with to keep areas open and idiot free..

I am fine with less mining, resource extraction. I think we need to make do with less metal, oil, natural gas, and such. It is just less access I worry about.

Ok back to my research....at least I know what I will be doing on the computer at work tonight.

 

[luk4mud]

Could you list some specifics?

At least in Washington I see evidence of boundaries drawn to permit continued use of roads. For example there's a forest service road on the north side of Mt Rainier NP that ends with a trailhead parking lot right at the edge of a designated Wilderness. Clearly the FS did not build the road just give access to the trail; even building the road to provide logging access right up to the Wilderness boundary does not make sense. No, the road was put in first, to provide logging access to an area that was later designated Wilderness.

There may be some exceptions in the newest Washington Wilderness, Wild Sky. But that designation was the result of a long fought battle. And the exceptions in that case are old mine access roads, not popular 4x4 trails.

On the other hand, it is easy to find roads that the forest service (and BLM) have closed for maintenance or administrative reasons. They commonly close roads that are no longer needed for logging, fire fighting, or trail access. Road may be decomissioned - e.g. culverts and bridges removed, and replaced with waterbars and ditches that will allow drainage without much on going maintenance. Roads may also be closed seasonally, for example to protect wildlife during breading season, or to reduce the spread of plant diseases, or to reduce road damage during the wet season. Roads may also be closed to reduce fire danger, or vandalism.

http://www.elementownersclub.com/forums/showpost.php?p=284254&postcount=9

McGruder corridor in Idaho/Montana is a classic case of a road running between wilderness areas.

First, I want to note the respectful tone of all involved thusfar in this thread. It's a refreshing part of this forum that members don't engage in the nonsense found most other places on the internet.

To address your question, South Sierra Wilderness and Golden Trout Wilderness come to mind immediately. When those areas were designated wilderness 10 or so years ago, roads into them were closed. There used to be a really neat jeep trail heading north out of Monache Meadows that is no more. Roads down into Jordan Hot Springs and adjacent areas were also closed. I know there are other wilderness areas that have met a similar fate, and I'll post up when they come to mind.

I agree that there are areas where existing roads are left open and everything around them designated wilderness. That's a neat solution if it is permamnent, but I don't think that's always the case. it's too easy later to claim that the road is being overused/ abused/ misused and get it closed. Locals know this all too well and that is one of the reasons they fight to keep land from being designated wilderness in the first place.

Given the apparent plans to remodel the Bristlecone Visitor center, it looks like they may not be a present plan to close the road, and that's great to hear in the short term. We'll see what happens long term.

 

[Jonathan Hanson]

I guess one thing that confuses me around here sometimes (while I am doing my research)......
In the thread about the Rubicon trail closing many of the same people who in this thread are happy to see areas closed said that closing the Rubicon is a bad thing.
Is not protecting wildlife & nature the same regardless of how famous an area is?

Lance, to answer that question I'll turn it around on you. If you're concerned about access to nature for handicapped and elderly people, why are you not lobbying for roads to be built to the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Or the top of Mt. Rainier? Etc. etc.?

Because, like me, you are not a lunatic. You believe in balance. You don't think there should be roads everywhere just so handicapped people can access every single spot that able-bodied people can access, and I don't believe we should decommission every road into every wild area just because it would make better habitat.

My simple stance is, 94 percent of our country is not wilderness. That leaves a fragile fraction of the natural legacy we were granted when we colonized this country. To me, and many others, six percent wilderness and 94 percent non-wilderness is not balance.

I'm a realist. There is little hope, given the realities of politics, population, funding, and a dozen other factors, that we will ever add more than another three or four percent to that total. I think we could afford that four percent. As I said before, wherever and whenever we put the welfare of habitat and wildlife ahead of our own recreation, it speaks highly of us.

I think those who fight wilderness proposals would do far more good for their goals of motorized access if they instead lobbied for increased funding for all open space preservation. You're here now arguing about, what, a few hundred miles of (legal) road that might be cut off by these new wilderness areas? In the meantime, thousands of miles of roads and trails on public land are being decommissioned due to budget cuts.

Again, as I said before - I'd like to see our country designate more of all kinds of open space, roaded and non-roaded. Would anyone here have a problem with that?

 

[nwoods]

I'll make a blanket challenge: I don't believe anyone here will, in his or her lifetime, come remotely close to exploring all the existing roads and trails open to 4WD use in the U.S. - or even in one state. We're not running out of roads. We are running short of places where there aren't roads.

I'd have to disagree in a local context. There are MANY places in California where roads exist, but these dammed little signs say they don't:

You find them in places like this:

What we need are more signs like this!

 

[paulj]

Here's an example of the connection between road conditions and budgets.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/mbs/news/20...ay-for-roads-trails-facilities-20090122.shtml

It says the some 10 million dollars were allocated by congress last fall to repair roads and trails in 2 Washington national forests. I have driven a couple of the roads that finally be repaired, after being damaged in storms in 2003. I also hiked some the trails mentioned.

But some of the money will also go to removing roads

The forest will remove 31 miles of road and treat nine miles of road to require minimal maintenance....

and

The $2,057,996 for roads will rebuild three bridges; repair one road and remove nine miles of road no longer needed for management or public access purposes, and should be finished by the end of this year. Some of these projects will restore road access to Glacier Peak Wilderness trailheads inaccessible for nearly six years.

One of the trails, Big Four Ice Caves, was rebuilt a few years ago to actually be usable by wheelchairs (gravel, but no steps), but recent storms wiped out a major bridge. It was a very popular one with families, giving access to some of the lowest ice in the Washington Cascades.

 

[Colorado David]

I was considering starting a new topic, but I think this might be the place to post this. I read a lot. I like to read before falling asleep, so my side of the bed collects a small stack of books and periodicals. I was going through the stack the other day and ran across the fall issue of the Trout Unlimited magazine. I am a member of several different species-specific conservation organizations. Occasionally I will find their goals in conflict with one another.

I'm sure there are TU members here on ExPo and maybe this has already been discussed. The fall issue had an article about the use of vehicles in the back country. The author (or perhaps his editor) used OHV, ORV, ATV and Quad interchangeably. After reading his bio in the front of the magazine, I was convinced he knew the difference, thus my reference to his editor. He is a field editor for Field and Stream, writes a lot for cold water fisheries magazines and lives in Colorado. More to the point, the intermingled use of vehicle names led me to believe the magazine, while trying to appear balanced, was firing a shot over the bow of all off-highway vehicle use. It was plain to me that the lion's share of the blame for the damage to trout habitat was blamed on the Quad. However, the reader not familiar with different vehicles would be left to spread the blame equally among all off-highway vehicle users. The photos used to illustrate the story were stock images of jeeps leaving rooster tails in the mud and one expo vehicle with a roof tent driving off trail. There was only one photo of a quad and it was in a sidebar about appropriate driving responsibilities.

We all have a need to use and protect scarce resources. We have more power together. As conservationists first, we need to work towards the common ground that can allow us to work together to conserve our wild lands. If the horsemen and the fly fishers, the upland hunters and the hikers, the off-highway expo travelers and all the others dig in and fight, we'll just wind up with the circular firing squad and we all lose.

 

[kellymoe]

Someone earlier asked if they had seen real roads closed to vehicle use, I have seen a few close over the years that i have to say really bummed me out. The first to go was a road that accessed Upper Little Rock Creek in the San Gabriels. I used the 4x4 road as a way to get to the creek for kayaking. The FS closed the road for 4 years, that was 12-14 years ago. The next was a road into Sespe Creek, this was closed "temporarily".

Another area whos roads were closed are in the Saline Valley area. There were several cherry stem roads in the Northern area of the valley that were extremely fun and that we traveledon a yearly basis, as far as we knew we were the only group to travel the road on a regular basis. These roads were closed when the Saline Valley became part of Death Valley Nat. Park.

I want to see wilderness areas maintained as much as anyone but there has to be a middle ground that unfortunetly is a tough thing to ask in a partisan country such as ours. I am an avid climber, kayaker, back country skier, I don't like the trend I have witnessed first hand in my local mountains that have either limited my use or stopped it all together.

The good news is that the bill this thread refers to seems to include a majority of the roads and cherry stems.

Oh and th eargument between the impact of horses and mtn bikes is night and day. Horses in desert areas and dry mountain areas tend to turn the soil to powder in addition to building ruts in the trail that will never recover. Mountain bikes cause a narrower rut that will never go away but tend to pack the dirt down and not powder the soil. The argument of a wayward biker causing destruction can just as easily be used against horses. From my personal experience horses cause much more destruction in the Sierras than mountain bikes, I am speaking of areas and trails near Bishop that are open to both pack horses and Mt. Bikes.

Please excuse any spelling mistakes, I am on a work computer that does not allow spell checker download.

 

[paulj]

One would have to know a lot more about US law and regulations to understand why various roads and tracks are included or not in Wilderness areas. The initial designation of Wilderness areas as the 1964 act
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=legisAct#2
The basic provision regarding roads in this act is:

(c) Except as specifically provided for in this Act, and subject to existing private rights, there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this Act and, except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this Act (including measures required in emergencies involving the health and safety of persons within the area), there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area.

But Golden Trout was established in a 1978 act, and South Sierra in the California Wilderness Act of 1984. I glanced through the 1984 act, but couldn't find details about roads. It does mention allowing the continuation of grazing. South Sierra is mentioned by name, but apparent the details of the proposal are in some other document.

Prior to the the March Omnibus, the most recent Wilderness act was Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 which included the Washington Wildsky Wilderness.

And from Wilderness.net
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=misconceptions

MISCONCEPTION: Wilderness is a "lock-up" of land that locks people out. Hiking by foot is the only means of travel within Wilderness, and Wilderness prohibits many types of recreation.

In fact, more than 12 million people visit Wilderness each year on their own or with a guide to climb mountains, ride horses, hunt game, fish blue-ribbon trout streams, ski snowcapped peaks, raft rivers, canoe lakes, take pictures and stargaze. In short, most types of recreational uses are allowed in Wilderness, except those needing mechanical transport or motorized equipment, such as motorboats, cars, trucks, off-road vehicles, bicycles and snowmobiles. Exceptions include wheelchairs and, in Alaska, certain mechanized and motorized uses associated with traditional activities and subsistence.

The bottom of this page discusses how ADA (1990) intersects with the Wilderness acts
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=legisoverview
more on the management of wilderness areas here:
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=manageIssues#3

This varies by area, but off-road vehicles, such as snowmobiles, and wheeled vehicles, such as bicycles, are illegal in wilderness and are often cited. Where the wilderness borders a road or off-road vehicle trail or where vehicles had historically been used in that wilderness, vehicle trespass can be a serious problem.

implies that Wilderness areas can, and have, included places 'where vehicles had historically been used'.

I suspect the greatest concentration of closed roads and tracks are the result of the California Desert Act of 1994, which also established Joshua Tree and Death Valley NPs. For example, this description of Sacatar Trail Wilderness just off US395
http://www.blm.gov/ca/pa/wilderness/wa/areas/sacatar_trail.html says

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Signs indicating "Wilderness" and "Closed Road" or "Closed Route" are placed at various intervals. Vehicles can be parked outside the wilderness boundary; however, the boundary is set back 30 feet from unmaintained dirt roads and 300 feet on paved roads.[/FONT]

 

[PathfinderTR]

Its getting to the point where USA is less and less appealing as a place to live.
http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12032734

I disagree as well. It's things like this that make me proud to live here!! As mentioned, I'd rather have lots of prestine wildlife areas where I am not able to drive, then mountain sides of strip mines where I wouldn't want to drive!

 

[paulj]

While 4-5% of the US area is designated WIlderness, half of that area is in Alaska.

Currently [as of Jan 2009], the National Wilderness Preservation System contains 107,361,680 acres. However, only 4.72% of the entire United States-an area slightly larger than the state of California-is protected as Wilderness. Since 53% of America's Wilderness is found in Alaska, only 2.62% of the contiguous United States-an area about the size of South Dakota-is protected as Wilderness.

from wilderness.net