Moab and more closing?

[robert j. yates]

But I can personally name routes that are currently closed to Wilderness, are temporarily (defacto permenantly) closed to Wilderness Study Areas and would be closed under actual Wilderness. These were not 'wash routes' or 'user created routes in the recent years', these were routes shown as "Jeep Road" on maps 50 years ago. Routes discussed in old trail guides, hiking books, history articles, etc. Routes that were shown as "XXX Trail" on even BLM maps. Counties here are having to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to defend these routes against groups like SUWA that bill them off as 'seldom used two-tracks'.

I know I am late to the party but I perhaps have one of the best example of this.....

I am part of a consortium that owns land at the top of Surprise Canyon adjacent to Panamint City. Surprise Canyon was home to many different mines and in fact was paved until the El Nino in 1980. It is currently closed to vehicular travel due to the BLM caving in to the CBD with respect to resource protection in the canyon.

What I would like to know is how a canyon that was heavily mined, with a city containing at one time several thousand residents, and was fully paved can now be considered wilderness? Also, how did "they" come up with the new sub deisgnation of the canyon stream as a wild and scenic river when it was actually at one time as I have mentioned, fully paved?

Now all of this might be worth arguing based on the canyon as a resource but here is the point..... it was in fact cherry stemmed out of the Death Valley National Monument enabling legislation as a road and now despite that protection, it is closed to vehicular travel.

What we have is a clear example of land use policy via lawsuit and the deeper pockets won. Shameful and no less so than SUWAS' tactics in Utah. A pox on all of the conservation movements that have bought into these tactics. I for one back the BRC as it is really the only way to ward off these types of tactics that are clearly based on the conservation movements' negative viewpoint towards vehicular based access to public lands.