Moab and more closing?

[paulj]

My guess is that BLM currently recognizes it as a road, it will remain accessible. If the county is trying to claim it is a road under that Civilwar era law, it might not.

My guess is that separately named units in the bill are continuous, separated by roads of some sort. Deadend roads may be 'cherry-stemmed', outlined on the detailed maps (separate from the surrounding wilderness).

A related question is whether any of the proposed boundaries have changed since the bill was first introduced in 1989. User created tracks are more likely to be closed than ones that had clear evidence of use when the initial wilderness surveys were done.

 

[Colorado Ron]

I promise you 99% of all this would stop the first time people heard that the authorities were not issuing tickets for being off trail. They were confiscating your vehicle which was then auctioned off to help pay for the damages caused by people that cant seem to stay on the trail. You know how fast most of this crap would stop and we wouldnt have to close a single trail.

 

[ttora4runner]

Just read that of some 638,000 (don't quite remember the exact number but that's close enough)half of that is being closed to motorized travel )new wilderness area) and the other half will be limited to designated routes.

They are still working on the map.

 

[Dave Bennett]

I promise you 99% of all this would stop the first time people heard that the authorities were not issuing tickets for being off trail. They were confiscating your vehicle which was then auctioned off to help pay for the damages caused by people that cant seem to stay on the trail. You know how fast most of this crap would stop and we wouldnt have to close a single trail.

Bingo!!! :Wow1:

 

[laxtoy]

http://www.suwa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=work_arwa

has a history of this bill, originally introduced in 1989, and links to maps

Maps and details can be found here
http://www.protectwildutah.org/proposal/index.html

you know what i find the most unnerving? in the list of cosponsors of this bill, there is not one representative/senator from utah. the bill is sponsored by a governor from new york, and a senator from illinois. in fact of the bills closest sponsors, two are from colorado, one from arizona, and the rest from states who share no border, and have little idea of the impact of such a closure to the areas economy and the future of outdoors enthusiasts. it truly makes me sad that i may soon be scratching a series of names from the places i would very much like to see.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

you know what i find the most unnerving? in the list of cosponsors of this bill, there is not one representative/senator from utah. the bill is sponsored by a governor from new york, and a senator from illinois. in fact of the bills closest sponsors, two are from colorado, one from arizona, and the rest from states who share no border, and have little idea of the impact of such a closure to the areas economy and the future of outdoors enthusiasts. it truly makes me sad that i may soon be scratching a series of names from the places i would very much like to see.

x2

Rest assured, there is still plenty to see and do in Utah, but this will further coral a growing number of users onto a dwindling number of trails, thus propagating future closures in the name of resource damage and over impact.

 

[craig333]

I wouldn't have a problem with confiscating vehicles if I could be sure it would enforced properly and not have some ranger go "you're six inches off the trail bud, you're under arrest".

 

[proto]

One thing we can all do is participate in the "Give A Punk A Ride" program: when you see somebody tearing up the landscape distract them with a chat about their machine. Work the conversation around to where you're offering them a ride in your rig "to see what it can do". This gives you the opportunity to explain "Anybody can do it with power. Challenge yourself to do it with precision."

Next thing you know, you have a former punk showing his punk friends the new way -- believe me, few things are stronger than peer pressure.

(This involves way less paperwork than the "Shotgun, Shovel, and 40 Acres" program.)

 

[Redrock]

I'm speaking as somebody with a foot in both camps - I'm a conservation biologist and very enthusiastic about backcountry vehicle travel - but I can't help but view this as a good thing overall. It's a sad fact, but some proportion of the offroad community behaves with incredible arrogance, disregard, and disrespect, such as those idiots with bikes in the Wilderness Study Area. And the rest of us have to pay the price.

Enforcement is incredibly expensive, but I agree with the guy above who opined that stepped-up patrols and immediate confiscation of one's vehicle, to be auctioned to pay for conservation efforts, would curtail a lot of this. Restricting quads would be unpopular, but also probably effective - I too have observed that they're responsible for a lot of this, and they seem to be the vehicle of choice for stupid yahoos who think the desert is disposable.

Fundamentally, I've got to side with the conservation camp. The desert - and wilderness in general - isn't out there for our leisure or our convenience. I firmly believe that the natural world has inherent value all its own, and that if people don't respect it they don't deserve to infringe on it.

 

[GunnIt]

This is from a previous thread that I started 1/28/09, titled: Locking out Over-landers
This area is contiguous to some of the proposed wilderness areas.

Environmental groups are trying to lock over-landers out of hundreds of thousands of acres of access in areas that have established roads and trails. The roads they are asking to be closed have been in existence since horses were abandoned as the main form of transportation. These areas are vast and remote, they are lacking of any reliable water resources which would prohibit any other means of access (horses or hiking). If these roads are closed, few if any people will ever see it.

Original story here:

http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2...cal_189762.txt

Suit filed on motorized vehicle use on Arizona Strip national monuments

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Grand Canyon Wildlands Council and other environmental groups filed suit Monday, arguing that the Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs national monuments are too open to motorized vehicles.

The Sierra Club, Earthjustice and Arizona Wilderness Coalition, among others, sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, stating that the agency's rules allowed too much travel on about 1 million acres of the remote monuments, and that solitude and wildlife habitat were being destroyed as a result. The monuments were created in 2000, by then-president Bill Clinton, who signed proclamations stating that vehicular use there should be banned, outside of emergencies and government agencies, according to the groups.

The groups also opposed livestock grazing on the monuments, saying the government had not adequately considered whether it would impact the desert tortoise, relict leopard frog, desert bighorn sheep and federally listed threatened plant species.

-- Sun staff report

 

[paulj]

The bill that is the subject of this thread has been introduced repeatedly since 1989, so is nothing new - though there is increased chance that it will pass this time.

The lawsuits have to do with BLM's land use plans, which is a different matter. I found two statements describing the suits. One complains about ' increased off-road vehicle use caused by more than 1,700 newly-designated routes across the Arizona Strip', the other about 'Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service for their failure to protect endangered California condors in the Grand Canyon from toxic lead ammunition'

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/01/26-9

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2009/condor-lead-03-25-2009.html

It is not obvious that either suit seeks to ban all road access into the Arizona Strip.

 

[GunnIt]

The bill that is the subject of this thread has been introduced repeatedly since 1989, so is nothing new - though there is increased chance that it will pass this time.

The lawsuits have to do with BLM's land use plans, which is a different matter. I found two statements describing the suits. One complains about ' increased off-road vehicle use caused by more than 1,700 newly-designated routes across the Arizona Strip', the other about 'Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service for their failure to protect endangered California condors in the Grand Canyon from toxic lead ammunition'

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/01/26-9

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2009/condor-lead-03-25-2009.html

It is not obvious that either suit seeks to ban all road access into the Arizona Strip.

The "1,700 newly-designated routes" are all the recognized roads and trails on the strip. The first article states "These National Monuments were set aside to protect irreplaceable cultural resources and wildlife," said McCrystie Adams of Earthjustice. "By authorizing ORVs to criss-cross these remote lands, BLM is ensuring the destruction of these values, rather than their protection."

Looks to me like they are trying to ban all road access in these monuments. As for the Condors and lead...The Center for Biodiversity is trying to ban all lead bullets everywhere. This area and parts of California just happen to be ground zero in this effort.

 

[paulj]

Looks to me like they are trying to ban all road access in these monuments.

I don't see that.

 

[johnnyrover]

If my local DNR has the power to take vehicles and licenses for keeping a fish outside legal limits, why is it so hard for someone to just confiscate vehicles and licenses that go out of bounds?

It really seems like it should be much easier than it is, and the original poster is right - once this happens to a few people, everyone would pay more attention to boundaries.

 

[Redrock]

Environmental groups are trying to lock over-landers out of hundreds of thousands of acres of access in areas that have established roads and trails. The roads they are asking to be closed have been in existence since horses were abandoned as the main form of transportation. These areas are vast and remote, they are lacking of any reliable water resources which would prohibit any other means of access (horses or hiking). If these roads are closed, few if any people will ever see it.

Having worked for and with a lot of land management and environmental protection agencies, there's a certain perception, not entirely without merit, that if you give OHV users an inch, they'll take a yard. For every square mile of road surface, another square mile or two of terrain is impacted by unauthorized off-trail use. If, as a rule, OHV users stayed on established roads and trails and minimized off-trail use and soil damage, we'd have a much better argument for our continued access to them. But when a small minority of idiots insists on doing donuts in the desert, running down Joshua trees, rutting up cryptobiotic soils, driving completely off trail across basins and flats, and cutting corners....those of us who use them right simply don't much matter. The idiot few do enough damage for all of us.