| IN
THIS ISSUE: |
IN
A BROAD SENSE:
KEEPING IT WILD
by Ronni Egan |
 |
Motorcyclist in Arch Canyon, Utah.
|
With summer full upon us we here at Broads are endeavoring to spend as much time as possible “out there” in the places we strive so hard to protect. We hope that you are doing much the same whenever you can.
As I mentioned in the last Broadsides, there are now even more places sheltered by the Wilderness Act as several wilderness bills passed last fall. Keeping the momentum going, the first quarter of 2007 has seen the introduction of a number of wilderness bills (see pg. 8-9), including new wilderness in Rocky Mountain National Park. The latter effort represents a remarkable bipartisan collaboration between Democratic and Republican legislators in Colorado, with Rep. Mark Udall taking the lead and persuading ultra-conservative Rep. Marilyn Musgrave to join with him to protect a huge swath of wildlands in northern Colorado.
The good news for Broads, however, isn’t just more congressionally designated wilderness. Broads is on the forefront of a number of issues that affect the health and physical integrity of roadless areas in the national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, wildlife refuges, national monuments, and state lands.
One of these issues is the Bush administration’s efforts to eliminate protections for inventoried roadless areas. Most governors of states containing these relatively unspoiled lands have opted to maintain Clinton-era bans on extractive uses and road building, but a handful, including Colorado’s Gov. Bill Ritter, chose to submit petitions to the federal government stipulating varying management regimes ranging from full fledged development to serious restrictions on impacts.
The final decision in each case is left up to the Undersecretary of Agriculture, Mark Rey, a former timber lobbyist. This, of course, is tantamount to letting the fox guard the henhouse. However, responding to a request from Gov. Ritter, Rey said in May that federal authorities will keep the inventoried roadless areas in Colorado off-limits to most development during the 16 to 18 months it takes to complete roadless rules specific to Colorado. This is welcome news indeed to us Colorado “tree-huggers!” Great Old Broads has signed on to many comments regarding the Bush Roadless Rule, and participated in the Colorado Roadless Rule hearings. I can’t say for sure, but I’d love to think that public outcry from thousands of citizens is beginning to register in D.C., at least on forest issues!
Another field in which some progress is beginning to be seen, which Broads is also working on diligently, is that of unmanaged or poorly managed motorized recreation on our public lands. In 2005, then Chief of the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, mandated that all national forests must have Travel Plans in place within four years, largely ending cross-country motorized travel and designating routes. A similar process is now being implemented on BLM lands. Land managers, motorized recreationists, and environmental groups around the country have been hard at work collecting information on conditions on the ground, and making their respective cases for their preferred route designations.
This is an arena in which Broads is playing an increasingly important role with our Broads Healthy Lands Project (BHLP) and GINGER database. A picture is worth more than the proverbial thousand words, and data provided by BHLP is being used in the travel planning process to illustrate the impacts of unauthorized, redundant, and ill-conceived routes.
The most effective use to date of our information has been in San Juan County, Utah, where we have mounted our Recapture Utah! campaign, featured in the last issue of Broadsides. In late April, we hosted our Recapture Utah! monitoring event. The information gathered will be used to bring pressure upon the BLM to adhere to its own regulations and to prosecute illegal behavior instead of rewarding scofflaws.
Some highlights of the campaign are: the National Trust for Historic Places sent a very strongly worded letter to Utah state BLM Director, Selma Sierra, requesting immediate closure of the illegally constructed Recapture Wash ATV route and criminal prosecution of the builders; the abrupt transfer of the Monticello Field Office Manager following the issuance of a one year jeep event permit in famous Arch Canyon (they had applied for a 5 year permit); the opening of a criminal investigation by a BLM Special Agent of illegally constructed routes in San Juan County; the opening of an internal investigation of the Monticello Field Office by the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General and; perhaps best of all, the formation of the new grassroots group Canyon Country Heritage Association (CCHA) in tiny Bluff, Utah. CCHA along with Broads has been (grudgingly) invited to the formerly secret meetings between San Juan County, the BLM and SPEAR, the local ATV group.
Late in May San Juan County Commissioner Lynn Stevens, who achieved a sort of notoriety by leading an illegal commercial jeep tour up Arch Canyon two years ago in defiance of the BLM, resigned from his position as head of Utah’s Public Lands Policy Coordination Office. In this role Stevens handed out hundreds of thousands of public dollars to Utah counties to defray the costs of their legal battles with federal agencies over control of federal lands. This cozy relationship was decried by environmental groups and Native American tribes as a monumental conflict of interest. Whatever his reason for resigning, we are happy to see him leave his post after some highly suspect deals and relationships, which has been how public lands management in this remote and fragile corner of Utah has been run for decades.
We are receiving frequent “intelligence” on agencies closing routes to guard against abuse. While there is still a long way to go toward a more responsible recreating public and serious agency management, we definitely get the feeling that the word is getting out that rogue behavior is becoming less and less tolerated. It is finally dawning on the “good citizens” among off-roaders that destructive and illegal riding jeopardizes everyone’s ability to enjoy their chosen sport.
In conclusion, I want to quote one of my major wilderness heroes, Edward Abbey, whose advice to activists and lovers of wild places has never rung so true: “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder...Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and...I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.” |
|
|
|
Into the Wilderness: One Step at a Time