Know thy enemy! Read if you care about your trails!

Good info man. I don't know about trail situations here in mo but I definitely want to keep places open around the u.s. Simply for the sake of protecting fellow Offroad enthusiasts rights

 

The new BLM directive to inventory all area with "Wilderness Charicteristics" is of more concern to me. I am from Idaho and I have seen significant portions of my favorite deserts closed due to Wilderness designations or Wild River Designations or Wilderness study areas. Enough is enough and I am sick of the of the Liberal coastal states trying to regulate how I enjoy my local areas. Same goes for wolves.

 

Aw man I know about wolves up there that's some bull

 

I stay involved as best I can, but it is difficult from where I am. The only times I get to the states are in the fall for a few weeks. So I do most of my politicking remotely. I have the personal emails of the Chairman for Idaho Fish and Game and the Chief of Staff for one of Idaho's Federal Senators. We have a very good dialogue and the opinions and desires of myself and those I know are relayed on a consistent basis. Most recently I prepared a proposal to the IDFG to change some boundary unit designations by providing biological and terrain justification.

I do my best, but I work overseas (currently Afghanistan) and it is difficult sometimes.

 

Better yet, I am putting in an offer tomorrow on a 160 acres of my favorite country in that same desert. I can be my own steward then and the GOV will be required to leave me the existing road access across BLM land. The lot is 1mile x 1/4mile and is flat enough I can have my own airstrip as well.

I'm ready to come home now and start building.

back to the original point of the thread, yes offroad enthusiasts in the area are organizing and hopefully the spread of Federal and State land regulation can be reduced.

Killer Chicken, you have my sympathy being from Washington and dealing with the liberal agenda there. I did my grad studies in Seattle (my sister lives there) and there are far to many people with far too much money who think your ideas should be theirs.

Keep up the fight.

 

Honestly I dont see Sierra to be enemy. They doing whats right by them and winning. If OHV community can not organize better then well we not gonna get access. I rather see land become wildlife preserve then another shopping mall that will get abandoned in few years, then fence off in order to prevent any liability.
The true enemy is business/developers who take large chunks of land waste on some idiotic project then when owners file for bankruptcy its get abandon.
I would rather see some way of working together with Sierra.

 

Very true statement for the northeast. I also agree with you that the enemy is not neccissarily the Sierra Club, but in my opinion more radical groups with a penchant for debilitating lawsuits like the Wilderness Society , Western Watersheds or Defenders of Wildlife.

West of the Mississippi we have large tracts of open land until you hit the coasts. In most cases a crappy development is not feasable due to proximity to urban centers and no market.

Here's the compromise. You manage your state lands and we will manage ours without the interference of the Feds. Defund the BLM, Forest Sevice, Bureau of Reclamation, EPA, National Park Service and similar institutions. The rule should be if you aren't from an area or at least based there then you have no say. This goes for those who petitioned for the reintroduction of wolves in the Pacific Northwest (Namely Idaho, Montana and Wyoming). 95% of all people who signed that petition where from coastal urban centers. I scanned the first 30 pages or so and all I read was New York, California and Florida.

 

I pretty much agree. I have a hand in both sides of the issue. I do a lot of wilderness exploration while backpacking and hiking so I like what the Sierra club does. I too however believe that if a trail has historically been open for vehicular travel then it should remain so.

The OHV community should work together with the Sierra club to find common ground where they can.

The biggest threat in the South West is urban sprawl and the solar developers who want to build massive sprawling solar powered plants in the desert. I would much rather see a distributed system so that every building generates its own energy.