More forest plan non-collaborators

On the Blue Mountain forest plan revisions:

Several of those who testified said even if access is restricted, it doesn’t mean they’ll stop from using the forests.

“There’s more of us than there are of them, and we won’t comply,” one man commented. “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

Another person voiced the opinion that the Forest Service doesn’t have the authority to restrict access.

“We don’t have to listen to them,” he said.

I wonder if these folks would be talking the same way (about trespassing) if this land had been privatized by their compatriots during the sage brush rebellion.

(Why is it that environmentalists who try to enforce the law are called “extremists,” and people who threaten to break the law are called “patriots?”)

6 thoughts on “More forest plan non-collaborators”

  1. ‘(Why is it that environmentalists who try to enforce the law are called “extremists,” and people who threaten to break the law are called “patriots?”)’

    You’ve tapped into a rich vein of inquiry Jon, which has been exposed elsewhere but rarely reaches the surface of corporatist-controlled MSM (Main Stream Media). (I would only suggest environmentalists can only “defend” the law, rather than “enforce” it.)

    “I wonder if these folks would be talking the same way (about trespassing) if this land had been privatized by their compatriots during the sage brush rebellion.”

    Here’s an offering: PERC (Property and Environment Research Center), formerly identified itself as the Political Economy Research Center. The name change is founded in part, on their notion that, “Property rights make the environment an asset rather than a liability by giving owners an incentive for stewardship. ”

    Welcome to the fictions of Free Market Environmentalism, especially at a time in which our nation has been brought to our economic knees in servitude to the one per centers preaching blind faith in the “free market.”

    The answer to your rhetorical question is all about the dynamics of the political economy, the perceptions around which are largely controlled by the corporate media. That media depicted the rancher scofflaw Cliven Bundy as a folk hero, instead of the racist, environpreneur, he is, and whom adamantly refused to pay even the minimal dues owed the publics’ general treasury for years, (now totaling over $1million) thus usurping the wealth of public lands for his private wealth. So much for Bundy’s “incentive for stewardship.” That, after all, is the end game PERC coyly camouflages.

    There’s plenty more rich irony in the few words you’ve invoked: “The Sagebrush Rebellion” merely shape shifted, and is now manifested as “collaboration” with the same goals.

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  2. Why is it that environmentalists who try to enforce the law are called “extremists,” and people who threaten to break the law are called “patriots?”

    Because U.S. history teaches us that defending the right to exploit anything and everything that satisfies our rapacious desires is as American as apple pie, while any rule that frustrates that urge is “extreme”?
    Or maybe, because ….. SQUIRREL!!

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  3. Of course, one could also point at the activists who use senior citizen women to illegally block bridges, thinking that the Forest Service wouldn’t arrest them. You could also point at those activists who set up dangerous booby traps, hoping to get some loggers to run off the roads. Many activists would rather see lands burned, at high intensity, as long as the loggers don’t get to cut “one stick”.

    Yes, both extremes are despicable, using equally bad tactics to get their ways.

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  4. Never could understand that the same people who order me to get the h**l of their property are the ones make the statements in Jon’s post, believing that they also own the public lands they’re using. This latter statement is where this group’s view of public land is flawed and why we have inherent conflict with how to manage/use the public lands we all own. Their use is on shared lands and no one has precedence over another for that use – how’s that for an idealistic view of the “public land” world?

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  5. Can’t let this go by! If anyone expects anything different they must be living in a different world. Look at our great examples! Our elected congressional members have totally lost their way, All their time is spent destroying their opponents by stopping everything. Our founding Fathers describe the job as one to resolve complex issues and problems for the American people, not spending all your time destroying the reputation of your opponent. The news is full of major confrontations that even lead to deaths and school shootings. These examples identify the world as it is today. Lest we forget, our public leaders must also except that their skills are frequently adding to the disagreements rather than helping to resolve the situations. I have attended public meetings called by the US Forest Service where the District Rangers and Forest Supervisor sent their staff to conduct the meeting and chose not to attend themselves. I still see meeting setups where the opponents are provided a stage to preform on and a podium to hide behind, or a long table where opponents can line up on opposite sides and build barriers to protect their presentations. We never start at the right point as this debate illustrates. Here again, the debate is over road access not on the current conditions of the forested lands and what our expectations are for this unit in the future. There are reasons we are experiencing catastrophic wildfires, burning up homes and private investments, and literally experiencing major problems with the health, vigor and diversity of our remaining forested lands. We can no longer continue to battle over tools and techniques. Leaders and professional scientists must bring the potentially effected interests together and find acceptable common goals. All interest must have access to the honest facts about current forest conditions and realistic expectations of future hazards and issues if we continue to ignore the conditions that are present.
    We have trained our public’s to build walls and to fight for their desires. It is now time for us to come together and decide what is required for our future on this planet. We have already lost over half of our forested lands and try as we might, as our population expands the problem will only intensify. So who has the courage to stand up and start the needed change? Search out the “Augmentation Meta Process”, MIT Doctorate Thesis, done in the late 1960’s

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  6. Um, when lands are owned by a party, in this case a member of the public, doesn’t that ownership imply some right of reasonable access — reasonable being the means desired?
    A better way to describe how greens see access is — they’re like the jealous relative in the family who fights the others fang and claw because his or her desires don’t match the rest of the clan.

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