One Controversy at a Time, Please

Ahh. Echoes of Ed Abbey (he wrote One Life at a Time, Please). If Roadless is contoversial, and travel management is controversial, if we have roadless travel management do we get more than 2x the controversy? Here’s a news story on a lawsuit on a travel management plan.

It seems like Mrowka and Hawthorne disagree on some facts. Are these trails already used or not?

That’s what I find discouraging about the state of the press these days. Seems like sometimes they just quote two different opinions and leave it at that. That’s OK, except when there are fairly readily accessible facts. I’m not blaming press folks- I understand- because I have family members in the newspaper industry. But it seems like we in the public are left to our own devices if we want to delve further to find out facts.

1 thought on “One Controversy at a Time, Please”

  1. Roaded roadless has always an oxymoron. It seems to me that roadless areas may include 4 wheel drive trails and mining roads but usually attempt to exclude timber haul roads. In many roadless areas there is well established motorized use, much of it predating the designation of roadless areas.

    The Payette NFs travel management plan has been appealed and is beginning litigation. One of the main contentions is that the Forest administratively closed many of the old mining roads and trails to motorized use prior to travel management, but never enforced the closures on the ground or had adequate public involvement. The Forest claimed they were already closed routés while the public had still been using them and saw no on the ground closures. A major influence on the administrative closures was Endangered Species Act, and consultation with regulatory agencies, US Fish and Wildlife and The National Marine Fisheries Service for protection of salmon, steelhead, and Bull Trout. The Forest Plan stipulates that they can not increase open road density in the area and since these roads, which have had continuous motorized use on the ground are administratively closed, they can’t be opened. It is confusing to the public.

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