The nationwide change in public access to public lands for any use began several administrations ago and continues today.
Driven by advocates of Wilderness Only, keep people out, save for "mother nature" the public is being eliminated from the forests and other public lands of this nation. Dale Bosworth was the latest tool used but there have been many others in the past and the current Chief of the USFS is no different.
The Wallowa Whitman is in the final stages of the lockout. The thing to keep in mind is that the elimination of roads and trails is all inclusive....Motorized or mechanical travel is the target, pickup, car, motorcycle, ATV, wheelchair, bycycle trails etc......all will suffer loss of access to some extent and for no good reason. Most of the 5000+ miles the USFS is considering for closure are pickup and auto roads............
The Wallowa Whitman contains about 2.5 million acres......2/3 of that are already sacrificed as wilderness and unusable by any form of mechanical travel. Bush? Bush? Clinton? Clinton? Obama? Who to blame? Over the years our government has imposed restrictions and taxes not unlike the British of pre-revolution. Just another nail in the coffin, another freedom trashed, another step toward??????? Tass

 

Do you have any idea how much pot and other drugs are being grown in our national forests Tass. ..... And you wonder why they're starting to close unauthorized roads down. Have you ever thought about that, or put those two together? My wife can't even travel into many sections of western forests due to the drugs being cultivated and the armed "farmers"who surround and booby trap their fields. They need to fly over and scout in helicopters first, then travel in groups of 9 or more with armed escorts.

Interesting how many speak of their "freedoms" with such fervor, then talk about revolt, revolution, secession, and civil war moments later.

AND NO, Travel Management is all George Bush. Again, thank your pal GW, not the "lefties".

 

The Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing on May 5 to consider H.R. 980, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). This legislation was introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). It will designate 24 million acres as Wilderness and components of the National Wilderness Preservation System in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. This Wilderness designation will make the land off-limits to off-highway riders. With the Wilderness bill (Omnibus Public Land Management Act) recently signed into law, that prohibited off-highway vehicle (OHV) use on over 2 million acres, this Congress now feels emboldened to continue pressing for passage of even more Wilderness bills that would take away additional OHV trails enjoyed responsibly by your friends and family.
NOTE: This measure is introduced by a Congresswoman from NY not any of the states that are effected by this legislation. Every state effected oppose this measure. Those supporting this are not Blue Dog Democrats or Republicans.

 

Moose, You forgot to add "lousy" in front of Congresswoman Haven't we been over this NREPA thing. Not thinking it's going anywhere. Maybe you're just reminding people of the issue in general.

 

Come in out of the dark FunRide. Blame Bush, Blame Clinton, Blame whomever you want but management under the current administration from the President, to the Senate, to the House of Representatives assumes the government owns the United States. Look at current direction, obama makes a point to undo directives that gave the public use of PUBLICLY OWNED GROUND. The senate and house of representatives endorse those moves for MORE WILDERNESS, MORE CONTROL, AND MORE LOCKOUT. From your messages I can only guess that you are part of the only job force increasing in size, the job force of government employment. Any government with strength enough to take all you have, control all you might have left, regulate any options you might still have remaining and then print worthless curency to cover the cost will lead the nation to a terrible financial and moral end. When the left cannot tax the few producers enough to cover the cost of "something for nothing" legislation it will be to late to recover.
Drugs and meth labs in the forest are in ISOLATED, SECLUDED AND UNTRAVELED AREAS.
Close the trails, shut the roads, keep the public out and guess what opportunities are left. You better do as I have done, I have instructed my wife and family in what to watch out for, how to protect themselves and others, and travel where they will when they want. Even untrained, unarmed, and unprepaired or protected keep in mind your wife is safer in the forests of the West than the jungle of Washington DC. In fact you and your wife are safer while hearing the calls of cougar and wolves in Oregon than you are listening to the braying of jackass's in Congress in Washington DC. The discussion is not about roads and trails, not about cross country travel or wilderness, the discussion and conflict revolve around the freedom to make your own choices and live your own life.....................Tass

 

You seem to like CAPS, so I'll go with that. You have NO idea what you're talking about. It happens all over the place. I found pot plant planters (empty), stems, root *****, and a mess of empty beer cans on my parents property this Spring in a random Vermont private woods. Tens of tons of pot is grown in just CO and CA National Forest annually.......And where do you think they grow it........on ISOLATED, SECLUDED AND UNTRAVELED AREAS. How do you think they get to those areas? No offense, but you obviously don't have anything to do with it on a professional level, and it's not worth guessing where you get your information.

Again.......The Travel Management lock down of unauthorized trials in the National Forests is a product of George W. Bush. TRAVEL MANAGEMENT was a Republican initiative. Keep Clinton out of it, because he had nothing to do with it. -Obama has continued with Bush's policy for now.

-Don't confuse the fact that what I'm saying above has anything to do with whether or not I think the crack down is right. Wholesale land grabs are bad news for ATV folks. Nobody wants to lose land, and yeah it sucks when lands are closed.....You have no argument there. However, there are reasons for things beyond your ATV and perceived neglect by the "government". -Didn't hear me bitchin' about Travel Management when it was initiated by GW.

 

My information comes from the USFS, the National Guard, the Oregon State Police from the Sherriff's department and from personal experience both professional and private in NE Oregon. The main access routes (which will remain open) are used to get to an area......at that point the transportation is the back and legs of the men that carry the items they need into the forests. It is perhaps different in Vermont. Like the vermin they are the drug folks seek the isolated and hard to reach areas. The Wallowa Whitman jus buried a good man killed by a falling tree in a very inacessable pot farm.....rotor blast from a helicopter blew over a snag.....several miles of difficult hiking got the men in and the helicopter was needed to get the plants out for their destruction.
The initial thrust for travel management began with the RARE I and RARE II thrusts by the Department of Agriculture/USFS in the early 70's......... I and others in the Northwest have been attempting to deal with this issue since that time frame. Leave Clinton out?? Not hardly, his pen was just as active as any in locking the public out of public places. If you became aware of this during the Bush era you SHOULD HAVE bitched and fought like hell about it. Government take over of our land and lives whether its forest access or health care or General Motors is not acceptable. By the way, at least in Oregon the largest loss of access is not to the ATV users, it is to the automobile, pickups, motorcycle and camper vehicles......Obama and his folks will be no different, lock you out and take it over....to our government there is no such thing as public ownership............Tass

 

I agree with you Tass.
I don't give a damn who started the mess but the feds need to keep out of state business.
Creating more secluded and untraveled areas is just what the drug growers want! It makes their access much easier and the potential for being discovered much less likely.
Most politicians have no real concept about how big these area's in the western United States are. They listen to the special interest tree hugger group's and use the "donation" money to vacation on a beach on some tropical island sipping a drink and being waited on, and have a "meeting" to justify their trip.
And who do you think signed the sweeping Omnibus bill? OBAMA!
To go along with the quote at the bottom of my sig. here's another one by Thomas Jefferson,"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
Government, led by the democrats is growing at an unprecedented rate right now, wanting to give everyone what they want...It's way past the time to say STOP!! It's time to back up the bus and shrink the size and scope of the govt. control over all of us!

As a side note this thread should be moved to the political forum.

 

Couldn't have stated things better than you did, Tass and Rancher. I'm only 46 and I've seen the changes in government that are taking away freedoms. It was a slow trickle before. I fear it's going to get much quicker after hearing some of the quotes from the current administrations various Czars.

 

Tass.....I understand your feelings on this matter and agree with you, let's say 80%. Regardless, I just want to clarify that "Travel Management" is a specific Bush operation. It became law on Nov. 9th 2005 FR70#216. The legal reference is 36CFR-261.13 (Code of Federal Regulations) General crackdowns of lands have been going on for years though....as you state. However, the biggest blow to trucks and ATVs came under this provision. Just want the facts out there so people know where to direct their anger. It's not the "socialist" or Pelosi, or the liberals in general who has created this mess. Maybe they are continuing it, and could add to it, but they didn't start it. There's lots of blame to go around, depending on your perspective.