anderson750
I'm working on it Rose
- Location
- Price, Utah
I would like to know how many people here have been active in land use beyond just sending in comments. How many members on this site have done any of the following:
Within the last year, SUWA pushed for a WC (Wilderness Characteristic) designation of much of the San Rafael swell. The Price field office was taking this information that was provided to them under consideration. This in essence would have closed off most of the Swell.
Faced with this, a small group of people (about 6 of us) spent any spare time we had GPSing routes (full-size, atv & motorcycle) and documenting the presence of man made disturbances. In reality we were only able to cover about 50-60% of the area in question with the amount of man power available. We collected over 1500 waypoints and pictures to document our argument as to why this area did not have Wilderness Characteristics (WC) and provided this information to the BLM.
And in the end, a great deal of what we documented stayed open in the final RMP that just came out. If we would not have documented what we did, without a doubt, everyone would have lost a lot of area (full size routes, atv & single track trails) in the San Rafael.
The reason I make this illustration is for two reasons.
Thats my 2 cents.
- Trail work
- on the ground data gathering and documenting
- meeting face to face with BLM officials
- meeting face to face with county commissioners
- joining an organization that is involved with land use (local club, U4WDA, USA-ALL, BRC)
- becoming actively involved with an above organization
Within the last year, SUWA pushed for a WC (Wilderness Characteristic) designation of much of the San Rafael swell. The Price field office was taking this information that was provided to them under consideration. This in essence would have closed off most of the Swell.
Faced with this, a small group of people (about 6 of us) spent any spare time we had GPSing routes (full-size, atv & motorcycle) and documenting the presence of man made disturbances. In reality we were only able to cover about 50-60% of the area in question with the amount of man power available. We collected over 1500 waypoints and pictures to document our argument as to why this area did not have Wilderness Characteristics (WC) and provided this information to the BLM.
And in the end, a great deal of what we documented stayed open in the final RMP that just came out. If we would not have documented what we did, without a doubt, everyone would have lost a lot of area (full size routes, atv & single track trails) in the San Rafael.
The reason I make this illustration is for two reasons.
- if you wait until someone else has started the ball rolling, you are to late. It already has momentum in one direction and to change the direction takes a lot of effort........Simple physics.
- It shows how things can be affected if people take a pro-active approach to land use instead of a reactive approach. A lot of letter writing that I see being done is reactive to a situation and not pro-active.
Thats my 2 cents.
