St. George BLM Travel Management Plan

[Don B]

One thing to keep in mind is that the BLM is not the enemy in this planning process. The St. George Field Office has been very good in working with the 4x4 community. You can bet that they will receiving a lot of political pressure from the other side and we need to help them out by showing that the public wants to keep the roads and trails open.

 

[Don B]

I'll be at the St. George meeting and possibly Hurricane.

 

[jackjoh]

I will be in SLC.

 

[mbryson]

One thing to keep in mind is that the BLM is not the enemy in this planning process. The St. George Field Office has been very good in working with the 4x4 community. You can bet that they will receiving a lot of political pressure from the other side and we need to help them out by showing that the public wants to keep the roads and trails open.

The BLM in St. George seems to be very cooperative. I believe we'll just need to show support numbers as you indicate. Whoever hasn't been to St. George to wheel is seriously missing out. Awesome trails and a convenient place to go.

I will be in SLC.

I'm single dad next week, but I'll do everything I can to be at the SLC meeting. Baseball and other kid activities are winding down for the summer so I'm not sure if I can drag me and the three kids down there.

I'd be glad to write something up from myself, but doubt that would be considered attendance by the BLM?

 

[cruiseroutfit]

One thing to keep in mind is that the BLM is not the enemy in this planning process. The St. George Field Office has been very good in working with the 4x4 community. You can bet that they will receiving a lot of political pressure from the other side and we need to help them out by showing that the public wants to keep the roads and trails open.

100% on the money. While there are obviously polarized personal opinions within any organization, my experience is that they want to work with users not against them. Some of the best input and suggestions we gathered for the previous RMP revisions was direct from the BLM, telling us which routes were most 'contested' and which areas needed the most attention.

 

[anderson750]

I just got off the phone with Scott Wheeler. He is the man who is responsible for the San Rafael travel map that many of you may have. He will take all of the data and convert it over to a contour file that the BLM works with. It does not matter what type of data file you have, he can convert it over for us.

By tomorrow I should have instructions on how to submit your data to us so we can get it converted and and made available for different groups to submit.

 

[Samuraiman]

Say what you want about a RMP for St George. We have already lost hundreds of miles of trails down here because of the land use bill. A RMP should have been completed before the bill. The upper La Verkin Twist trail is now wilderness, the BLM does not recognize it nor will they. It is a very popular trail for mtn bikers and atvs alike. Not to mention Caanan mtn is lost. Yet after the Caanan mtn area was placed into a WSA the BLM continued to print maps that plainly showed Caanan mtn on it with a trail clearly listed as a jeep trail. Ironic isn't it. I was a witness in court for a person being charged with riding in a closed area. We had been paged out with Search and Rescue to look for him. He was in the Caanan Mtn WSA at that time. On the map they were using to prosecute him it clearly showed the JEEP TRAIL on the map. The NCA area in the Beaver Dam area has several trails now off limits, it was initially suppose to be existing roads and trails, now ROAD CLOSED! I know there has been alot of people involved in this process, but in my opinion what is currently written in the land use bill and what is included on the map, is what this final draft of the RMP will consist of. The decision's have been made and the maps have been drawn. You can give them GPS coordinates till your blue in the face, this just gives them the location of your favorite trail so they can illegally post it closed and build a fence around the staging area! The face of Southern Utah and the riding and outdoor recreation opportunitys are about to change drastically! I still have hope in the process, but after the lies deceit and hollow promises before the land use bill was passed, I have my doubts, but will be attending the meetings.

 

[anderson750]

I understand your frustrations. I have been actively involved with the land use bill that Emery County is currently working on. There have been many stakeholders at the table....recreation, grazing, mining, etc. On a few recent field trips, there have been 2 BLM employees who have decided to take it upon themselves to fix what they see as errors in the last RMP. They are only interested in working on closing trails, not fixing errors that resulted in closed trails. When questioned about who has instructed them to do this, they blatently said that they were not waiting for management to instruct them to do anything and were just going to do it. I think there are few BLM offices as bad as Price where the inmates are running the asylum and pushing their own agenda's.

I don't want to get this thread going in the wrong direction, but you have to realize that if they do not have the data it will be closed anyway. The BLM has gone from a management of "open unless designated closed" to "closed unless designated open". So what good does it do to not submit data?

 

[scoutabout]

We're already mad about losing this trail and that trail. Let's not lose mo' trail by sitting out of the process. To echo others, despite what the OHV community has been 'taught', land managers (BLM in this case) are NOT the enemy.

100% on the money. While there are obviously polarized personal opinions within any organization, my experience is that they want to work with users not against them. Some of the best input and suggestions we gathered for the previous RMP revisions was direct from the BLM, telling us which routes were most 'contested' and which areas needed the most attention.

USA-ALL and RU4WDA should hire Kurt to coordinate involvement and education efforts during the full length of this RMP process. Kurt's successes during the blitz of RMP implementations from a couple years ago was legendary. The people who were getting paid to do this at the time did zero. Let's not waste our money again.

Looking forward to attending meetings, writing letters and submitting my comments during the process. Every person who hates my a$$ can have a free kick for every time they positively involve themselves in this RMP.

 

[anderson750]

We're already mad about losing this trail and that trail. Let's not lose mo' trail by sitting out of the process. To echo others, despite what the OHV community has been 'taught', land managers (BLM in this case) are NOT the enemy.

I don't think the BLM is our enemy. Our enemy is people within the office that intentionally do not do their job and push their own agenda. I have heard good things about the St. George FO and I believe this is the case in this instance. However, the last 25 years have been different in the Price FO. I am glad this has nothing to do with the Price FO.

USA-ALL and RU4WDA should hire Kurt to coordinate involvement and education efforts during the full length of this RMP process. Kurt's successes during the blitz of RMP implementations from a couple years ago was legendary. The people who were getting paid to do this at the time did zero. Let's not waste our money again.

We welcome everyones input and I think we are headed in the right direction with this.

 

[scoutabout]

I don't think the BLM is our enemy.

Not everything is about you. But I appreciate your agreement on the matter. Looking forward to seeing the machine in action.

 

[Don B]

St. George BLM Travel Management Plan

Scoping Meetings coming up.

These are open house meetings where representatives from the BLM will have maps and other information and will answer questions you may have.


We need to:
• Provide route inventory data (e.g., maps, digital files, GPS data)
• Identify routes important for facilities access, recreation, commercial activities, etc.
• Identify areas where existing routes create impacts to sensitive natural and heritage resources,
• Identify routes that could be included in the High Desert Trail System
• Identify alternatives for the Northern Transportation Route
Attend meetings:
They will begin at 6:00 pm and last until 8:00 pm.

Scoping Meeting Schedule

Monday, June 14, 2010
Dixie Center
1835 Convention Center Dr.
St. George, UT

Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Mesquite Community and Senior Center
102 West Old Mill Road
Mesquite, NV

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
City of Hurricane Office
147 North 870 West
Hurricane, UT

Thursday, June 17, 2010
SLC Public Library, Conf. Room - Level 4
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City, UT

Please attend a meeting that is most convenient to you. It is very important that we have public involvement in this process.

 

[anderson750]

Not everything is about you. But I appreciate your agreement on the matter. Looking forward to seeing the machine in action.

 

[SAMI]

As funny as it is to watch you two go back and forth, and it is funny.. I just about "LOL'd",

I think Steve has a good point that the general OHV community paints the BLM, or FS, or any land manager with a broad brush labeled "ENEMY". All they know is that they showed up to their favorite riding area, or trail, and found a "ROAD CLOSED" sign. Wonder who put it there? Ummmmmm, Land managers put it there... Those tree-hugger loving, #&%holes - BLM, and so on. So yes, it's entirely a real issue that many in the OHV community view them as the antagonist in the situation. I don't see the land management as such, with exception to the D-Bags guilty of "losing" documents in the Price FO. But anyways, you have to realize that it is a real issue.

I'm not sure how much you get out and talk to the average user randomly out on the dirt trail, but the attitude is everywhere. It's natural to dislike the entity that took your toy away - common human characteristic since birth.

Is there a network system setup (that actually works) either with the RU4WDA or USA-ALL that can get the message out to the clubs? I noticed that the last USA-ALL notice for a clean-up activity was sent the day before said activity. What's being done to reach the masses - besides of course this thread on RME.

 

[anderson750]

As funny as it is to watch you two go back and forth, and it is funny.. I just about "LOL'd",

I think it is funny to. I debated between which smiley to use when I replied.

I think Steve has a good point that the general OHV community paints the BLM, or FS, or any land manager with a broad brush labeled "ENEMY". All they know is that they showed up to their favorite riding area, or trail, and found a "ROAD CLOSED" sign. Wonder who put it there? Ummmmmm, Land managers put it there... Those tree-hugger loving, #&%holes - BLM, and so on. So yes, it's entirely a real issue that many in the OHV community view them as the antagonist in the situation. I don't see the land management as such, with exception to the D-Bags guilty of "losing" documents in the Price FO. But anyways, you have to realize that it is a real issue.

I'm not sure how much you get out and talk to the average user randomly out on the dirt trail, but the attitude is everywhere. It's natural to dislike the entity that took your toy away - common human characteristic since birth.

I don't view the BLM as the enemy. I view some of the people inside the BLM as the enemy. I agree 100% that feelings that most users have is that the organization itself is the enemy. I would bet that most of those people have never been involved directly with any issues or projects. With the bad people we have in our FO we also have some good ones. On Monday of this week I was involved with a project to put up cattle guards on single track mountain bike trails. We were working with the a lady in the grazing department and she is a breath of fresh air and great to work with.

Is there a network system setup (that actually works) either with the RU4WDA or USA-ALL that can get the message out to the clubs? I noticed that the last USA-ALL notice for a clean-up activity was sent the day before said activity. What's being done to reach the masses - besides of course this thread on RME.

I am not going to make any excuses for the clean up. I think it was poorly handled and it showed in the amount of people that showed up for the project.

Lets get this back on topic. We will be making direct contact with groups in the St. George area. There will also be notices sent out through the USA-All email system to let people know how to submit data, make comments, etc. I am sure BRC is going to be sending out action alerts also. There are limitations to the amount of people we are going to reach through RME, USA-All & BRC. It is going to take users reaching out to other users who may not be associated with any of these groups. Everybody needs to do their part.

What USA-all primarily wants to do is gather data from as many sources possible and compile it into a form that different user groups can submit with their own comments. I am basing my experiences off the Price FO, but if the full size routes would have been included with data submitted by CCOHVA, Sage Riders or Carbon County then the routes probably would have made it into the RMP. I want to make sure we can avoid a situation where data is "lost" or not accepted because it is in the wrong format.

 

[scoutabout]

I think Steve has a good point that the general OHV community paints the BLM, or FS, or any land manager with a broad brush labeled "ENEMY". All they know is that they showed up to their favorite riding area, or trail, and found a "ROAD CLOSED" sign.

Interesting yes. I really meant that ignorant "access advocates" have set our cause back by years with their failed strategy of "it's not your fault, it's the fault of the EVIL ENEMY: BLM, FS, SUWA, Sierra Club, etc". Idiotic. Jason, I do like your analysis too.

So instead of feeling compelled to be involved in the process, many "leaders" have actually driven users AWAY from being involved. Good leaders have used the oppossite approach, and we see their successes in Kanab, Moab, Delta and many other places.

So don't waste money donating to groups who SAY they'll do something. DO SOMETHING.

^^This previous comment was directed at everyone in general, not just the last poster.

Mods: feel free to move my diversionary comments to another thread so that all the good guys can keep the thread on target about when/where/what.

 

[scoutabout]

There will also be _________ by USA-All _______ to ____________.

I wish this would happen someday. Maybe they should have started this process (of 'teaching' us how to submit data) before now?

USA-ALL has said they'll _____. Excellent, when they do, I will send money.

I'm just saying (again, to everyone in general) that until then, don't expect that a $25 check absolves anyone of their responsibility to get DIRECTLY involved in the process of protecting their own PRIVILEGE to enjoy MOTORIZED RECREATION on public land.

 

[anderson750]

I'm just saying (again, to everyone in general) that until then, don't expect that a $25 check absolves anyone of their responsibility to get DIRECTLY involved in the process of protecting their own PRIVILEGE to enjoy MOTORIZED RECREATION on public land.

I don't believe there is or will ever be a time when users do not have the responsibility to be involved in protecting their privelage, and yes it is a privelage not a right, to enjoy motorized recreation on public land. No single organiztion will be the solution to keeping access open, they can just accomplish things that individuals cannot on their own.

 

[scoutabout]

No single organiztion will be the solution to keeping access open, they can just accomplish things that individuals cannot on their own.

Have yet to see that. All I've seen is individuals filling-in and succeeding where orgs have failed. Just saying.

I'm glad that you don't think land managers are the enemy, and I'm glad you understand that MOTORIZED RECREATION ACCESS is a privilege. If you could convince your "org" rofl of this, I think it would help.

 

[Samuraiman]

I think the St George office is more likely to listen. However, we have already lost access to the mail drop. The Cherry Stem that was down to the mail drop has been lost. It would have cost them too much to build the fence in the correct location. We will see how it goes.Also Don I am more than willing to sit in on the meeting and bring the SAR laptop with the routes we use all the time in searches. I feel the Cart was put before the horse on the RMP and the Land Use bill. THanks Casey.