rockinb,
Seems you know what's going on there,
May I ask if you know the "official" reason for the closing of those roads?
Were they failing and impacting fish habitat?
Mostly unused except in hunting season and the forest/blm district had no money in the budget for maintenance?
Generally, the forest/blm has public input on these type of things, at least a comment period. Do you know if they did and what the majority of the comments related to?
If they (NFS/BLM) don't want people in there, they usually have a reason.
Thanks,
Geno
They were going to close ALL the roads in the Gila National Forest in 2011.
Enough public outrage was displayed, as well as enough political pull to stop the closures.
The USFS had never maintained most of the roads in the first place.
I know the public roads in the Lincoln Natl. forest were maintained by the county. Not the USFS.Usually, it's something simple. Like the USFS doesn't want to maintain the roads. Or they simply just don't want motor vehicles in there.
Here's a bit of what I was personally involved with.
https://www.abqjournal.com/7498/updated-gila-national-forest-proposing-to-close-roads.htmlWith huge funded groups like the
Center For Biological Diversity calling for an entire closure, they met with fierce opposition.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2680281/postsThis was a huge deal in 2011, and they did not expect the public outrage they incurred.
From the article you linked to in the abqjournal, it doesn't sound like the forest wanted to close all roads:
"Gila officials acknowledge they’re proposing a major change from current policy in which the forest is largely open to driving cross-country.
Their plan would limit vehicles to designated roads and trails, and
restrict vehicle camping to areas along the sides of roads or near them."
Yeah, restricting vehicles from off road would be an impact to folks used to driving cross country but it still seems folks could access the forest by road. It was that way in most of the forests in the areas I'm familiar with. Very limited cross country driving with vehicles of any sort, maybe a short drive (100 yds?) off the side of a road to a flat spot to camp.
How many miles of open roads did they leave, looks like they were considering some options:
"Options range from taking no action, which would leave 4,604 miles of roads open,
to implementing a preferred alternative, which would leave 3,323 miles open. Other alternatives range from allowing 2,332 miles to 4,266 miles of open roads"
As for maintenance, yeah in both the areas I live the NF roads in some cases are maintained as county roads because they are designated as such (County rd 273 for example), but some of the side roads are maintained, such as it is, by the FS when budgets are available. With the proposed across the board budget cuts for federal agencies under the new administration I'm guessing the situation is not going to get any better.
This is quite the sticky situation all around the NF system, as your article pointed out Ol' Tricky Dick was one of the first to ask for establishment of rules:
"The concern has been around for decades. President Nixon signed an executive order in 1972 to establish policies to control off-road vehicles on public lands."
I'll be the first to say there needs to be some changes, like maybe a bit more logging with an emphasis on thinning for fire prevention. But the word is logging companies want the big trees too, as that's where the higher profits are. Do that and all the old growth advocates come out protesting, nothing gets done, for profit reasons or legal wrangling and our forests are still full of pecker poles waiting for a match.
Then the burned areas are susceptible to erosion and more roads are closed.
Not to mention FS budgets get sucked off for fire events and they have little left to fund other forest needs.
Wish I had a simple solution, but I'm afraid until we can all meet in the middle a little, life will go one pushing and pulling one way and the other.
Thanks for the links,
Geno
PS, yes, I think the CBD has gone way over what it was intended to address when founded. So have some groups on the user side too. And us folks in the middle ground are the ones to get screwed.
