Like I said before, I have no problem with wilderness areas but count me as one that believes we have enough. I am not so much driven by the fantasy that we might be able to recover our logging industry. My disdain for these wilderness and study areas are all the problems they cause for local residents and the states they are located in. I am talking about decreased revenue, decreased tax base, increased risks from noxious weeds because of the limits placed on controlling them in these areas. Greatly increased risk of fires stemming from ZERO logging, thinning or management of fuel. Count me as one that thinks we have enough wilderness areas in the country. There are 765 wilderness Areas in the USA. That totals 109,129,657 acres according to wiki which I loath to quote but I am short on time. That totals a land mass LARGER THAN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.
If you look at the recent wilderness designations made in the past 10 years, a great majority of them were made with an ulterior motive. Oftentimes that motive is a left-leaning anti natural resource; anti-local (which oftentimes has been conservative populace) benefit to the point of being punitive. And ultimately to simply increase the federal governments control and sway over more and more of the country (and in this case typically the west).
So I will ask you the same question I posed previously, do you thing the federal government has enough land? Do you support them increasing their land-holdings? Do you support them having more and more control of life on a small local level because of their insatiable appetite for more land?
I would contend we have far more designated wilderness areas than needed. That combined with public land available for access makes for more than enough public land available. Much of this public land is restricted to various degrees from ohv usage. More and more of our blm and usfs land is restricted in the users' ability to use ohv. They certainly are not relaxing those rule on "normal" public land. Same for state land here where I live.
