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Very well said.

Please tell me how much is enough?

Right now in the United States we have wilderness areas that add up to a land mass equal to the state of California. Over 109,000,000 acres currently in wilderness areas and that doesn't include WSAs

How much more would you like to see? How about if we add more that would amount to another land mass area the size of New mexico or Arizona? Would that satisfy you?

I also appreciate your sideways swipe at me as not being a serious outdoorsman. That's 2 different attacks of me simply because of my opinion and beliefs. Real open-minded of you.

I am very amused by these statements that the orange army is everywhere. I agree if everywhere is within a mile of any road. But the reality of vast swaths of PUBLIC LAND in Montana is farther than a mile from any road and all you have to do is hike that mile+ on most public lands and you are alone. This fallacy that you have to be in a wilderness area to achieve this peace is not reality here in Montana.

When land is placed in a Wilderness Area or wsa, the local governments lose tax revenue, lose production which also impacts tax revenue, creates headaches such as harborer of weeds and pests including predators that often times cannot be hunted or controlled in these areas. All these things negatively affect local economies. Yes, hunters bring in some money, but in Montana, our hunting season is extraordinarily long compared to may states and it is still only 6-8 weeks long. Meanwhile, the local community has to survive the full 52 weeks out of the year.

Wilderness areas also take loggable areas out of production and limit managers' ability to control fuel which in turns creates large stockpiles of fuel just waiting for the conditions to be right and become an enormous wildfire that is impossible to control.

Asking for data is valid and fair. I do not have it at hand right now. What I do have is personal first-hand experience living in proximity to these areas, working in these areas, working on ranches and friends having ranches that abut these areas. Working in the extension service servicing regions that had tens of thousands of acres of wilderness and wilderness study areas. Those of us that live it know the reality.

geno,

Thanks for your post. You reference problems with A-holes inappropriately using OHV on public lands. I am with you that this is a serious problem. ANd because of this, restrictions continue to tighten on what might be considered "normal public land" in this conversation. Based on what you and I agree upon, more and more "normal public land" is under tighter and tighter restrictions on motorized vehicle use. Yet others here complain the only way to access areas without motorized vehicle use is through wilderness areas. That logic makes no sense based on what we just agreed upon.

Enforcement and penalties for breaking the law/rules with motorized vehicles are terribly strict in my part of the world, as they should be. I like many others have been rudely interrupted in my hunts by A-holes on wheelers. Doesn't mean we need more millions oc acres in wilderness. Maybe we just need to enforce the laws we have and better educate those that use public lands? Kind of reminds me of the public debate following a school shooting. Do we further legislate and control the populace in general? Or do we attack those that are creating the problems?

Enough with the straw man argument. No one here is saying do away with all wilderness. If you recall, my comment is that I do not support bha because they are proponents of more and more wilderness and more and more restriction on federal land as well as more and more federal land in general equating to more and more control by the feds and more intrusion into the lives of those of us that live in these regions.

How much more land would you like the feds to control and limit access to?

Tarkio,

On that we can certainly agree. Unfortunately, in many of the places I have hunted the agencies don't have the money to adequately (in my opinion at least) enforce those OHV restrictions. Oh, there may be some after the fact enforcement if someone happens to get a plate number and a picture. That does not help after the damage is done. Or they may get lucky and just happen to catch a violator on their way out of a closed area.

Have a nice evening,,

Geno

I look out my window on the AB wilderness area, and you have no clue. the weed problem is centered around the trailheads (yes motorized vehicles). I'm not sayin' trailheads are bad, but don't blame the wilderness for problems caused by motor vehicles.

the wilderness i've seen is not really very valuable as timber sales (and yes, I've spent a good chunk of my life on a log skidder). too steep and low grade timber stands. the timber sales are not as much of a boost as they used to be because insurance has forced the loggers to mechanized logging shows where large companys that can afford tree shears and processors employ very few people to harvest incredible amounts of timber. again, not a bad thing because it is safer, but it reduces the number of people making money from those sales.

fire danger? well, I've seen far more fires start on private land and burn onto wilderness than vice versa (and yes, i've been a wildland firefighter for years). roads to access fires? forest fires are attacked from the air and followed up by hand crews for the most part. dozers and fire engines are generally utilized to protect structures and other improvements in the interface.

the wilderness greatly helps the surrounding landowners via hunting rights. not a bad thing in itself, but creates other issues. one is reducing public access to the elk herds during general rifle season so elk numbers cannot be managed very well. another problem is the surrounding landowners are fighting tooth and nail to close any public access they possibly can to so they can have more control the game herds on wilderness behind their property.

"the deep pocket guys" have much more influence at the local level.

so, I've voted republican since I could vote, I've owned ranches in Montana, been a logger, wildland firefighter and hunter, and I'm a member of the BHA.

Balderdash. Which tax revenues do local governments lose when federal lands are designated wilderness? Wilderness generates revenue and local sales tax because lots of people want to visit wilderness and they spend a lot of money locally.

And as far as hunting in wilderness areas, you must be joking when you say it can't be done? I do it every year.

You talk about hunting season in Montana, but google "Estes Park Colorado." It would not exist without the wilderness of the Rocky Mountain National Park next to it, and it's packed with tourists year-round but especially all summer. You can't drive down the street or get a seat in a restaurant. during the summer. It's the same with other small towns located near popular wilderness areas.

And as someone already pointed out more than half of that "State of California-sized" wilderness you like to talk about is in Alaska where virtually no one in the lower 48 will ever travel so you need to factor that in to your calculus. It sounds like a big number but there are huge parts of the country with no wilderness. That's why we have so many non-residents flocking to Colorado every hunting season, and it matters not the length of the season, a lot of rural businesses couldn't make it without that influx.





You're entitled to your opinions, but just know the difference between your opinions and reality.

Wow, Estes Park as a shining example? Rocky Park is fine and dandy, but don't forget you've got the Denver Metroplex as a draw base two hours away at most. Never mind that's industrial tourism on an epic scale, there's a too many unhuntable elk problem there, et cetera. Oh, that's right, it's a NATIONAL PARK, not a WILDERNESS AREA -- whole 'nother ball of wax.
The other thing about Estes, or Winter Park, or Granby -- lots of money, probably, but its paid to seasonal workers. Nobody who lives full time in Estes is taking vacations to places like Estes, they can't afford to patronize the kind of businesses they work in, unless they own the business. Up here in Montana, its a fact that the closer you get to Glacier, the lower the wages and higher the poverty level. All the "studies" gloss that over.
Another aspect of the wilderness experience in Colorado, its it's not really wilderness in the sense of solitude. Most of these wildernesses get so much traffic, at least for the first eight miles, there's no firewood below eight feet off the ground, no time at which you're out of sight of another hiking party (at least on summer weekends). These are almost all "nonmotorized hiking areas" that were formerly deserted, but after designation became yuppie magnets for those who like to make lists of all the "wildernesses" they've "conquered."
Tourism and recreation are a terrible base for a local economy. Seasonal, low paying, fickle both by weather AND the larger national economy, as tourism cash, even for hunting, is based on the "player" being prosperous enough to have the cash for "fun stuff."
Finally, I want to emphasize that I live in a county that is the size of Connecticut all by itself, about 2.1 million acres. Of that, fully 1.1 million acres of it is already full-honk USFS wilderness, plus there's another 300,000 thousand of Park that is managed as wilderness through the park plan. I'd say that's more than enough. As for "multiple-use" -- that's down to maybe 400,000 acres at best, and that's not saying much considering most of the road network has been closed or gated off year round, when seasonal closures would work just as well in terms of wildlife management needs.
So, I understand there are hunters who want to prioritize their pleasure over all else, just like there are Fudds who will sell out the rights of others just as long as their ox doesn't get gored. Fine, join BHA.

There it is...

You can know all you need to know about an organization by who is a member and who isn't.

Mostly elitist Fudds.

As a member, I take offense. You're off the Christmas card list.

I don't mean any offense to most folks. You included.

It's just got that feeling about it. Like something is not what it seems. I know I'm not the only one that smells that either.

But each to their own. As long as you are happy.

When public lands are moved into a wilderness or wilderness study designation, grazing rights are severely impacted and limited. Limiting grazing limits numbers of animals in a county. Limiting numbers of animals greatly impacts local revenue. Look at the CMR. When they created it, the powers that be promised to never exclude or negatively impact livestock use and particularly, access to water for livestock. Know what happened there.

So, by your reasoning, because it's a long ways away, Alaska doesn't count? I don't get it. One of the things you promote about the awesomeness of wilderness areas it the Fricking peace and tranquiity and the most far removed, peaceful and tranquil wilderness areas out there doesn't count in your book. How the hell does that work exactly?

I agree there are wilderness areas that benefit the local economy. But for every one of those, there are many that do not.

Help me where I said hunting in the wilderness can't be done??? I hunt in wilderness and study areas myself.

I have no clue? I have fought weeds on wilderness areas for years. Yes some weeds are introduced by motorized vehicles, but the designation makes it nearly impossible to really fight the problem. Once there are weeds there, simply the exclusion of vehicles doesn't magically make them go away. Restrictions on access, control typ both essentially make most weed control efforts futile. Look at the CMR. Unbelievable canada and now knapweed. I don't give a [bleep] where they started. The fact you cannot spray only creates more damn weeds. A lot of the canada if ound on the lakeshore. Pretty damn certain there aren't motorized vehicles driving the beaches of ft peck.

And selectively choose my words and ignore others. I never said all wilderness negatively impacte logging. Certainly a fair amount of the areas in our area are affected. The second part of my point was land managers inability to manage FUEL leads to sever problems. I never said fires start in wilderness areas exclusively and those cause problems. Damn, you need to maybe visit www.RIF.ORG.

Tell me what does happen when a fore starts on wilderness areas or on a study area. Can you race in with your ranch outfit and put it out? Will the feds dispatch crews to cut lines right away? No. This combined with excess fuels because of limited managment is what I am saying about them contributing to fire issues.

I fail to follow your attempt at a point where you say wilderness helps landowners via hunting rights? But creates access problems> So it helps landowners but hurts hunters. And then you say surrounding landowners shut public access?? And yet as hunters, many on here are extolling the virtue of wilderness. I am missing something here and I am not being a smarta$$. I simply don't follow your comment.

Not so up here in Oregon. Recreate, hunt, and fish tons of wilderness and wilderness study areas up here, and seasonal stock use is just part of the landscape. Without near constant maintenance by stockmen, probably half of the water developments would become non-functional and wildlife would suffer.

There's about a 95 mile long stretch of the Deschutes River up here that's managed by the BLM, ODF&W, and the Warm Springs tribe. They decided to toss out grazing, and now have fires almost annually that burn right to the river banks. Stock used to keep the fuel loads down to a reasonable level and fires were near non existent. Now fine fuels can be measured in tons per acre.

The areas I am familiar with, some still have some grazing. Most all had grazing significantly decreased. A number are getting decreased regularly and severely limiting water access at the same time, effectively making it near impossible to graze.

Tons per acre? Now THAT's ironic. I take it the grazing elimination is to "save salmon." Well, one of these days, you'll have a big fire year followed by the wrong kind of winter, that dumps half the canyon onto whatever spawning reaches there are.

As for the maintenance of water in wilderness, it's considerably more difficult to maintain without the use of heavy equipment, and while the ability to use such is THEORETICALLY allowed, just TRY to get a permit. Takes years if ever.

Well, that's the power of innuendo, Skinner's stock in trade. Something seems off, but you just can't put your finger on it.

You can form your opinions on the membership based on what you read here, or you could go to one of the BHA meetings and meet some of the folks there and see for yourself. I'm sure there are some whose politics I don't agree with but you can say that about any group, especially if innuendo is your thing.

Maybe it didn't come across like you meant it?

Same here. Sometimes dodging the sheep is a pain in the neck but they don't call it "The Land of Many Uses" for nothing.