CRITICAL LAND USE MEETING: Prescott, AZ. - BLM comment meeting

[crawler#976]

NEW LOCATION:
Prescott College Crossroads Center
220 Grove Avenue, Prescott
March 8 6 to 9 pm

*** WE MUST SHOW UP IN FORCE FOR THIS MEETING ***
*** WEAR RED ***

It is being held at Prescott College - a bastion of the Anti-recreational use/Earth First type eco-whackos...

This meeting represents the final opportunity for comments on the BLM Agua Fria National Monument and Bradshaw-Harquahala planning areas.

Please come prepared, read the draft plan!

http://www.blm.gov/az/LUP/aguafria/afria_plan.htm

This effect a huge area, and part of it is home to the best Rock Crawlin' trails in Arizona off Table Mesa Road, plus it will limit vehicle access to portions of existing roads and trails on the Agua Fria Nat. Monument.

Later

Mark

[flyingwil]

It is being held at Prescott College


Uh Oh... P.C. will far out number the wheeling community! I wish I could go but I have to work that night at 7pm. I hope others and the several Prescott members are able to attend.

Wil

[datrupr]

Mark, I would love to go, but I don't think I would be able to make it up there in time after work and picking up my daughter from school. Be a voice for all of us that can not make it up there.

[datrupr]

Mark, possible change of plans, I am going to see if I can make it up there. If I sneak out of the office at around 4:30, and have Colette pick up the girl from school I should be able to make it up there in time. We will see, and I have to see if I can't dig up a red shirt somewhere.

[crawler#976]

sweet!

My biggest beef is the reduction in access to existing roads on the Agua Fria Nat. Monument. It'll be good to see the maps first hand and get the rational from a person vs. a PDF Doc...

[Ursidae69]

I don't have time to respond fully the way I'd like, but I wanted to say a couple things. I write sections in EAs and BAs all the time where I work and I deal with mitigation action plans from EISs all the time too. Remember that nothing really set in stone this early in the NEPA process. Briefly reading this EIS, it seems that the road closures, what 70 miles worth?, is mostly due to pronghorn habitat. Offer alternatives, not demands that roads stay open. Offer alternatives like keeping the road open with the assurance that your club will routinely do trail work/cleanup. Use catch phrases like "mitigations". Offer to voluntarily close a road during the pronghorn calving season, things like that. They will be a lot more receptive.

Find out what the grazing allotments are like in the areas where roads are being closed. Grazing is very hard on the range and there are also interaction effects with pronghorn populations in the literature. So, if they are letting cattle into areas where your roads are being closed, bring that up. Arguably, cattle are a lot more of an impact than a 4x4 trail in most areas of the southwest. Cattle growers have a huge lobby. Lots of voices count for a lot in the NEPA process, that is why cattle and pronghorn interests will get high priority in this EIS. I've volunteered on dozens of fencing projects with the Az Antelope Foundation out on Bloody Basin Road, they are a group that gets out there and gets their members involved and when it comes time for something like this EIS, their voice is heard.

Anyway, good luck, I hope your interests can be heard and worked in with all the other stakeholders in the EIS.

[Jonathan Hanson]

I agree with Chuck on this. The BLM plan sounds pretty reasonable, and they have been getting better and better at balancing recreational use with legitimate habitat needs of animals such as the pronghorn. I don't think too many people on this site have a problem with preserving wildlife habitat, even if it comes at the expense of their own recreational convenience now and then. We just had a lovely group trip across the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, where the road we followed will soon be closed for several months during the fawning season for the Sonoran pronghorn. I didn't hear a single complaint about that.

The issue with roads is often confused by the thousands of miles of wildcat roads crisscrossing BLM and other public lands. One moron on an ATV decides he doesn't want to walk from here to there and rides across the desert. The next one comes along and sees the tracks, and follows. Then someone in a full-sized truck thinks those tracks are close enough to a trail. The next thing you know, there's a new road where there shouldn't be one, and everyone uses it. Then, when the BLM tries to close it, 4x4 drivers scream that the "eco-whackos" are trying to lock them out of public lands.

Crawler, I think you could take this opportunity to reduce some of the nasty partisanship that currently makes management of public lands such a difficult task. You could start by reining in the broad-stroked "eco-whacko" remarks, which are no more constructive than the "redneck 4x4 bozo" tags of the "other side." Several people on this forum, including myself, might very well fit your personal description of an "eco-whacko."

You could grab the undivided attention of every BLM rep at the meeting by standing up when its your turn to speak, identifying yourself as a four-wheel-drive enthusiast, then saying "I want to make sure we guarantee the viability of wildlife habitat in this area, and I believe we can do so while retaining opportunities for people such as myself." Then tell them what you are willing to do to help, intead of just ranting about nothing but self-centered demands like everyone else. Your testimony will stick in their minds.

[crawler#976]

Jonathon...unfortunately, you don't know the group of people we're dealing with in my area. They have one focus - 100% closure, and they have been very, very successful in the past. We have lost access to 100's of miles of roads/motorized trails in the past 15 years on National Forest land, and unless the groups that favor access are heard loudly, we WILL lose more. These groups are nationally well funded and hire professional lobbyists to battle against small groups of concerned locals who at best can get advice from groups like the BRC.

Locally, the people were up against are extremists in every sense of the work - IE: they promote the monkey wrench solutions, not the reasonable give and take it requires. ALF, ELF, EarthFirst! all have members in this community. We had several people arrested in town in the recent ELF arrest made nation wide, one of who committed suicide in jail. He was/is suspected of being in the highest levels of ELF, a group recognized as a domestics terror group. In past years we've had members of EarthFirst! arrested here for sabotage of high-tension power lines.

As a side note, I've been involved with land issues of over twenty years. In that time we have never been truly successful in retaining our rights to access. Of all the planning/study sessions I've attended this one has the most chance of at least salvaging a portion of your rights to travel what were public roads/trails. We've made our concerns heard, and indeed the draft plan is pretty fair. The closure of illegal road/trails is fine with me - it's when main roads or trails that date back 50+ years get shut down that bothers me. Most previous closures have been made on one way trails via the rational that they don't "go anywhere"...

As far as rhetoric goes, I vehemently oppose the grazing rights issue groups - so in some local’s opinions I'm actually an "anti-cattle whacko". :)

Later

[Ursidae69]

One more thing I'd add. When you are having one-on-one meetings with the BLM folks, looking at the maps, etc, try to bring up ATVs and try hard to differentiate yourself from them. The ATV crowd brings a lot of bad press to the OHV community as a whole. Even though you may have great arguments to keeping a trail open with certain mitigations, they may still want to close it because of ATV use. It's been years since I lived in the area, but here in NM ATVs are the bain of everyone's existence. My favotite places to wheel are criss-crossed with ATV tracks. The erosion is bad because of it. Not sure if that helps, because enforcement is the only real way to stop that stuff, and no agency has the budget for any sort of real enforcement.

Good luck.

[DesertRose]

Thank you Chuck and Jonathan for chiming in here on a touchy subject, and trying to pull the discussion back to some semblance of moderation.

Throwing epithets at those on the other side of an issue is the best way to further join the mire of hate that is beginning to characterize public meetings regarding land use issues.


Jonathon...unfortunately, you don't know the group of people we're dealing with in my area.

Actually, we DO know the people in the area you're dealing with - personally, some of them. In fact, I probably actually had a couple of them on my staff or as interns at one time or another - I was executive director of one of the organizations you throw very wrong accusations at:


They have one focus - 100% closure, and they have been very, very successful in the past. We have lost access to 100's of miles of roads/motorized trails in the past 15 years on National Forest land, and unless the groups that favor access are heard loudly, we WILL lose more.

There are many groups on both sides of any issue, and using this kind of hyperbole is just not productive. What you say might be true for one or two very extreme groups, but not the big mainstream groups. Again, lumping people and groups into categories is so counterproductive not to mention it spreads untruths.

Most of the people attending those meetings are concerned individuals just like you and me (they just happen to disagree with you) - they might be mobilized by organizations of which they are members, but they are not paid staff of well-funded national organizations with hired lobbyists.

To my knowledge, Sierra Club has ONE hired lobbyist for the state of Arizona, and she is Sandy Bahr. I was on the board of directors of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, of which Sierra Club is a member, and I know a lot about these groups you are claiming to know so much about. It just 'taint true.

Mentioning ELF and ALF and Earth First is just more hyperbole - these ARE extremist groups, but they are marginal. (And dragging in Dave Foreman and Rod Mondt and Nancy Zierenberg - the infamous EFers who got caught doing stupid things decades ago? I've worked with Dave extensively in the past and he's now doing more for wildlife and conservation than all of us combined! He knows his young and stupid years were just that.)

No, it's not all extremists attending. Yes, it will be some of the more hard-core wilderness users from Prescott College, and Phoenix will send out members from Sierra Club. But there will also be some of the hunting groups, Arizona Wildlife Federation among them. They support restricted access during certain times. In other words, there will be lots of folks there who represent these very legitimate uses of public land.

I, too, have been involved professionally, like Chuck, in public land use. I've been on the OTHER side of meetings listening to all the pissing and moaning and counterproductive accusations flying at meetings.

And the great part is, that to a T, the people that the land use managers in the agencies listen to are the reasonable, thoughtful, quiet ones who act with respect, as Chuck points out. And who act responsibly about their use of public land - not just considering some sort of God-given right.

Finally, I don't understand the position that "access" means you get to go anywhere you like any time you like on public land. Public land is a legacy for all Americans. Access is a privilege, not a right. Access can and should be limited if we are to preserve our land legacy in perpetuity, not just make it a playground for one user group or another, be they hikers or hunters or ATVers. And without public land what do we have? TEXAS! Where you have to be wealthy or have wealthy friends to hunt or 4x4 like we do here (vis a vis our recent vice-presidential ruckus, which occurred on private hunting lands).

And finally, I'm not quite sure what to make of:

As far as rhetoric goes, I vehemently oppose the grazing rights issue groups - so in some local’s opinions I'm actually an "anti-cattle whacko".


Assuming that because we are conservationists means that we are anti-grazing is just another path down the slippery slope of miscomprehension of complex issues. We support responsible grazing, in fact much of my current work involves protecting the rights and landscapes of traditional pastoralists in several parts of the world.

We should all just step back and realize this is too complex an issue to try to pigeonhole into an us-them fight, and being productive AND proactive is the best way to ensure all user groups - and wildlife and wild places - are represented and protected in land-use decisions.

[Jonathan Hanson]

In my experience, the radical groups on both sides never win unless the reasonable people in the middle fail to act. ELF arsonists and Earth First wrenchers don't influence public land use decisions, any more than do the Lite-beer-swilling ATVers who ride across the desert around here and shoot holes in saguaros.

There are just as many "wise use" whackos as there are "no use" whackos - and the former are much better funded, through proxy organizations backed by mining and lumber companies who, excuse me, don't give a tinker's damn about our four-wheel-drive recreational opportunities. I'm as frightened of those who would ban hunting and all four-wheel-drive travel as I am of those who would open up all wilderness areas to motorized travel. No more frightened, no less.

Crawler, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "rights to access." Nothing in public land policy guarantees anyone the right to access anyplace they want to. The multiple use policy of BLM mandates a fair portion of habitat, where the benefit of wildlife is, yes, put above our own recreational self-interests. I think that speaks highly of us as a species. Every land-use issue I've been involved with has resulted in reasonable compromise - I am not aware of a single case which has resulted in "100 percent closure."

I want trails to explore with my Land Cruiser. I also want trails to explore on foot where I don't have to even hear a vehicle. The latter are far, far more rare than the former today, and thus more important to protect. The BLM's recent survey of the Arizona Strip inventoried seven and a half thousand miles of roads. That's an average of one mile of road per square mile of land. The survey concluded that only six percent of all the strip land and ten percent of the national monument land is more than one mile from a road. Sorry if this offends anyone, but that's too damn many roads, and if BLM proposes closing a bunch of them to preserve the habitat and wildlife of one of the grandest areas in the state, they'll have my hearty endorsement.

The Agua Fria area is an important recreational resource for the people of the Phoenix area. I'll bet the BLM will wind up doing a pretty good job for everyone concerned - including the pronghorn I have been thrilled to spot there.

[flywgn]

This is an important meeting and I regret that other commitments will have us out of town this Thursday. Dang! And here the meeting is practically in my backyard.

I have been involved in land use issues for nearly fifty years and the most difficult times have been when the extremes of both sides refuse to budge. On the other hand, the most rewarding times have been when issues have been settled with rational thought and dialog.

I used to be a member of one of those groups mentioned above, many moons ago, when I perceived it to be a moderating voice in what I saw as unbridled environmental destruction--both public and private. My membership was allowed to lapse (about 30 years ago) when at a meeting concerning a fund-raising campaign for a sensitive issue, one director stated, "I don't want to raise money. I want to raise hell." At the time, that was the direction the leadership and vocal membership of that group was heading, and I thought it to be counter-productive. I still believe that mentality, whether it falls onto one side or the other, is counter-productive.

If I could attend the meeting, my personal choice of color would most likely be grey. :D

(My apologies for the overuse of the first-person pronoun above. The comments just fell out that way.)

[Jonathan Hanson]

Next best thing to being there is a letter. Not an email, or a form letter from Habitats-R-us, but a real letter. These agencies are quickly becoming jaded by the huge volume of form and auto-gebnerated emails they receive. One signed, original letter is worth a hundred of those. We hear this constantly from the officials we talk to.

BLM is a far, far better agency than it was when the initials stood for "Bureau of Lumber and Mining."

[crawler#976]

We should all just step back and realize this is too complex an issue to try to pigeonhole into an us-them fight, and being productive AND proactive is the best way to ensure all user groups - and wildlife and wild places - are represented and protected in land-use decisions.

Well said.

I'll continue to be proactive for what I see as a vanishing opportunity, back country exploration by motorized means. Keeping vehicle access open on public land not designated as Wilderness is my priority. I'm not in favor of unrestricted or destructive useage, but keeping open existing roads and trails is a primary focus for me.

Hope you all can come up for the meeting! I'd enjoy meeting you all. If not, hope to see ya on the trail!

Oh yeah, that's me in the pic...

Later

Mark

[Jonathan Hanson]

Excellent! I'll match your tree-hugger picture and raise you one fondling an evil, antisocial assault rifle:

http://www.jandrhanson.com/alphaenviro.jpg

[datrupr]

Funny, now we need a pic of both of you guys hugging trees while holding assault rifles:hehe:

[Ursidae69]

Well said.

Oh yeah, that's me in the pic...



Man, that is a huge ponderosa! Looks like a skunk bush next to it, (Rhus trilobata).

To keep with the new gun theme that has emerged, here is me with my buddy's 270 I borrowed for a hunt. :)

Please report back with details on the meeting. I'm curious how it will go.

[crawler#976]

...Man, that is a huge ponderosa!

...it's close to the Yolo Ranch west of Campwood, AZ. once upon a time the worlds largest Ponderosa stood a few hundred yards away. 120' tall with a trunk that measured 16' 10-3/4" in dia @ 4' off the ground. It was struck by a super bolt of lighting many years ago and finally died a year afterwards. Mr.& Mrs. BajaTaco accompanied us to see it's remains. The tree I'm hugging is roughly 13' in dia, and is visable in the background.

http://www.bajataco.com/spiderranch/enlfr.htm?9

[flywgn]

... The tree I'm hugging is roughly 13' in dia, and is visable in the background.


Diameter???? Do you mean circumference? Regardless, that's one BIG tree!

PS to Chuck: Check your msgs!

[crawler#976]

DOH!

...got diameters on the brain- programming round parts today :xxrotflma

[crawler#976]

Good meeting...

Had about 50 show up – thanks to the TTORA guys from Phx for making the trip! The group was pretty evenly split amongst the groups that use BLM land.

The BLM has done an excellent job integrating a management plan that covers 997,000 acres. The management area stretches from central Phoenix west to Salome, north to Yarnell east to Minnehaha, then north to Prescott, east to Dugas and back south to Phx.

They have listened to all party's involved and other than some minor problems with a 4 mile section of rerouting an ATV trail in the Agua Fria Nat. Monument, I can support "Alternative E" as written. The Table Mesa area is being set aside as special use area, but no route planning will be done until the implementation phase - probably another year or two down the road. Those of us that support crawlin’ will need to be involved heavily in the route selections at that time.

Comments on the plan will still be accepted via snail or e-mail until April 5th. I urge locals or other interested parties to review the plan and make your comments heard.

Mark

[flywgn]

Many thanks Mark for the attendance and for the report. Is all the information in the link you posted above?

[Ursidae69]

Thanks for the update. When you say the group was evenly split, which interests were being represented at the meeting? I'd guess it was hunters, antelope folks, OHV, and cattle growers.

Did the "bastion of the Anti-recreational use/Earth First type eco-whackos..." make an appearance? What about general eco-minded folks?

[crawler#976]

No one from the Antelope Foundation spoke at this meeting - they probably attended one or more of the prior 7 meetings closer to Phx.

No hunters spoke at this meeting. No recreational target shooters spoke either.

Only one rancher and his wife spoke- they operate a ranch within the Monument, and he was pleased with the results of Alt E as well. I complimented him for his work on the surrounding public lands - it is in better shape graze wise than any other I've seen recently. Even during the drought they have not exceeded holding capacity.

Approx half the crowd was done up in the PC grunge look. It's my personal opinion that these folks would be much more effective if they chose to represent themselves with a more "normal" look. The dirty dreadlock, unkempt look doesn't do their intelligence justice. The Wilderness Coalition and Sierra Club made a pitch to the students of PC prior to the meeting, and they raised a few talking points on expanding the areas having wilderness characteristics through out the management area, and suggesting portions of the Agua Fria Nat. Mon. (Specifically tributaries of the Agua Fria) be designated as scenic and wild river area. Several comments made by the Anti-recreational use/Earth First type eco-whacko's made sense, some made rambling diatribes. The same could be said for the OHV supporters as well.

There were two comments made by generalist in favor of the plan - the eco-minded folk as it were.

There was one comment made in regards to mineral rights and mining uses.

Several groups represented the OHV users. The Prescott Open Trails Assoc. (ATV users) and Whiplash Motor Sports (organized desert racing) representaives both spoke. POTA focused primarily on wash travel within the Mon., while Whiplash spoke on the lack of resources allotted for the area around Wickenburg where they hold their events.

I chose to not make a public comment, I'll do that via e-mail now that I have a better understanding of the document, and can spend more time reviewing it. I did spend roughly 20 minutes with the plan manager and staff prior to the meeting going over the maps and got answers to several questions I had on generalities within the areas I'm focused on.

[Ursidae69]

No one from the Antelope Foundation spoke at this meeting - they probably attended one or more of the prior 7 meetings closer to Phx.

No hunters spoke at this meeting. No recreational target shooters spoke either.


Interesting, but I guess they are happy with alternative "e" and didn't feel the need to be there.



Only one rancher and his wife spoke- they operate a ranch within the Monument, and he was pleased with the results of Alt E as well. I complimented him for his work on the surrounding public lands - it is in better shape graze wise than any other I've seen recently. Even during the drought they have not exceeded holding capacity.


Very cool, public land grazing in the southwest can be done right, but it is a lot harder in terms of money for the rancher, so I applaud anyone that can do it.




Approx half the crowd was done up in the PC grunge look. It's my personal opinion that these folks would be much more effective if they chose to represent themselves with a more "normal" look. The dirty dreadlock, unkempt look doesn't do their intelligence justice.


I agree with you here. Of course, to each his own ya know, but I still agree.



The Wilderness Coalition and Sierra Club made a pitch to the students of PC prior to the meeting, and they raised a few talking points on expanding the areas having wilderness characteristics through out the management area, and suggesting portions of the Agua Fria Nat. Mon. (Specifically tributaries of the Agua Fria) be designated as scenic and wild river area.


That is to be expected, your making posts here to bring folks out is the same as SC announcing this meeting at PC. Both sides know how important public comment is. I've not actually hiked or been through Agua Fria NM since I was a kid. I remember as a youngster riding my 3-wheeler up and down the river and all over the place there. Certainly not something I'd do now. Making the tributaries protected as wilderness doesn't sound that bad, especially for the bald eagles and other birds that use it for breeding grounds. Are there roads in the areas suggested that would get affected?



Several comments made by the Anti-recreational use/Earth First type eco-whacko's made sense, some made rambling diatribes. The same could be said for the OHV supporters as well.


Wish I had a transcript, I love hearing this stuff, the diatribes are often pretty funny.




There were two comments made by generalist in favor of the plan - the eco-minded folk as it were.

There was one comment made in regards to mineral rights and mining uses.

Several groups represented the OHV users. The Prescott Open Trails Assoc. (ATV users) and Whiplash Motor Sports (organized desert racing) representaives both spoke. POTA focused primarily on wash travel within the Mon., while Whiplash spoke on the lack of resources allotted for the area around Wickenburg where they hold their events.


I'm curious how the ATV groups sell themselves. I know that not all ATV riders are bad, they have bad apples that ruin things same as we have, but I think there are a lot more bad apples in the ATV crowd. That IMO is due to the low cost to get into the sport. There is a thread on this board about it being illegal to drive in washes in parts of AZ, I didn't know that, wonder if that is true in this area?



I chose to not make a public comment, I'll do that via e-mail now that I have a better understanding of the document, and can spend more time reviewing it. I did spend roughly 20 minutes with the plan manager and staff prior to the meeting going over the maps and got answers to several questions I had on generalities within the areas I'm focused on.

Your interaction with the managers was probably time better spent than making a public comment anyway.

Regarding the trail designation in the future, what is your take on that after talking with the managers and seeing the maps? Do you think they will be open to hearing about the hardcore trails that you guys do? How do you plan to approach that? Maybe harder trails can be designated, but left off of maps to keep inexperienced people off them?

Thanks for the post. :clapsmile

[crawler#976]

Regarding the trail designation in the future, what is your take on that after talking with the managers and seeing the maps? Do you think they will be open to hearing about the hardcore trails that you guys do? How do you plan to approach that? Maybe harder trails can be designated, but left off of maps to keep inexperienced people off them?

Chris Horyza (the plan manager) could not give me any specifics on the route defination process. The BLM has plotted GPS routes for the existing hard core trails, and is suggesting the routes, when formalized, be named and signed with difficulty info (1 to 5 or 1 to 10 scale). There will be routes closed - I can virtually guarentee that Armagedeon will be removed from the list due to it's traversing thru a riparian area. That's fine by me...as long as we're allowed to continue with the sport elswhere in the area.

One of my other comments directed specifically to Rock Crawlin involved treating it like boating. Specific equipment is required for boating - both safety wise and environmentally. Boaters are required to use PFD's and are prohbited from discharging fluids into the water. Perhaps once trails reach a level of difficulty, let's say 4.0 or above on the 1 to 5 scale, extreme trails call for the use of safety equipment, fuel cells and catch cans for prevention of spillage. Unfortunatelly the BLM doesn't have the authority to impose those types of regulations.