🚀 go-pugleaf

/ hpmwgip4:ca.environment / jym@mica.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer) /  1:51 pm  Aug  6, 1992 /
writes:
>
>The bill is opposed by miners, ranchers and off-roadsters. Seymour, a 
>Southern California developer, gets much of his campaign funding from 
>this collection of lobbyists. (The Bureau of Land Management estimates
>the desert's potential mineral value at $1 trillion, so you can imagine
>the political pressure to rip it open.)

Gosh, you don't imagine that his lack of support for S21 is in any way 
related to the large number of people who showed up at the public input 
meetings on the bill.  The ratio of people against the bill vs supporting 
it was about 3:1 in the articles I read.

>The desert is both the most fragile ecosystem, and the last area lacking
>comprehensive environmental protection. (There is no desert analogue
>to the California Coastal Commission, for example.) 

The BLM has a desert management plan which spells out how the desert 
resources are to be managed.  I only wish they would follow the plan they
have established instead allowing the complex process of managing the
desert to be jerked around by a bunch of armchair environmentalists.
I agree that there are sensitive areas of the desert that need special 
protection, but closing most of the desert and concentrating the public's
recreational use to practically nothing is not a reasonable solution.

And it's "off-road vehicle enthusiasts" not "off-roadsters".

Happy Trails,
Scott