🚀 go-pugleaf

/* Written  1:56 pm  Aug 11, 1992 by scottt@hpmwtd.sr.hp.com in
cdp:ca.environment */
/* ---------- "Re: LETTER: Attention DESERT LOVERS" ---------- */
/ 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

I like the way you define "public recreation" to exclude the 98
percent of desert enthusiasts who DON'T own one of those
fume-spewing, tortoise crushing, phallic replacements you call an
off-road vehicle.

You know, I would really like to go hiking in the Algodones Dunes
someday.  Unfortunately, the BLM has seen fit to reserve that area
exclusively for "vehicular recreation", effectively EXCLUDING
everyone else.  Imagine the California Coastal Commission saying
"No, we're sorry, this part of the Pacific is reserved for
Powerboats: no swimming, diving or surfing allowed."  No one would
stand for it.

Fortunately, ORV areas will, within 75 years, be a thing of the
past.  People will learn to appreciate the desert for its quiet.
And ORV users will die out, probably from exhaustion after trying
to hike 200 yards to the road from their disabled machines.

Unfortunately, lots of other species will die out at the same
time.

Chris Clarke