🚀 go-pugleaf

Eric Mankin (mankin@mizar.usc.edu) wrote:
: I am quite aware that it closes some roads. It does not close them all,
: and I explicitly said in the post that I might join in a suit
: to reopen certain jeep trails after the park had been established: 

I can't imagine what grounds you would have for such a suit.  The road
closures are now part of a congressional mandate--the California Desert
Act itself--so the NPS is not only not breaking the law by enforcing those
road closures, it must enforce those road closures to avoid breaking the
law. 

Closures to bicyclists on the basis of a blanket prohibition of bicycling 
in Wilderness Areas is a different matter, however.  There is no 
congressional mandate that bicycles be prohibitted in Wilderness Areas.  
In fact, for the first twenty years of the Wilderness Act of 1964, it was 
clear that bicycles were not prohibited in Wilderness Areas.  Later, at 
the urging of the Sierra Club, administrative policy changes were used to 
redefine the words adopted by Congress to make them mean that bicyles 
were prohibited, but Congress never agreed to or mandated that policy.  
In the case of closures to bicyclists in Wilderness Areas, it is still 
possible to change the administrative rules without changing the laws of 
Congress, as you erroneously suggested could be done to accomodate 
motorized use of ORV routes that are being closed as a result of the 
California Desert Act.

: I thought it was good to get the park set and then work on its rules
: afterward.

I see.  So you figured that if our legislators just passed a law that had
been the focus of congressional battles for the better part of a decade,
it would be no sweat to turn around and change part of that law shortly
thereafter?  Tell me, why would anyone in Congress want to get in the
middle of that bruising battle again? 

: Was there anything ambiguous about the sentence, "I am 
: emphatically not in favor of closing all jeep trails on public land"
: in the post above?

Only the part about you support for the law that prohibits ORV use of  
some of the jeep trails that you think should remain open to ORVs.

: They also (again, speaking selfishly) make a lot of noise. One of the

Most modern ORVs do not make a lot of noise.