The Carnegie saga woke up a lot of SF Bay Area off-roaders to the fact that motorized recreation is under a vicious and unrelenting assault by anti-OHV groups (that now include “fishing” organizations).
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Photo: Federal Road Ripping During a Flood Event
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It has also exposed the soft underbelly of some so-called environmental groups as having an agenda that has nothing to do with “protecting the environment” – but having everything to do with the exercise of political power over their adversaries. (e.g. timber, mining, OHV, ranching, developers, and farmers)
See my Blog on NIMBY War – this book confirms the political ambitions of enviro groups
http://thegeneralsrecreationden.blogspot.com/2009/12/book-review-nimby-wars-must-read-for.html
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It has also exposed the soft underbelly of some so-called environmental groups as having an agenda that has nothing to do with “protecting the environment” – but having everything to do with the exercise of political power over their adversaries. (e.g. timber, mining, OHV, ranching, developers, and farmers)
See my Blog on NIMBY War – this book confirms the political ambitions of enviro groups
http://thegeneralsrecreationden.blogspot.com/2009/12/book-review-nimby-wars-must-read-for.html
For several weeks, The General has stated he believes off-roaders will see an avalanche of anti-OHV lawsuits in 2010 and beyond based on junk science, crisis mongering, and non-substantive technical violations.
What you won’t see are those same environmental groups challenging aggressive TMR road decommissioning projects that do not have site-specific NEPA documents or worse yet are being worked on with heavy equipment during the wet season (yes, the same wet season when OHV use is either banned or severely restricted). It has been The General’s experience that enviros (and some agency staff) turn a blind-eye to resource impacts if the goal of the project level activity is to CLOSE an area or route to OHV use.
Recreation HQ believes that OHV legal interests should consider filing a lawsuit on federal travel planning projects where there are either gross or technical NEPA violations
or where there are sediment impacts that violate BMPs or other water quality regulations to important salmon (yes, real salmon habitat – not the Carnegie hoax fish habitat) fisheries.
The General is asking the troops to keep an eye open for examples that match the aforementioned scenario as depicted in today’s photograph.
Filing lawsuits against enviro groups or agency bureaucrats based on corruption, dishonesty, or bias - although sounding good - really don’t have much legal merit. However, environmental law suits based on NEPA, water quality, or ESA violations do have merit and maybe that is the type of suit OHV legal representatives should be looking for besides our standard intervention-type legal actions.
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Thanks for your service!
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Posts
You are so right Don, about OHV groups needing to take the time, and resources to file lawsuits.
ReplyDeleteThe Anti's take this approach to close areas, and when they win, they get paid their legal fee's. Why can't OHV groups do the same thing? In the few cases that we have filed suits, we have dropped it when it looked like we were going to get what we wanted from the land manager, only later to loose our access (Tellico).
The land managers know that we, as OHV groups do not file suit very often, so they are not afraid of us from that standpoint.
It is time for change!
To protect our rights, we need the $$$$.
ReplyDeleteWe, as a group need to "pony up" with the $$$$. Anti-access groups have been out-spending us and it shows. Plain and simple
Why can't we force California to use our $52.00 registration TAX to pay for these greenback lawsuits?
ReplyDeleteMike
Mike,
ReplyDeleteFunds are already spoken for in the new OHV bill - SB742
Don