Road Ripping is Coming to a Forest Near You

As the Recreation HQ waits for the Six Rivers complaint to be delivered to federal district court in San Francisco, The General wanted to give riders new to this blog a quick history lesson on the topic of travel management rule-related road-ripping (the politically correct or sanitized term is decommissioning).

Some of you may ask just how did this all get started and what groups are behind it? Well, it started out in the Clinton-Gore administration as a well orchestrated (I don’t use the term conspiracy … I just say darn good planning) effort between federal agents and anti-OHV groups such as the Center of the Prevention of Roads, Trout Unlimited, The Wilderness Society, and many others including the California Wilderness Coalition who got their head anti-OHV guy (Paul Spitler) appointed to the CA OHV Commission in 2000.

It is interesting to note that several driving forces in the Clinton administration are now king pins in the groups pushing subpart A of TMR and use of federal funds via the Legacy Roads Initiative to aggressively rip thousands of miles of good roads and jeep trails throughout the country.

Info on Legacy Roads (and Trails!!!) Remediation Initiative
http://wilderness.org/content/legacy-roads-and-trails-fund

Wildlands Center for the Prevention of Roads (note FS anti-roads guy Jim Furnish as one of the board members)
http://www.wildlandscpr.org/legacy-roads

Trout Unlimited (my good friend Chris Wood – a FS lieutenant in the 90s and master strategist (he is a good fisherman by the way) of the Clinton Roadless Rule and other plans). Chris Woods’ 2010 TU Letter to the FS on Road Decommissioning
http://www.wildlandscpr.org/files/TULegacyRoadsLetter.4F.doc

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The Wilderness Society and Road Ripping

http://wilderness.org/content/putting-forests-work

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The Aforementioned Paul Spitler (fmr. OHV Commissioner) at The Wilderness Society
http://wilderness.org/about-us/experts/paul-spitler

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History of the CA Route Inventory Process (RID) and how Spitler/enviros used the CA program to lay the groundwork for the 2005 TMR and the landscape level trail closures we are seeing on the Shasta Trinity NF and the illegal road ripping that is being challenged in court on the Six Rivers NF.
http://thegeneralsrecreationden.blogspot.com/2009/05/travel-management-good-idea-or-big.html

Enviros continue to bully Region 5 and threaten lawsuits if the FS does not follow their template on issues such as mixed-use, non-designation of “unauthorized” trails, and road decommissioning. As you are beginning to see (many pro-access FS staffers and The General saw this in 2001 as the CA RID process was promoted by enviros, the FS, State Parks, and even some OHV groups), TMR is being used by enviros and some in the agency to implement the closure agenda that was started in the mid 1990s.

Just how road-ripping impacts OHV Wars has yet to be seen. Be assured The General has planned for the fight and asks you to join him.

Thanks for your service!