HQ Cong. Hearing Alert - Forest Planning Rule, TMR, and Permitting Process on Docket

HQ wanted to alert its followers about the hearing tomorrow being held in Washington D.C. before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands.


BRC News Release on Nov. 15 Hearing
http://www.sharetrails.org/news/2011/11/09/blueribbon-coalition-invited-testify-congressional-subcommittee

As HQ understands, BRC’s Greg Mumm will be testifying on three important topics.
The new Forest Planning Rule, TMR, and excessive “cost recovery” charges and other abuses of the special use permitting process.

Nov. 14 - E&E Article on Hearing Tomorrow (A good overview)
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FOREST SERVICE: House Resources panel to plumb agency's planning rules, permitting

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

The House Natural Resources Committee tomorrow will explore a sweeping Forest Service rule that would serve as the template for managing the nation's 193 million acres of forests and grasslands.

The Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands oversight hearing will feature testimony from Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell and will also probe the agency's management of off-highway vehicle access and its issuance of special-use permits.

The agency's draft planning rule, first announced in February, will determine how the agency's 175 national forests and grasslands develop individual management plans, which govern activities from logging to recreation and the protection of endangered plants and animals (E&ENews PM, Feb. 10).

The rule aims to speed planning efforts, incorporate best available science, engage the public and ensure forests' resilience to climate change, pests and other threats, the agency has said.

But it has drawn its share of critics, including Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee, who warned it could open the door to special-interest lawsuits and would fail to ensure timber harvests will increase across the nation's millions of acres of national forests (Greenwire, May 5). Environmental groups have criticized the proposal for giving too much discretion to local forest supervisors and lacking rigid standards for protecting water and wildlife (E&ENews PM, May 16).

The agency has said it intends to finalize the rule by the end of the year.

Tomorrow's discussion will likely also address the agency's implementation of a 2005 travel management planning rule, which Tidwell has said helps ensure motor vehicle users have guaranteed places to ride in the forests.

While supporters credit the rule for preventing motor vehicles from muddying streams, harming fish and spreading weeds, many Republicans and off-highway vehicle users say it has led to the unwarranted closure of trails.

"Congressional oversight is needed regarding the agency's closure of tens of thousands of roads and trails over the last decade," said Greg Mumm, executive director of the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition, a trail access coalition.

Mumm, who was invited to testify at the hearing, said OHV users initially supported the process but that in some cases it has been used to make landscape-level changes to forest plans and close large numbers of existing legal trails and authorized routes.

Some forest supervisors say travel management planning decisions are the most difficult they make.

The issue came to the fore earlier this year when Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.) successfully passed an amendment to a House spending bill that would have restricted the agency's implementation of the rule. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who voted for the amendment at the time, later panned the move as unnecessary (E&ENews PM, March 11).

Mumm said his group has also recently asked lawmakers to pass a bill that would streamline the agency's issuance of special-use permits, a process he called overly complex and expensive.

Tomorrow's meeting comes less than two months after the committee held a field hearing in California to hear from the Forest Service, state officials and citizens about land-use regulations, policies and actions affecting access to agency lands.

Schedule: The hearing is tomorrow at 10 a.m. in 1324 Longworth.

Witnesses: Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, others to be announced.
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Last year HQ wrote a blog with an outline (Next Steps) in TMR called, Designate the $#^&^% Trail
http://thegeneralsrecreationden.blogspot.com/2010/08/designate-d-trail-next-steps-in-tmr.html

OHV advocates should check with their local Forests to see where they are in Round Two or “Next Steps” of TMR. Some Forests have started project level trail planning – good on them. Some have not. Local clubs and riders have to get involved in Round Two of TMR. Kudos to those who are involved and a swift kick to those who are not.


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No Place for Ugly Rhetoric in Public Land Use Debate

The Recreation HQ could not let this week end without making a comment on some of the crowd’s “verbal ugliness” directed at the environmental representative (and to some extent at the Forest Service official) at the September 19, 2011 House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Land’s hearing held in Sacramento.


Nobody supports vigorous and spirited debate on public land access issues then I. However, at the hearing some in the audience crossed the line between civil public discourse and inappropriate name calling and heckling.

Over the years, I have sometimes been the only conservative land-use representative at meetings largely dominated by far left-wing eco-zealots. But at those meeting (and to my surprise), I was not rudely hit with over-the-top insults and slurs.

HQ understands the anger in the OHV community about how thousands of miles of historic access routes have been closed over the years by eco-lawsuits and government overregulation. In fact, these closures make my blood boil too.

However, OHV’s cause is not advanced in the public arena when it resorts to ugly and hostile rhetoric.


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Land Agencies Should Use "Signs" to Address NOA at CCMA and other Sites

REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK - ORICK BEACH

Since the BLM issued an emergency closure order in May 2008 that closed the Clear Creek Management Area to all users, the Recreation HQ and groups like BRC have urged the agency to adopt the use of “warning signs” used by sister agencies to address valid public safety issues v. the use of closures or expensive capping/ soil treatments.

CA State Parks uses signs to warn against undertow and dangerous ocean waves. Redwood National Park uses signs that count the number of people killed by downing on the beach and tallies those numbers on its warning signs.

At issue with the CCMA closure is that there is not one documented case in CA of a human contracting asbestosis/cancer and dying from recreational activity on public lands that contain naturally occurring asbestos. Yet, the BLM refused to even review or consider a signing prescription for CCMA because the line officer said he had made up his mind that the area should be closed to OHV and other motorized uses.

March 31 Blog on Faux Liability Issue at CCMA (a good read with background info)
http://thegeneralsrecreationden.blogspot.com/2010/03/faux-liability-issue-at-ccma.html

HQ believes it is just this type of arbitrary federal action that the new Congress will investigate and have oversight hearings on.

HQ urges all federal land management agencies to strongly consider a “signing” prescription for routes/areas that contain NOA

A spokesman for a major environmental group told me recently that the whole NOA issue is “much to do about nothing.” HQ agrees and hopes that the agencies can put this to rest once and for all and get back to the job of providing quality motorized and non-motorized recreation at CCMA and in the other 42 CA counties where NOA occurs.

Thanks for your service!