Wallowa-Whitman Travel Mgt. (OR-WA-ID)

[goldhammer]

The draft environmental impact statement is out for a 60 day comment period, starting around the 19th of June. This will desiginate routes that will be open for motorized use. The forest supervisor is not selecting a prefered alternative until the final comes out. He like to sit on the fence until the last minute to keep the most people happy, and find out which way the wind is blowing. We need to swamp them with requests for "class II" "TRAILS" All the USFS wants to give us out here is gravel roads that are passable in your standard everyday issue porsche.

Call 541-523-1214 to request a full hardcopy with maps, a set of cd's or the summary. You can also view it at www.fs.fed.us/r6/w-w/projects/travel-management-plan/index.shtml.

Can also request the documents by email at [email protected].

This covers the area of NE Oregon, SW Washington and west central Idaho.

Other travel management plans are being worked on across the country, and are supposed to be in place by the end of the year. You need to get involved and take a look at the places you use on USFS ground. Don't lose your favorite route because of non-involvement.

Thanks....

[goldhammer]

After reading 600+ pages of dry material (think War & Peace) It looks like I will be selecting Alternative 4 with the modification of adding in the "Over 50 inch" trails from Alternative 5. This can be done at very little cost to the agency, and will provide around 49 miles of 4x4 trails where there are none at this time.

The responsible official will sit on the fence till the bitter end to make the fewest people mad, based on the amount and kind of comments he gets.

You can sumit comments via the website where you look it over, and I hope most of you do. Thanks, Art

[TooRisky]

The biggest problem here I saw just This week...I live up in NW WA., and was out for few days exploring using maps and GPS.

I found huge swaths of even moderate 4x4 trails burmed off and the trails were at this point starting to grow over. This is not a temporary situation that they talking about, they will burm the trail and let nature take it course to the point it is overgrown, then they will not allow any traffic back there for environmental reasons.

I noticed they took about 25-30 miles of the east side of a ridge that was open only about 4 years ago.

So when they close a trail, it is permanent closer cause you cant stop mother nature, its a catch 22 on the public and covers the environmentalist butts now and in the future.

I also want to mention that it is not only the 4x4 people, it is hunters trying to get to the back country, family campers looking to get away, and the simple day trail explorer will all be effected.

I feel what they are doing is herding us into authorized camping areas like a frigging KOA, or those 4x4 parks which you can run the trails in a half a day then run them backward for the heck of it and that is all you have.

Wake up people...