Zac - I don't understand how you can say we are losing access. We don't get rid of 50% because we don't have it now. Access to Sweet Grass creek (and East Trunk) is legally at the pleasure of the landowners - the law is very clear on that - and the swap does nothing to change that.
The...
I'm not trying to be confrontational, but how do you hold them to their mission statement and purpose? I agree about the no law part.
Perhaps we are differing on the meaning of policy, but they had a memo that clearly spelled out what they were supposed to do when a trail was closed down by...
I'm not understanding your point. I have a 12" high pile of docs about the east crazies which contains all sorts of memos and policies about trail access, but if they choose not to abide by them there is nothing the public can do because there is no law that says the FS has to abide by their own...
I want to agree with you, but the take-home message of this defeated lawsuit is that the USFS is under no legal obligation to protect these trails. In fact, historically, they haven't protected these trails circling the Crazies. Just look at an old map and see that a trail circled the Crazies...
You created enemies of those landowners with your suit so I don't see the difference.
Yes, you should have sued the landowners, not the Forest Service, if you were concerned with access and didn't want to negotiate with the landowners. The Forest Service had no legal obligation to prove these...
Elky - I don't know the context of the NEPA quote, but I'm not afraid to use it when appropriate to protect a resource. On the other hand, as I said in the EAJA thread, I'm against monkey-wrench suits and I see no relevance of NEPA to access in this suit, nor do I believe the trail is a threat...
Give me a break. It had no chance of winning. Zero, zippo. Every lawyer I talked to said as much and I came to that conclusion a year before when I looked at doing the same thing. Worse, BHA could have sued the landowners to prove any prescriptive easement existed if indeed they had the proof...
Myself and my electrical engineering friends are constantly getting offers to move to California. No way, not so much because of taxes, but because of crowds and housing costs.
I'm not a fan of monkey-wrench lawsuits, but the agencies could follow the law so they don't have to pay out. I can't imagine the abuses if they weren't held accountable by someone.
Some constructive input from a Montana Wildlife Federation alert (but I think the first one is a deal breaker - it has already been tried - and a better alternative is to scrap the Sweet Grass portion of the swap).
There was a wonderful interview of Simpson (Republican) and Bowles (Democrat) about their plan to get Social Security on track. They were appointed by Obama to get the deficit under control. Unfortunately, I can't find it, but they wanted to do things like raise the SS retirement age to 69, over...
42 degrees is a 90% slope, and a lot steeper than you would think. If you slipped, you probably wouldn't stop until you hit the bottom.
This slope was about 80%, and about as steep as you can climb without using your hands.
As most know, I won’t support the exchange without conservation easements.
That said, I’d like to thank Sullivan for explaining he's trying to prevent "rewarding [landowners] who block legal access.” In other words, it’s just sour grapes, and I’ve been dealing with that since before there was...