Ten Bears
New member
I think we have a few TRKOP's & MSB's around here.
http://www.atvidaho.info/editorial_list.php?e_id=3The Emporer Has No Roads
By: Tom G
Webmaster: Please note this article was written about a past president, NOT our current one.
Almost every one is familiar with the fairy tale about the emperor who was so vain that he wore a new robe every hour. He was hoodwinked by some unscrupulous charlatans who convinced him they could weave a fabric of such quality it would be visible only to “The Right Kind of People”. It took the simple honesty of a child to point out that he was really walking around buck naked.
Now in the White House we have a modern day Emperor who is being hoodwinked by an equally unscrupulous crowd. They have convinced him that they possess a set of magical maps. These are really just ordinary maps of our National Forests and public lands showing many thousands of miles of roads and tracks and trails used by the citizens of this country for access and recreation. However, when “The Right Kind of People” look at these maps they are unable to see these roads and track and trails. They are invisible! In fact, what they see is this country as it was before the first European trod upon this continent.
What a glorious vision they think this is, and they just know it would be good for us common folk if we could share it. Since they realize that this is highly unlikely, they have asked the Emperor to declare that these roads and tracks and trails are officially non-existent and invisible. The fact that they are there on the ground and can be seen and used by the majority of his subjects is unimportant. Once they are declared invisible by the power of imperial decree and the magical maps they meet the definition of a roadless area.
The charlatans in the fairy tale wanted to get their hands in the royal treasury and according to the story, they succeeded. Their modern day counterparts have a bigger goals mind. Once these areas with the invisible roads and tracks and trails are declared roadless they can be nominated for the next step on the true believer’s road to Nirvana – WILDERNESS. Since many of these areas are pretty small they will have to be protected by buffer zones, which will immediately need their own buffer zones and any roads within their boundaries will have be declared invisible. No unpaved road or trail on our public land is safe and I wouldn’t bet on paved roads being immune.
Within this massive, Washington driven proposal there probably are some areas that truly are without roads and trails and there may even be a few “untrammeled by man” that merit protection as Wilderness. However, the definition of Wilderness is very restrictive and the number of such areas is small at best, so proponents are left to tinker with the definition and rely on magical maps.
This campaign is being orchestrated as another attack on the timber industry but that war has been pretty much won, or lost, depending on your perspective. It is, however, a direct assault on almost all forms of recreation on our public lands. If you own anything from a motor home to a mountain bike or even a horse your ability to enjoy wild land recreation is directly threatened.
If you think I exaggerate take a look at the campaign for Big Green that has been around for several years. It projects everything west of Chicago as having only two types of land use, cities and wilderness. Such niceties as private property rights would be swept aside in the name of the greater good. One of the prominent GAGs (green advocacy groups) recently dusted off their wilderness fanatics wish list and are trying to cram it under the umbrella of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration in the hope that a little legitimacy will rub off. The only surprise is they didn’t include Canada and Mexico.
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In a recent issue of Motorcyclist Magazine a columnist writing about the antics of such folks referred to them as self styled Morally Superior Beings, MSBs, and went on to say that MSB propaganda in this country is what many unthinking people think they think. What a profound observation! It was certainly borne out by a conversation I had with a retired Iowa farmer in a northern Alabama rest area. Our Idaho license plate attracted his attention and he wondered if it was too late to come tour our few remaining Wilderness areas in his motor home. He had read that our public land was being given to ranchers free of charge and would be turned into feed lots – and he knew about feed lots!
Speaking of acronyms for “The Right Kind of People” I prefer TRKOP rather than MSB. When pronounced Trick-op it’s really quite appropriate as there are some pretty tricky operators among them. Invisible roads are just one example, another is their zeal to demonize any one who doesn’t share their precise view. When I take my grandchildren out on snowmobiles to enjoy some beautiful back country they couldn’t reach on their skis or snowshoes, we are not just on a family outing. We are indulging ourselves in INDUSTRIAL RECREATION! These words are usually delivered in a loud voice dripping with all the innuendo and righteous indignation that can be loaded upon them.
If this modest effort gets published it is not unlikely that it will later be referenced in some GAG fund raiser as evidence that there is one more barbarian at the gate. Since I refuse to let anyone but me define me, or my motives, I offer the following. I am a grandfather who got lost in the wilds of the Bitterroot Range, the first time, before my 3rd birthday. That was more than 60 years ago. I have been going back to wild places in the West ever since, for recreation, adventure and renewal. I was a supporter of the early Primitive Area designations and of the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Under it many truly deserving areas have been preserved. However, there are better alternatives than total lock up for the remaining, so called roadless areas. Designating some of them Back Country Recreation Areas is one. Another approach, while not a total solution, would be to return some authority to the Forest and District levels. This would allow these managers to manage the land and resources entrusted to their care if the hierarchy could shield them from frittering away their budgets on endless appeals and lawsuit or revising plans that lead to nothing since there is no money left to implement anything. This would be done under existing laws and regulations that are replete with environmental protections and safeguards. These folks have a tough job and we should be helping them deal with our concerns rather than harassing them for following orders. Senator Craig’s pending Bill on forest management is another.
Probably the approach with the greatest promise was developed by the folks in Quincy, California, a small community with a timber based economy that evaporated. After years of shouting, finger pointing and hand wringing they realized that they all loved their town and if they were going to save it they would have to work together. All factions, from the most extreme environmentalist to the reddest of the red neck loggers gathered at their library with local public land managers and elected officials and hammered out a plan to put their economy back on track. It became know as the Quincy Library Plan. Almost immediately it was repudiated by the environmental hierarchy. Perhaps this was because it didn’t include absolutely everything on their current wish list but I suspect it was because it was based on cooperation and compromise. Such an approach offers no ammunition for a fund raising juggernaut fueled by rumors of crisis, contrived conflict and predictions of impending catastrophe.
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As if all this weren’t enough, the Forest Service is also proposing a total overhaul of the regulations under which they do their planning. This is another campaign being driven by Washington and TRKOPs and they are holding public meetings around the country. The one I attended wouldn’t even qualify as Public Involvement Light. They have taken this massive, complicated and technical document and reduced it to four Themes on which we were invited to comment. These were presented in such warm and fuzzy language it was impossible to find much of substance to comment about. The most revealing part of this meeting was the pictures used as background during the introduction. They used about 20 beautiful forested scenes but only two showed any sign of human activity. One showed a tourist standing at an overlook and the other was a vacant, paved road through fall foliage.
They missed a perfect opportunity to show people enjoying the National Forests with kayaks, snowmobiles, mountain bikes, etc. Perhaps a mere oversight but it does show the mind set of the people from the Forest Service Washington Office who put the presentation together. What can we do? Those of us who love our wild lands and want to save and protect them for the future but also want to be able to enjoy them, under reasonable regulations, in a wide variety of ways. Get informed! Find out about these plans and initiatives. Get involved! Go to meetings, write letters, make sure your concerns are made known to the decision makers.
The other option is to do nothing or just complain to our friends. If we chose this route we should probably try to sell our recreational equipment while there is still a market for it and live out our days admiring the emperor’s new clothes and his invisible roads.
Date Posted: 2000-01-01
