Report on Forest Level Roadless NOI Meeting on Stanislaus NF
Meeting date: Dec. 7, 1999
Place: Forest Supervisors Office in Sonora
Based on what I have heard about other roadless meetings, this event proved to be almost balanced and the Forest Service staff treated everyone fairly. I arrived about 45 minutes early with another BRC member. We helped the one FS staff person finish setting up chairs. I was the first person to sign up to speak and was also the first one called to speak. It appeared that the FS staff called your name in the order you signed-up.
The audience of approx. 50 people seemed pretty much split evenly between multiple-use and the wilderness advocates. If it were not for the 2-3 students who read from prepared text championing Clintons directive, the 21 or so speakers would have been divided about 50/50 or 45/55.
Each speaker was given 3 minutes and I started off by giving credit for this land closure directive to Algore. I had an 11x17 inch poster of a closed gate and used that to illustrate what the end result of the directive could be. An Alpine
County supervisor also spoke against the directive and said their board passed a resolution against the Roadless program.
It seems that even the hard-core greens that were at this meeting are very tuned up to the fact that closed roads do not sell to the general public. Almost every green speaker kept repeating that this directive WILL NOT close roads. After everyone spoke, we had a Q&A that was actually more informative and interesting then the speeches. In this venue, I pointed out that Dombeck in the Senate hearing stated that the 62 million acres would be managed as wilderness and I asked the FS spokesman what he had heard on this topic. He only said that he guessed Dombeck had wished he had not said that! I also pointed out that currently our existing recreational roads and trails
are not protected and exist in a rulemaking limbo. I also said that once our recreational
roads/trails are identified as being in a new roadless/unroaded area that even simple
trail repairs become almost impossible to do...the FS staffer did not disagree.
John Hoffman, a multiple-use advocate, also pointed out that this process is illegal since only Congress can designate Wilderness and expand buffers. However, one Jeeper pointed out that the FS can through rulemaking and other means bypass Congress and invent new land designations that can, if fact, be MORE restrictive than Wilderness.
My hat off to the many multiple-use recreationists and BRC members who traveled to this event to represent their interests. There were several reporters in the audience so a story or two should be forthcoming.
Don Amador
Western Regional Representative
Blue Ribbon Coalition