Posted on 06/01/2006 7:23:27 AM PDT by CedarDave
Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday became the first Western governor to petition the Bush administration for protection of all roadless national forest land in the state.
"I'm going to fight to protect 1.7 million acres of pristine New Mexico land," he said in a national telephone news conference. "New Mexico's roadless areas promote the health of rivers and streams. Roadless areas support significant and complex wildlife communities and ... create unique valuable recreational opportunities."
Richardson has been a vocal critic of President Bush's decision to replace a Clinton-era rule protecting all roadless forest land with a state-by-state petition process. Richardson and Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said Wednesday that the federal government unfairly denied New Mexico any financial help to prepare its petition. "The Bush administration has politicized this process to an incredible degree by funding only governors of their own party," Clapp said.
Most of the 1.6 million acres of inventoried roadless forest land in New Mexico is protected from road-building— at least temporarily— in individual forest plans. But 351,000 acres are open to new roads, according to a state Game and Fish Department report released Wednesday.
Roadless areas support healthy watersheds and ecosystems, are less vulnerable to severe wildfires and have less wildlife poaching, according to the state's petition.
In addition, the Forest Service already has a $37.7 million yearly road maintenance backlog in New Mexico, according to the Game and Fish report.
The petition calls for a permanent ban on new roads and most commercial timber harvest. However, current access to roadless areas wouldn't change.
"This proposal that I put forth will not close existing roads and does not affect the ability of New Mexicans to use off-road vehicles and fight fires," Richardson said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Not mentioned in the article is that declaring national forests (and BLM areas too) roadless will shut down any further oil and natural gas exploration and development. This too will make the environazis very happy and contribute to their support as Richardson looks past his certain re-election this fall to national office in 2008.
Well, that's a relief to all coyotes and illegals.
Never ever trust this man............."...create unique valuable recreational opportunities.".....how can recreational opportunities be gotten to when there are no roads?
Yeah, sure wouldn't want regular folk to have access to land they might buy, live on, raise families away from the urban centers.
It's this kind of silliness that perpetuates the nonsense that America is running out of space! 1.7 million acres indeed!
Ruefully
yeah this way they'll have new land to create new Mexican cities,nice pristine tax payer funded democratic voter flooded area's where it's against the law to ask for identification
Doogle
"Never ever trust this man............."...create unique valuable recreational opportunities.".....how can recreational opportunities be gotten to when there are no roads?"
by strapping on one's hemp sandals, loading up on carob 'gorp,' packing the shorty toothbrush, and packing in!
1.7 million acres indeed!
No choice for the states?
maybe they could build ocndos there
maybe they could build condos there
Ok. So we will let them overgrow since we wont be able to thin them and we will end up with a 1.7 million acre forest fire.
That will wipe out those spotted owls. At least we will still have the silvery minnow.
Bill Clintons pimp running his mouth again. He's still carrying cigars around for Bill.
Bill Clintons pimp running his mouth again. He's still carrying cigars around for Bill.
It's all Federal land that the governor proposes to lock up; can't live or build on it anyway. For years the FS has been throwing off folks that leased and built homes (mainly summer homes) there pre-WWII. For those private inholdings within forests, they will try to buy you out, or failing that, will refuse to improve access roads in hopes of driving you out. Some ranchers have arrested for not complying with cattle removal orders.
The BLM land, especially, is generally semi-arid to arid (i.e. desert) with little use except for some very limited cattle grazing. In many areas of the state, there is significant oil and gas potential on these lands as there is on the forest service lands of NW NM.
Which will be wiped out in certain areas when the soil sterilized by the mega-fires runs down into the creeks and rivers with the first big monsoon cloudburst.
That would be two problems solved...er...I mean enviromental tragidy...yeah, that's what I meant.
I still think we can save the minnow by just letting Walmart sell them as pets.
"I'm going to fight to protect 1.7 million acres of pristine New Mexico land," ... promote (blah, blah). Roadless areas (more blah) create unique valuable recreational opportunities."Okay ((((head scratching))))? Will someone, anyone p-l-e-a-s-e explain how vast areas that get sealed off to 99% of the population have any 'recreational' use???
This lame canard is always thrown out and I say, okay, then who can use it? Not me, not the elderly, not Grand Parents and the family. Certainly not anyone with a disability. Hell anyone who can't hump 30 miles with a 70# ruck can't use it. The only people who can access these 'recreational' areas are Yuppie 'hikers' with 2% body fat and people who can afford a freaking' $10K toy.
This is nothing but 'recreational fascism' for a privileged few.
Yes it is. But it is just a cover for the real reason -- the envirofacists do not want development of any natural resources anywhere for any reason because they hate private enterprise and want government control over all aspects of production. Thus, recreation has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
The irony is, that by shutting down natural resource extraction here in the US, they shift it to overseas. Because demand continues unabated, the mining, drilling, lumbering, etc. continues but with more and much more severe environmental damage as most of the third world countries have not yet developed an environmental ethic. Whenever I see ads for worldwide environmental conservation projects, I wonder how much destruction has occurred because we prevented ecologically sound development here at home.
1.7 million acres.
sounds like a lot.
it's not.
It is just slightly bigger than a 50 mile square.
Lots of noise. No impact.
big deal.
"Never ever trust this man................create unique valuable recreational opportunities.".....how can recreational opportunities be gotten to when there are no roads?"
You can say that again! He wants to stop oil and natural gas production in the name of "saving the environment. Most of our national forests here have been made "road-less" by the blocking off of existing public access forest roads and Richardson supports more of the same.
What good is a national forest to anyone if we have no access to see it?
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