Not of the people.
Posted on 11/05/2023 5:44:10 PM PST by george76
Our freedom to roam is under assault from a plan to close everything off and make us ask permission before we enjoy it..
There is a plan underway to close the great open spaces of the American West to you, me, our children, and our children’s children. The federal government — which owns most of this land — is determined to move from a “use and let use” system of accessing Western public lands to a permission-based system that will mean reservations, permits, and closures.
Just last month, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision to close 317 miles of historic and popular off-road trails near Moab, Utah. For decades, these trails — which are mostly old uranium mining roads — have been enjoyed by everyone from Jeep owners to dirt bike riders to base jumpers looking for a place to land. They have evocative names like Gemini Bridges, Mashed Potatoes, and Dead Cow Trail. They appear in guidebooks. Some of them are even featured in the hugely popular Easter Jeep Safari.
The plan is already being implemented, and it threatens the freedom enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans who hike, camp, Jeep, mountain bike, ATV, fish, swim, canoe, kayak, trail run, overland, base jump, raft, and backpack the millions of acres of free space that make “the West” the West.
I have enjoyed our public lands my entire life. There is nothing like a sip of coffee as you watch the first rays of dawn begin to break on the red rocks. You don’t realize how tough your kids are until they shrug off a chilly 15-degree night in a sleeping bag. And you don’t really appreciate how unfathomably vast the West is until you spend three days exploring the backcountry without seeing another human soul.
All of these experiences — and many others — take place on public lands. There is no entrance fee. There is no permit required. You just lace up your hiking boots, or jump in your pickup, or hop on your mountain bike, and you go. Simple as that. So long you don’t litter or destroy or cause a ruckus, you are left to your own devices. It is something that unites Americans of every class, creed, color, and political persuasion.
That feeling of expansive freedom speaks to everyone who steps outside to enjoy and explore America’s public lands. It feels like our birthright to enjoy them and, for hundreds of years now, it has been just that.
But now, that freedom to roam is under assault from a plan to close everything off and make you ask permission before you enjoy it. If nothing is done to stop it, one of the last, great, unifying forces in American public and private life will be fundamentally transformed and left unrecognizable before most people realize what is happening.
Zooming out, the aggressive rate of federal trail closures is part of the larger “30×30” plan that President Joe Biden announced shortly after taking office. The alleged intention is to “conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters and 30% of U.S. ocean areas by 2030.”
There is no evidence that users of these trails have been damaging them. Indeed, people cherish these lands. Go drive the trails and you will rarely encounter even a single piece of trash. That is why they have been in use for decades with no appreciable degradation.
Nevertheless, the federal government is now implementing a plan to close hundreds of miles of cherished trails. And that is why the BlueRibbon Coalition — the nation’s premier group dedicated to preserving motorized access to wilderness — has joined with the Colorado Offroad Trail Defenders to challenge the plan in court. They are represented by my organization, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
What the Biden administration’s plan really means is an aggressive plan to close those lands to use by the public. Well, not to the entire public — crunchy backpackers and hikers are still beloved by the left. But the executive decision will limit access for the “wrong” kind of outdoorsy people — people who drive Jeeps and Toyotas and ride ATVs and dirt bikes, and who look like they might be having a good time without suffering under a heavy backpack.
This seems to be a great paradox to those who do not understand why people love overlanding, dispersed camping, dirt biking, ATV riding, and off-roading, but it is no mystery to those of us who actually engage in these activities. We love the wilderness, too. We love taking our children, friends, and family out there and enjoying fresh air and magnificent scenery. If we come across someone else’s trash, we pick it up. If we see someone breaking the rules (by, say, driving off-trail), we reprimand them.
There are very, very few law enforcement personnel on these lands enforcing the rules. Instead, the motorized travel community self-enforces an ethic of respect for public lands. We teach it to our children. That is why these trails remain so attractive as a place to recreate.
The Moab closures are a bellwether case for protecting access to public lands. The closures represent a provocative challenge to an entire way of life for millions of people in the West. If the Biden administration can close these lands, it can close them anywhere. Americans have shown themselves to be responsible stewards of their public lands, and they deserve to be able to enjoy them — freely — for generations to come.
No government can be taken seriously (from a national security standpoint) that allows and even encourages millions and millions of unvetted migrants to bumrush across the border.
It’s the same with “the environment”. Millions and millions of additional bodies places enormous demand for additional roads, housing, water, sewerage, timber, hospitals, schools etc etc.
Everything they say is a lie. Don’t be fooled.
Going to war with Iran...?
Good luck with that
Since bidet drained the Strategic Oil Reserves.
And shut down the keystone pipe line ...canceled fraking permits...and off shore drilling and exploration permits.
Good news ..he opened huge off shore leases..unfortunately not on any significant areas of oil reserves.
Good news...exploration companies might want to retool to extract liquid methane with exists in vast quantities off shore Atlantic coast.
Even more btu’s per gallon than petroleum.. 👋 👋 👋
The western states should declare ownership of these lands was transferred to the states and their founding and seize all the land that the fed’s are not using for military bases. The federal government has no business, nor constitutional authority, of being the largest landlord in the country.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
>Have to preserve the wilderness, “for the people”.
In globalist speak, “our democracy” means they decide, not regular people; and “for the people” means “for them only” in the same way.
(and same with ‘our rights’ and every other thing in which they refer to a group right or privilege; all for them, nothing for anyone else, neo-Feudalism).
But you damn well better pay for it.
Agenda 21
“They get rich people or corporations to fund their purchase of wilderness areas with the quid pro quo being that those individuals or the corporate leaders are allowed access to the land and often times have large area cut out from the tract for their private hunting and fishing use”
Oh it’s worse then that. They get to live there as “caretakers”.
Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Defense Fund, lots of land trusts in California, it’s all about them getting to rope off major areas of the West. For themselves.
The government was created by the people.
It can not override the will of the people.
... Unless the government currently in place is somehow not actually assembled by the people.
I never thought I’d see my country turning into a communist country.
Just like every other despot and tyrant.
Bastards.
Thieves.
Communist Fuxx!
“In 1946, President Truman merged the General Land Office and the Grazing Service to create the BLM.”
So, did we vote on that, you know, like, democratically as a nation? Or was it done through congress? Or did Harry just, kinda, do that on his own - creating a new government agency. You know, like creating the CIA in 1947?
Harry Truman, Democrat, 33rd president. Nice odd number that - 33.
Not of the people.
Well, then it’s a good thing I have no plans to go out west, or drive anywhere that isn’t within a 3 hour drive of my home. Who the hell has any money to travel these days anyway?
Exactly.
Come out to the West Texas desert. Lot’s of wild, undeveloped land to enjoy the does NOT belong to the feds. REEEALLY wild. You might have to pay a fee to a rancher or two, but if you don’t harm their livestock, you’re probably good to go. LOL!
The FedMob has been quietly and incrementally closing roads and trails on FedMob lands since the early ‘90s at least.
I saw it happening first hand.
bttt
I take it China wants the land.
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