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.
“ 317 miles of historic and popular off-road trails”
Not sure that 317 miles of Jeep roads constitutes “closure of the Great American West”.
How do you like tyranny now?
Who is fool enough not to see it?
Biden must be surrounded by the most radical Marxist environmental nut jobs in the country. To push the crazy BS he does. This is their moment and they are pushing it for all it’s worth
Clinton made the forest roads be closed off with steel gates. Roadless forest initiatives, which helps forest fires get bigger, because there is no access. I don’t think they realize how many acetylene torches fit in the back of trucks and SUV’s. The protests are easy to predict, just cut down gates and bring weapons to defend yourself. IT IS OUR LAND, not theirs.
In 1866, Congress passed the Mining Act, including Section 8, that later became Revised Statute 2477 (“R.S. 2477”). R.S. 2477 granted rights-of-way across federal lands for the construction of highways...
Garfield and Kane Counties got involved when the USFS closed thousands of miles of roads in the Dixie National Forest. In 2005 the federal government banned motorized travel in the area, and in 2009 the USFS issued a travel plan which effectively decommissioned historical RS-2477 roads and trails throughout central southern Utah.
In 2011 the State of Utah joined these counties and sued the federal government along with SUWA..
Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires.. Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and roads on federal lands.
Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb
If you do not start managing forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they are still ignoring it, said Dr. Bob Zybach.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3883830/posts
Clintons are like a subway. You have to put in coins to open the gates. Said Johnny Chung, who admitted to a Senate committee in 1997 that he funneled $100,000 from the Chinese military to ..
Clinton’s Utah Coal Deal.. Bill Clinton has put 25% of this country’s so-called “compliance coal” or “enviro coal” (i.e., clean-burning, low sulfur) off limits with his Executive Order declaring a section of Utah to be a national park.
Clinton signed the Executive Order designating 1.7 million acres of land in southwest Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, his action placed the area off limits to mineral extraction and development.
The New York Times reported that the monument encloses the largest coal field in the nation, the Kaiparowitz Plateau, which contains at least 7 billion tons of coal worth over $1 TRILLION.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/10/think_you_know_how_bad_the_clintons_are.html
When there is no longer any advantage to being rich (aka the ‘undesirable” begin encroaching on the elites’ hideaways) the rich change the rules.
And lots more government jobs!!!
This is happening in Hawaii. Hiking trails closed. Reservations for Haleakala sunrise. etc. more hunger games mentality. Visit now while things are still open!
agenda 21, its thier plan
Did not know about this.
Thank you.
They probably gave it to China already.
I know quite a bit about him. Yes, he was a Mason. I've been one for over 50 years. It is a fact that many of the founders of our nation were.
He was also a friend of Tom Pendergast who's political machine helped Truman into his first public office. When Pendergast died, President Truman attended his funeral. It was very controversial at the time.
Truman was largely in the shadows until Franklin Roosevelt died. I don't believe that Truman was as susceptible to the Lefties as Roosevelt was.
In summary, the Masons do not run our government and the are not a globalist cabal either.
“The federal government — which owns most of this land”
NO THEY DO NOT.
WE the people own those public lands.
As living beings we have a responsibility to address threats to our lives. If we fail to look into secret societies, government secrets and secret parallel governments we will be failing our assignment of self preservation.
This might interest you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPisjVhIZSc
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Moab makes nearly all their money from tourism and much of it from 4WD community.
Lets see how this impacts their town.
Get on google maps right now (fall season) and rout a trip from Cody Wyoming to Jackson Hole.
Now ask yourself does that make sense? Yellowstone on paper is owned by UNESCO as a registered world heritage biosphere reserve. The U.N. closes public roads in America every year.
Not of the people.
How much will the “permissions” cost?
There’s gotta be a fee in there somewhere.
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