I received this from Jeri Ferguson @ Cal4Wheel:


To All:

You all are invited to attend:

Mike Ahrens, BLM Barstow, will be giving a presentation on proposed fee demo at Dumont Dunes at the CA4WDC Environmental Affairs meeting on May 9th at the Sizzler in Norco. 1750 Hamner, Norco, Ca 92860 at 7p.m.

Hope to see you

Jeri Ferguson
CA4WDC

Jeri was at the UFWDA Land Use Conference in Phx. this past weekend, so she is really up on fee demo now, that was one of our 2 main topics. Turns out, if things go right, it may be a good thing. Talk to Jeri about it, or I can fill you in, but not on list. I already fawked up the other day and accidentally posted some of the details to the LUN mailing list.

We already have the greens running for cover on the Fee issue. (note attached LA Times Editorial).

Think about a few things as you read:

Balzar (green ecoeditorialist master) is found "down a four-wheel-drive road across a bone-dry mesa of slickrock and juniper in some of the toughest and least-traveled country in the Southwest." Quite a ride description for a man who hates SUV's and vehicle use on public lands.

It get's better: "There are no rivers here, no lakes, no towering trees, just rutted jeep trails and a few hundred miles of hard-angled Southwest rock scenery." This is the same place (Utah) that Mr. Balzar's SUWA calls "wild and pristine?"

"sturdy new "Fee Area" signs are posted every few miles-signs." Anyone find a similarity to the carsonite woods of "No Tresspassing -- Wilderness Study Area" signs found in the California Desert Conservation Area? Where was Balzar when these signs went up?

"Thanks to fees, they now have an absurd concrete launch ramp." What does Mr. Balzar misunderstand? That the concrete ramp prevents the rafters feet from creating turbity in the sensitive unprotected riverbank, protecting the potentially threatened and endangered riparian habitat.

What does Mr. Balzar want, less environmental protection? This is where we have a chance to expose the true agenda of these activists, closure and exclusion, not an agenda of environmental protection.

"But they have made their point: The wide-open spaces are being closed, and fast."

Do you think the greens are getting a taste of the results from their own closure policy, and fear we are willing to pay to keep public access open (despite all their efforts to starve and litigate the funding out of the government management agencies)?

Re-read that last quote, "But they have made their point: The wide-open spaces are being closed, and fast."

Remember, it's the Wildlands Project activists that keep closing the wide open spaces, not any fees (keeping public access open) for environmental protection program.

Happy Trails!



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http://www.LATimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000027312apr17.column?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Do pinions

April 17, 2002

John Balzar:

Charging to the End of Paradise

SOUTHEAST UTAH -- We are in the canyon lands a few miles from nowhere, and we are being
stalked. Two people tailing us in their SUV want money. They are bandits with badges. They are
government workers. They are land developers.

Pardner, welcome to the death of the West, again, and this time maybe for good.

Freedom? The wild? A campfire under the stars? A chance to get away from things and show the kids
what remains of our greatest myth? Times are changing and not for the good on our public lands.
Another important revolution in the history of the wide-open West is unfolding across tens of
thousands of acres controlled by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Signs
are going up. Fee boxes are going in. Rangers and their sidekicks, those once-kindly volunteer
campsite docents, have been given a new mission. Make way for the bulldozers and cement mixers
and construction workers.

"They are asking for fees I don't want to pay to build things that I don't want to see," groans my guide, David Petersen, as we bounce down a four-wheel-drive road across a bone-dry mesa of slickrock and juniper in some of the toughest and least-traveled country in the Southwest. "They are charging us to Disneyfy our public lands."

For a while now, a few farsighted people have been sounding the alarm about the federal government's six-year-old experiment to impose fees on public land users. They warned that development and concessions and ruination of peace and quiet would follow. They were correct, of course, and a grass-roots uprising is fast gaining steam in states from Utah to Oregon, from Montana to Arizona.

This is not one of your effete fights between Sierra Club backpackers and everyone else. This is a showdown that will define public lands for all stripes of users, from hunters and bird-watchers to mountain bikers and old-boy pickup-truck campers like Petersen and me.

"They're really bringing bureaucracy to the people with this one," says Petersen. "I'm not sure that grass-roots is organic enough to describe what's going on."

June 15 has been set for a national protest against this commercialization of our public trust lands, specifically against Bush administration plans to make permanent this development, or "recreation," fee program. Petersen, a mountain man, a canyon man and a writer with one of the West's most distinctive voices on behalf of wildness, has brought me to Cedar Mesa to peek into the future. There are no rivers here, no lakes, no towering trees, just rutted jeep trails and a few hundred miles of hard-angled Southwest rock scenery. This is one of those places where people come when they are serious about getting away, to command one's own horizon for a day or two. But no more. Sturdy new "Fee Area" signs are posted every few miles-signs that beckon people to come, signs that foreshadow paved roads and asphalt campgrounds and maybe a curio shop. Who knows what the traffic will bear?

All across this region and elsewhere in the West, the rough is being scraped away from what is left of our public lands. Not far from here is Sand Island, the storied put-in for rafters on the San Juan River. What do rafters need? A place to blow up their boats and camp one night before beginning their float. What is the government providing them? Thanks to fees, they now have an absurd concrete launch ramp.

Welcome to adventure. Don't worry about getting your feet muddy. And please enjoy the new showpiece visitor center and maintenance building and ranger station and the field of solar panels to keep the cash registers running.

This magical place of cottonwoods and sweet memories for a generation of outdoor lovers now resembles nothing so much as a strip mall.

Didn't we do this already to our national parks, and to our lasting regret?

Like army ants, federal land managers cannot leave the land to manage itself for the pleasure of us to enjoy. If there are no more trees to cut, no petroleum to drill for, no cattle to graze, then there must be buildings, turnarounds, fences, entrepreneurial opportunities and, of course, deputies to maintain a show of force. Bureaucrats are turning what remains of the land into another kind of jobs program for themselves.

Behind us this day, the BLM rangers eat our dust for miles in case we venture across the invisible boundary into their "fee area," perhaps taking a day hike down one of the labyrinth canyons. We disappoint them. But they have made their point: The wide-open spaces are being closed, and fast.

On June 15, I'll be joining the protesters. Take those road crews and fix our crumbling freeways. Send the construction workers to rebuild city schools. Let a couple of guys in a pickup truck park under the stars without mercury-vapor lights to lead the way to a brand-new hot-water shower and Laundromat strip-mall facility. Sign in and deposit money here.