In a recent edition of the Blue
Ribbon Coalition magazine there was an article titled ?Trails In
Our Backyard? by the BRC Executive Director Clark L. Collins that got me
thinking about the trails that really are in my backyard. I live in an
area outside Aztec, NM that is surrounded by approximately 1 ? million acres of
Bureau of Land Management managed land, and my yard backs up to some of that
land.
The BLM managed lands in the Farmington, NM district are crisscrossed by
thousands of roads due to the oil and gas industry in the area. And along with
those roads there are numerous OHV routes ranging from hardcore rock crawling to
single track dirt bike trails. Its those dirt bike trails and a few of the oil
and gas roads I?d like to talk about here.
A couple hundred feet after I step out my back door I?m in a canyon that is
BLM managed land. Going up that canyon to the ridge line are several dirt bike
routes that lead through the forest or up the dry washes. Ultimately those
routes connect up with an old road at the top of the ridge, from which you can
see into four states. To the west is Arizona and the Chuska Mountains, to the
northwest is Utah and The Sleeping Ute, to the north and northeast is Colorado
and the LaPlata and San Juan Mountains, and all around are the canyons and mesas
of northwest New Mexico.
As I write this a good sized chunk of southern California is burning, and
when I look out at the vista mentioned in the previous paragraph I can imagine
the same thing happening to what I am looking at.
California fire smoke in the four corners.
More smoke from the CA fires.
Much of what I can see is covered in a pinon pine and juniper forest, a forest
that is ripe for a major fire caused catastrophe due to drought and the bark
beetle. On a recent walk up the canyon behind my house I started to notice the
number of pinon pine that are dead from the beetle, my estimate for my part of
the world is the dead trees number at least 75% of the total number of trees.
And those dead pinon pines are a fire waiting to happen.
What was once a healthy pinon pine.
Dirt biker framed by 2 dead pinon pines.
Recent events in the U.S. Senate by obstructionist Senators, including one of
my own, Senator Bingaman, can easily bring the catastrophe that is facing
southern California to the rest of the western United States. Under enormous
pressure from the public the Senators yesterday finally agreed to an amendment
to the president?s Healthy Forests Legislation, designating 50% of the tree
cutting is to be in urban interface areas, but it is probably too little too
late. Decades of mismanagement have made the western United States into a giant
tinderbox, proven by the current situation in California and recent events in
Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Oregon.
Senators such as Bingaman of New Mexico, Boxer of California and quite a few
others, mainly on the Democrat side of the aisle, are serving to perpetuate
public lands mismanagement that started several decades ago, but really gained
momentum under the Clinton/Gore administration, an administration that was
firmly in the pocket of the radical environmental groups. These Senators, and
quite a few Representatives, are, in my opinion, also ?owned? by the same
environmental lobby. And I say owned for a very specific reason, legislators
that act in the manner that they do would have to be acting under the direction
of that extreme lobby. And if they are not acting under their direction they are
so afraid of the extreme environmentalists that they may as well be acting under
their direction.
Ploys by the Senators such as Bingaman?s delay last week of the Healthy
Forests legislation and Boxer?s repeated attempts to turn a good sized portion
of California into wilderness only serve to reinforce the assumption that some
of our legislators have an agenda that is in step with groups such as the Sierra
Club, Wilderness Society, Center for BioDiversity and many of the other radical
environmental groups. These groups believe in zero logging, zero OHV use, zero
mineral extraction, and anything else you can think of that is contrary to wise
use AND wise management of our public lands. And even when the
legislators reluctantly pass some common sense legislation their radical
environmental comrades still whine and say things like this Sierra Club quote
from an Investors.com editorial:
"They're going to need a lot more than 50%," said Sean Cosgrove of the
Sierra Club. "That (amount) is still going to leave a lot of people at
risk. The rest will likely be spent on logging projects miles away from any
population center."
The persistent whining and claims that the Bush Administration is in cahoots
with logging, mining and other extractive industries is, I believe, starting to
wear a little thin with the public. But, unfortunately the extreme environmental
groups just don?t get it, and neither do their comrades in the U.S.
Legislature. It?s time that we weeded out these legislators, but how much more
of the west needs to burn before we do?
It seems I digressed from my original topic, the trails in my backyard.
It?s really not a digression, though, those trails that I treasure that run
through the forest that I live with everyday are in danger of becoming so much
charred landscape and sterilized soil.
And it scares the hell out of me, not just for selfish reasons, but for what the
radical environmental groups and their ?owned? legislators are doing to much
of our country. If you come in contact with people like Kieran Suckling of the
Center for BioDiversity, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Dave Foreman of The
Wildlands Project , Senator Bingaman or Boxer or any of the other legislators
that have bought into the dangerous nonsense that they are propagating I urge
you to let these people know exactly what it is that they are doing to our
country.
Darn it, I digressed again! But how can I not digress onto the
subject of the mess our public lands are in and who is causing that mess? Every
time I look out my back door I can imagine a moonscape instead of a forest, and
that moonscape extending as far as I can see from the top of the ridge. Like I
said in the previous paragraph I?m scared of what is happening right now and
what can happen if we continue to let the extreme environmentalists and their
comrades in the legislature get their way. I?ve been battling this fear with
action for many years, but unfortunately so much of the public, and specifically
the OHV crowd, just sit back and let things happen; then after it happens the
shouting starts and people become aware?momentarily, then back to what they
were doing before anything happened.
I?m going to enjoy the trails in my backyard, and hopefully that enjoyment
is not ?enjoy them while you can?.
The pinon pine in front is dying, the one in the rear is a
healthy one.
But along with that enjoyment I take action to try to make a difference, two
letters to Senator Bingaman in the past week or so took very little of my time,
but they were something. I want to be able to use my Jeep and dirtbikes in the
canyon behind my house, and everywhere else it is legal to go (a rapidly
dwindling number of places thanks in huge part to the radical
environmentalists), and use them responsibly while still trying to make a
difference.
