To all,
With the recent revival of scientfically baseless environmental claims, and the likely hood that non shared access political groups are gaining a majority here in the US, it is even more imperative that all of us join some sort of shared access group with some moxy.
My money is on the Blue Ribbon Coalition, as they are fighting mostly at the Federal level, and since the majority of land that we ride on here in the states is BLM or federal land, they make the most sense to me. This not to say that those groups fighting at the state level are any less effective in their particular area's, it's just that I cannot contribute to all of them and I feel this group has done the most for the most.
Only about 10% of the dirt bike/ATV riding public belong to some sort of land use advocacy group. This in and of itself, says allot about the BRC, and other smaller shared access groups successes. By going to their web site www.sharetrails.org you can get a good idea of what they are all about. And as their web address says, it's about sharing the land.
Here in my state, one of our great senators [sic] is proposing even more wilderness area's. Area's that are not even close to meeting the definition of the 1964 wilderness act. The main reason for this is that a few years ago there were a number of wildfires in the "wilderness areas" adjacent to our riding area's. Since there are no roads in the "wilderness area's" the men and material could not get in readily to fight these fires. And as some extreme evironmental groups advocate letting burn, well the majority of the "wilderness area's" are nothing more than a burned out cinder, slowly returning to life.
As you might imagine, the area's where we ride, this is in the southern part of the Seqouia national forest by the way, have paved and unpaved roads that allowed the fire crews to combat the blazes and those area's look great.
Well, our environmental friends are a bit jealous of the greenery of our area's and are now trying to take them away from us.
I know there are shared access land use battles going on all over the country, and you can see that the BRC is picking it's battles strategically to set legal precedent that will inturn paint a broad stroke in terms of shared access.
Recently, Jimmy Lewis had a good article in his Jimmy Rigged colum talking about this very problem. And I believe he said "were getting screwed".
So I ask you all to please join the BRC, and I challenge you to contribute the cost of gas for a round trip to your favorite riding area to their campaign.
When you join you can sign up for legislative alerts and help flood lawmakers offices with letters and emails in the cause of shared access.
With the recent revival of scientfically baseless environmental claims, and the likely hood that non shared access political groups are gaining a majority here in the US, it is even more imperative that all of us join some sort of shared access group with some moxy.
My money is on the Blue Ribbon Coalition, as they are fighting mostly at the Federal level, and since the majority of land that we ride on here in the states is BLM or federal land, they make the most sense to me. This not to say that those groups fighting at the state level are any less effective in their particular area's, it's just that I cannot contribute to all of them and I feel this group has done the most for the most.
Only about 10% of the dirt bike/ATV riding public belong to some sort of land use advocacy group. This in and of itself, says allot about the BRC, and other smaller shared access groups successes. By going to their web site www.sharetrails.org you can get a good idea of what they are all about. And as their web address says, it's about sharing the land.
Here in my state, one of our great senators [sic] is proposing even more wilderness area's. Area's that are not even close to meeting the definition of the 1964 wilderness act. The main reason for this is that a few years ago there were a number of wildfires in the "wilderness areas" adjacent to our riding area's. Since there are no roads in the "wilderness area's" the men and material could not get in readily to fight these fires. And as some extreme evironmental groups advocate letting burn, well the majority of the "wilderness area's" are nothing more than a burned out cinder, slowly returning to life.
As you might imagine, the area's where we ride, this is in the southern part of the Seqouia national forest by the way, have paved and unpaved roads that allowed the fire crews to combat the blazes and those area's look great.
Well, our environmental friends are a bit jealous of the greenery of our area's and are now trying to take them away from us.
I know there are shared access land use battles going on all over the country, and you can see that the BRC is picking it's battles strategically to set legal precedent that will inturn paint a broad stroke in terms of shared access.
Recently, Jimmy Lewis had a good article in his Jimmy Rigged colum talking about this very problem. And I believe he said "were getting screwed".
So I ask you all to please join the BRC, and I challenge you to contribute the cost of gas for a round trip to your favorite riding area to their campaign.
When you join you can sign up for legislative alerts and help flood lawmakers offices with letters and emails in the cause of shared access.
