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HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WILDERNESS?

psychoneurosis

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Oct 15, 2008
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www.psychoneurosisracing.com
An overwhelming percentage of hunters say a lack of access to hunting areas is a huge problem for them. Research indicates that about 90% of hunters use trucks or ATVs as part of their hunting experience. Sound like anything we have run into in the snowmobile community?

Quick Wilderness usage comparison. 15.3% of public lands in Colorado are Congressionally designated Wilderness. These areas receive less than 3% of all visitor days on Colorado public lands. Makes you wonder why this could ever be seen as an economic driver?

And Wilderness has also been specifically identified as a significant factor contributing to and limitation on agency response to the pine beetle outbreak. Wilderness areas are some of the hardest hit by the beetle and I have noticed a significant decline in game use of the post beetle habitat
 

Dogmeat

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http://www.summitdaily.com/news/9175432-113/public-access-lands-acres

An estimated 541,000 acres in Colorado, including 456 acres in Pitkin County, are public lands in name only — the public is shut out from lack of access, according to a new report.
The Denver-based Center for Western Priorities found that nearly 4 million acres of public lands in six Western states are off-limits because of historical land-ownership patterns, inadequate entry points or other impediments.
The report, “Landlocked: Measuring Public Land Access in the West,” found that most of the inaccessible acres are entirely landlocked by private property or access is blocked when a road or trail crosses a corner of private land.
“Our analysis here is, as far as we can tell, the first time it’s ever been done,” said Trevor Kincaid, a staff member at the Center for Western Priorities and an author of the study.
The center decided to undertake the study when there was a public uproar over lack of access to some public lands during the federal government shutdown earlier this year. People were upset over closure of national parks and the inability to visit national monuments in Washington, D.C. In the Aspen area, the Maroon Bells Recreation Area was closed to vehicles, and several campgrounds in national forests closed early.
“Another thing we learned from the shutdown is people love their public lands,” Kincaid said.
The center staff got curious about how much land is permanently inaccessible, not just off-limits because of inconvenience.
“We knew that there was land that was blocked off from the public,” Kincaid said.
The study showed there are 454,000 acres of public land completely surrounded by private lands in Colorado and another 87,000 acres inaccessible because the public cannot cut corners.
Idaho and Utah had the lowest amount of “landlocked” areas; Montana and Wyoming had the most. Colorado and New Mexico fell in the middle.
Montana has 1,995,000 acres of inaccessible public lands, or about half of the six-state total. Wyoming has 758,000 inaccessible acres.
New Mexico is almost identical to Colorado with 542,000 acres.
Utah has 197,000 inaccessible acres, while Idaho has 163,000, the study said.
The study didn’t consider public lands that are difficult to access because of rugged four-wheel-drive roads as inaccessible. In some cases, the best access is via a well-maintained road that is closed where it crosses private property, but secondary access is provided over rougher roads. Those lands aren’t considered inaccessible by the study, even though use might be diminished by lack of easy access.
“There’s definitely more land out there that is inaccessible,” Kincaid said. “This is a conservative estimate.”
For example, the study assumed that roads marked as public are indeed open. That doesn’t factor in illegal closures when ownership is in dispute.
“Private landowners have been known to block access to public land by ‘posting’ public lands as private,” the study said.
The report was released during Thanksgiving week while the mapmaker was on vacation, so no additional information was immediately available on the 456 acres of inaccessible property in Pitkin County, Kincaid said.
The study contends that inaccessibility to public lands hurts the economies of Western counties, ones that are often rural.
“These shuttered public lands dramatically reduce opportunities for outdoor recreation, such as hiking, hunting, fishing and horseback riding, and stymie the United States’ burgeoning $646 billion outdoor recreation economy,” the study said.
The Center for Western Priorities wants Congress to take action to secure access to property that is currently inaccessible. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is an existing tool to provide access, but it is chronically underfunded, the study said. In addition, Congress could act on the HUNT Act introduced by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., to expand and improve access into public lands, the study said. It noted that past efforts to improve access have received bipartisan support from Western legislators.
The study can be found at www.westernpriorities.org/ wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Landlocked-Measuring-Public- Land-Access.pdf.
scondon@aspentimes.com
“Another thing we learned from the shutdown is people love their public lands. ... We knew that there was land that was blocked off from the public.”
Trevor Kincaid
Staff member at the Center for Western Priorities and an author on the study “Landlocked: Measuring Public Land Access in the West”

Just to show you how rediculous the situation really is, even the wilderness freaks are pissed off about it. You get a bunch of billionair *******s who buy off congressmen and senators to lobby for access restrictions, the buy up all the surrounding land, and then they don't have to get it designated as wilderness OR pay taxes on it, even though its now effectivley "their land". Note that the article above does not include responsible OHV usage on public lands as "recreation", only activities 'legal' in designated wilderness.

What this shows is how totally f*cked up the management of public lands is by the federal and state governments in the western US, Wyoming and Montanna particularly but Colorado is not innocent.

I absolutley hate to say this, but I would rather see swaths of the private land taken under emminent domain and made so the public can access it, motorized et all ... But that will never happen, as the wilderness freaks will lock it up for themselves .....

You can't win, period.
 
F
Jan 2, 2009
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wilderness means.....

In Virginia bout 15 years ago my lil bro and I used to hunt this area off of the blue ridge pkwy/skyline drive. This road is a tourist drive across the ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains from VA to SC. In this specific area we had to have 18,000 different permits, watch some videos, have another 18,000 permits, and abide by the area specific rule book, but they gave us hunting access to this area called St. Maries Wilderness. I believe it is 20-25,000 acres. For the east coast it has some premier whitetail buck hunting. We would hike in with packs 4 to 7 miles and camp for several days during both archery and rifle season. My bro got his first buck here with a bow on halloween night 1997. The rules of the "wilderness" are many. No horses, no motor vehicles, no hunting within 500 ft. of the parking lot, do not chamber a bullet until the 500 ft. mark for which they had signs, etc.. They do not allow anything with wheels, including deer carts. That being said, we are originally from N. Idaho, and I have spent alot of time in Alaska recently, thinking back on the effort they made to preserve this "wilderness" area was beyond worth it in my opinion, as well as the hassle of all the permits we had to get to hunt there. It was a 4 hour drive from Richmond, Virginia. But to get out of the city was priceless, it felt like we were in the backwoods that I am used to it was secluded, fresh, and clean. The trails were the only sign of human presence and probably the only thing taken care of by the forest service although they did not cut fallen trees across the trail, just leg/eye height branches. So high 5 on wilderness. With foresight to population growth and areas close to high populations I believe it is a good idea to take measures to preserve it. But in massive, not very populated areas, the regulations should not be as strict, just common sense responsible. Especially where responsible snowmobiling is concerned, we don't leave tracks to see in the summertime. The wilderness will change 100 times over from fires and vegetation growth and be different throughout the years naturally. On the end note this St. Maries Wilderness area in Virginia is HIGHLY recommended for hikers, hunters, or campers. Five Stars once you get 500 ft. from the parking area.
 
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