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How NON-Motorized activists will restrict Snowmobile access to US Forest Service Land

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94fordguy

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Yakima, Wa.
I posted this in: Land Use: Every person who rides in Washington needs to read this and submit a comment!! , but have not gotten any input or replies. This holds true for all ares, SAWS is one of, if not our biggest advocate! Let's try it here. Help me donate more money!!!

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In addition to writing letters...
Join: SAWS - Snowmobile Alliance of Western States
They are our biggest voice! They stand toe to toe to all who propose to take away our lands. They have the legal knowledge to take our letters. our comments, our concerns and present them in our best interest. To show all those who question us what good stewards of the land we actually are.

I challenge everyone who sleds in WA, who is a member and reads the WA Riding Area Forum and ALL of SnoWest to:

1. Send in a comment: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/wenatchee/forest-plan/contact/index.shtml (Thank you to newtrout for the link)

2. Join SAWS: Snowmobile Alliance of Western States

These are 2 simple things to do. It will take just a few minutes of your time, yet it will make a huge difference. Our strength is in our numbers and in our continued stewardship of the National Forests where we and our families play.

I just donated $50 to SAWS. Donation Link I urge everyone to give a small donation...$5 or whatever you can spare. Its a small price to help save the lands we love.

My business will match any donations made to SAWS up to $100. That means I will match any combination of contributions up to $100..... 10 people donating $5 + 5 people donating $10, etc.
Send me the donation conformation link via PM or e-mail and I will add them up til they reach $100, then send in my additional contribution of $100.


Lets all join together to do what we can to protect the lands we love


I tried to send in a comment to the link to the forest planning revision page and my browser timed out.... luckily I saved the comment so I'll try again later and hopefully it will work.

Also, if there are any other places we can send comments to other than our state legislators, I am all ears!!!!!
 

Sled Idaho

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Thats good to hear Christopher!!

I'm glad that the members of this site, through their fees, were able to contribute such a large amount to these organizations!!

Cle Elum Sledhead (SAWS Chairman) posted a Thank You to SWOL right after we received the check from them. It was mentioned that SAWS was the only organization that SWOL heard from upon receiving the donation.


That check was just from member contributions.
We received a letter from the Canadian Avalanche Center as well.

Oops, thanks for the clarification!
 

Sled Idaho

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Been a while since I posted anything here, but this thread calls for something. It's really great that there are so many people fired up about this subject! This was one of SAWS' first, if not THE first, action alert sent to our membership. Summer of 2005 it was proposed that snowmobiles be excluded from the OHV because in a sense they did not pose the same threats to erosion and vegetation that other OHV does, and that it was conducive to their use to travel off-trail.

The clowns at WWA are so transparent in their attempts to curb snowmobiling it's comical. Nevertheless they have a lot of money to spread their b.s. wherever they please. To me, it's scary how effective they could be if their leader had half a brain. The one thing we can be somewhat thankful for, though cautious, is the FS uses common sense on occasion. We can hope that if this thing from WWA ever gets any traction that the FS will say "thanks for the input, but these are public lands." They did that when they modified the OHV Rule in 2005 despite the thousands of letters they got from WWA and the like.

Thanks everyone for the donations, and for the support. We will do what we can to then help everyone get the word out. BRC developed an auto-letter generator for a petition to the Senate re: CIEDRA, maybe we will look at doing something similar. We have the "petition" from WWA so we can tear the s**t out of that too.

Thanks again all!

Scott, your Idaho SAWS Rep
 

christopher

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Please stay on top of it as much as you can and LET US KNOW if this thing begins to see the light of day!!

SnoWestOnline WILL TAKE AN ACTIVE stand against this sort of thing to the best of our ability!
 

rmk2112

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Nov 21, 2009
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........Thanks everyone for the donations, and for the support. We will do what we can to then help everyone get the word out. BRC developed an auto-letter generator for a petition to the Senate re: CIEDRA, maybe we will look at doing something similar. We have the "petition" from WWA so we can tear the s**t out of that too.

Thanks again all!

Scott, your Idaho SAWS Rep

Thanks for all you do Scott.

WE need a auto generator for letters here...anything to make it easier for everyone within the reach of SnoWest to be able to send something in!!

Is this possible Christopher...or anyone else out there who could help build this?
 

christopher

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Thanks for all you do Scott.

WE need a auto generator for letters here...anything to make it easier for everyone within the reach of SnoWest to be able to send something in!!

Is this possible Christopher...or anyone else out there who could help build this?

Probably NOT something we could code directly into the SnoWest Forums itself, BUT....

If they can share the source code, there is no reason why we couldn't duplicate it on a webpage outside of the forum but still on our servers.
 

rmk2112

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Nov 21, 2009
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Probably NOT something we could code directly into the SnoWest Forums itself, BUT....

If they can share the source code, there is no reason why we couldn't duplicate it on a webpage outside of the forum but still on our servers.

Make it so...No 1. (Capt Picard intimation):usa2:

That would be awesome.....can you imagine the amount of letters and support that would generate? Whether its a auto generated letter or not, the number of letter that would flood into the respective decision makers would be enormous!! That would show that 1000's of use are aware, committed, ready to fight for the lands we love to play in with our families and friends.

Use your clout Christopher,:hail: pull some strings to get the code...lets do this!!
 

plumnuts

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Right side of Washington
Re

so OB could make changes by Executive order... got that and should be expected at the very end of his term (hopefully 2012).. that being said.. HOW MANY PEOPLE WHO RIDE SNOWMOBILES (or horses, bikes, 4 X 4, etc) belong to the BRC? Sadly few... and more sad.. few choose to give extra money to save something for his or her children to enjoy in the future.. Janet and I feel if the rule was to pass and snowmobiles would be required to stay only on designated roads, we would sell our snowmobiles and what we would spend on snowmobiling send even more to the BRC
 
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sledheadjake

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Aug 31, 2009
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I wrote a letter to the washington FS and to the senator and Idahos senator and FS, and waiting to get paid to make my donation to saws.Thank you everyone for all the donations and support to keep our sport alive!
 
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Dmill

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Sep 14, 2009
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great falls / snow slip inn
wrote my letters, hope they fall in good hands, donated 50 to saws... this just blows my mind that they always shut it down and there is nothing we can do.. looks like snowmobiling is going to have to be an outlaws sport.. i guess if i have to get arrested to ride... I WILL!
 

sledfvr

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CBU or Citizens for Balanced Use is another good organization to join. They recently went to bat for us in Montana.
 
First post here - I felt it important enought to register and set everyone straight

(As posted on the Skidoo forum)
http://www.dootalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=396627&pid=2938811&st=15&#entry2938811


--I don't think anyone on here understands this thing. You all sure indicate that in your comments.
Read the rule and then comment.
Basically in PA our National Forestry people have "opted in" snowmobiles but they did not make any changes to our current rules. And the reason is because our National forest here has always been "closed unless posted open" That's the biggest change that everyone else is noticing. All the roads they previously ride are now closed unless posted open. This is the biggest part of the act. This came along with the roadless bill the green weenies got in place in the clinton administration.
As for the manufacturers doing something on it they do already. They are all part of ISMA which is our legislative body who represents us to congress. ISMA is your voice (if you are a member of a state association and own a snowmobile) You can call them and ask them what they are doing on it. If you are a member, as each state association pays dues to them as well as the manufacturers. Sure, it's not a large sum of money but the ISMA's budget for this year is 200k. That's paid representation to go see congressmen and women to address our agenda. Call them up. Ask them what they are doing. Call the local people in your states. In PA we have representatives for each riding area to represent the members (those who join the PSSA in this case). You can get answers from them as well. I welcome people to contact me about this. I have some knowledge on how it all works.

Steve (PSSA region 3 director hat on)

(edited for a correction - The closed unless open rule still only applies to the Allegheny National Forest in PA as far as I know at this time - most all other areas are "open unless posted closed")
 
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X
Nov 26, 2007
108
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Grand junction
Will when I call Polaris they told me they know nothing about it, so I told the person I spoke with and they told me that they are not going to do anything about it UNTIL it becomes a law then they will worry about it!! I thought to myself glad your concerned about it I think that would be a little to late!
 
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clutch man

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Sep 8, 2009
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La pine Oregon
Has not been much said here in a few day but i think we need to keep working on this it will not go away. <a href="http://www.sweetim.com/s.asp?im=gen&lpver=3&ref=11" target="_blank"><img src="http://cdn.content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/00020059.gif" border="0" title="Click to get more." ></a>
 

psychoneurosis

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Oct 15, 2008
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The opposition on behalf of our club went out today to Tidwell and the Region2 motorized rep for the forest service in denver (sherwood).

To be honest the whole thing looks like the comment that was submitted on behalf of the Winter Wildlands Alliance for the 2005 TMP rule- they just changed it to a petition. Legally it is crap but it still needs to be opposed.

Couple of the things that we hit on were, (and feel free to add them to what you are sending)

The arguments that are the basis for this petiton were already addressed when the comments and responses were made in the Federal Register at the time the 2005 TMP rule was adopted. You can't just keep arguing the same thing over and over because you lost.

The executive order does not even imply that says all users must be regulated in the same manner, the executive order only sets the minimum standard to be regulated to. The petition can't even provide a legal basis for such an interpretation. Sad

How to get to the standard is completely agency discretion and expertise and the courts give the agencies a lot of leeway here. To change it now would be arbitrary and capricious given the mountain of evidence supporting the different regulatory schemes that has come out since

I particularly enjoyed the peer reviewed articles. :face-icon-small-con:face-icon-small-con Could not find most at the local regional library and/or google and only one article was written after 2005. least they could do was update their info.

Their complete oversight of the added cost and delay in TMP implimentation at the individual forest level was pretty funny. Whoops must have overlooked that

Social conflict?!?!?!?! Travel management can address this?? Probably not the best criteria for TMP to have to deal with and it is clearly poorly suited to remedy social conflict

Glad to see that we are not the only ones opposing
 
P
Jan 8, 2009
9
0
1
Hood River
You know this crap is getting on my nerves, i was brainstorming a plan not long ago on an envior movement towards focusing on the pollution of skis and cross country skiing (and touching heavy into how polluting ski resorts them selfs are in the big picture) Stupid as it sounds, Skis and snowboards as we have known them for a while are non-recyclable and if i recal that base wax is petroleum based, on our side we can actually recycle our sleds completely.
would be nice if we could spin the heads of these idiots to think about there own hobbys instead of ours, might take them away from fighting someone to make them selfs feel good crap, give them a trip back in the self guilt part of it all.
all we ask is to be left alone about this anymore,

Lorduss,
I think you have a good start, but thinking of how many people drive to a ski hill each and every day and how much pollutants come out of the car verses the amount of the snowmobilers. What is the environmental effect of a ski hill. I really don't know, it might not be that much?? Also,using Yellowstone as an example, there are 25,000 to 30,000 visitors a day in the summer. How many snowmobilers per year on the greatest year. If you can compare the environmental impact of the millions of cars to the thousands of snowmobiles, I can guarantee the snowmobiles are not even a dent compared to automobiles.
L8er
PK
 
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snoman681

New member
Feb 11, 2008
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to all the environmentalists that try to run the world

snomobiling in the national forests hurts very litle it should be allowed in every area of the wilderness it is a great way to get out and see all gods beauty the air on top of any mountain is the same air that is in New York, L.A,or any other big poluting city in the world comparitive snowmobilies do not even register as far as wildlife in winter on top of the mountains there is very little they move to the lower country for the snow months try saying that for all the cars and busses that tour the parks in the summer months my guess is the people that say these things have never seen the areas we ride in the winter so they have no real idea of what goes on
 
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