Snowmobilers are lazy and we will lose access to public land.

Thank you for posting this. Hopefully it will open some eyes out there.

That is sad and pathetic.

I don't care if you're from Wyoming or not, you should have commented on that.

But yeah, I agree, if you are too lazy to take 5 minutes to send in a unique email that isn't part of a 'form letter' that will just be disregarded, you really don't have any right to complain whatsoever about losing access to public land.

They lost a lot of comments from our club members. They said they had a computer glitch. Go figure.

It seems to indicate that the responses were almost all form letters - it says form letter breakdown. Isn't a form letter OK, as long as it is from an individual?

It's Propaganda .
The Nazis used it too.

TRS said:

They lost a lot of comments from our club members. They said they had a computer glitch. Go figure.

Click to expand...

Exactly. When they first sent out the notice for public comment on this, the link in the notice was broken for at least a few days. I emailed them about the broken link and submitted my comments regardless, but yeah, how convenient for them.

TTTop

How much of this is just a numbers game for the FS folks? I comment on a ton of in-state and out-of-state stuff, but do they actually read any of them? All I get is a 'form letter' thanking me for my submission that reads nearly verbatim to all the other 'responses' I get back. I can't imagine the rhetoric that comes through from the non-motorized community that even makes sense for what they are fighting for. How do we know that each submission is given an individual (and hopefully unbiased) review to help determine the outcome of these things? If sledders put in 17,000+ comments regardless of if they are form letter or personal would it make a difference? Would it be different if our open use alliance groups started petitions/lawsuits before and land use issue was brought from the non-motorized groups? Are our voices being heard regardless of how many comments we submit, or do we give ourselves the shaft for not spamming the hell out of the comment periods? I'd sure like to know, I don't know about the rest of you.

Here's my take. I'll continue to support objectives that try to keep public lands open to all of us. I'm not filthy rich, and don't have a lot of public persuasion skills, but I'm trying. The problem I see is that the motorized community is internally segregated. How many folks ride bikes in the desert that would never think to comment on an initiative to keep sledding areas open? How many sledders ride all winter but never check on land use issues that need comments for OHV in other areas? I'm guilty as charged in a lot of ways. IMHO though, until we get the ENTIRE motorsports community i.e. bikes, sleds, quads, sand rails, jeeps, boats, PWC, UTV, etc... to join in as one group to battle all of these land use suits, we will never be able to defeat the deep pocketed masses of the non-motorized nation. It's not that we can't, it's how do we catch up to the groups that are notifying hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of 'members' that provide input? Why can't we replicate the tactics they use to be successful?

The OP's issue is a fact. The motorsports community is not where it needs to be to effectively fight right now. Would that change if we equaled the amount of comments? Do we need to reach deeper into our pockets to support our coalitions? Do we sit back and continually hope we called a bluff? I don't know......... Just seems like most the stuff I see these days is about as worthless as a political argument on facebook.

I respond to every alert that I get regardless of whether it is for sleds, atv's etc., as Racer220 stated, if I even get a response back it is a very brief form letter, I am not sure they even read most of the stuff that is sent into them, especially if it is from someone who does not support their agenda. We could all do more but more importantly we need to try our hardest to get more people involved in the land use issues.

Response

I agree that snowmobilers need to self-evangelize to promote their sport in these situations. Form letters are weeded out by software. So take the form letter in word and add some points and subtract some items and move them around.

It has been my experience that the Forest Service people (and the state) support snowmobiles because they view more users as job security. They will not support snowmobile noise. Noise is our real enemy and loud cans do not help our case no matter how hard you argue (loud pipes save lives - its my right, blah, blah, blah).

Take you buddies to the next meeting, write, donate to the legal funds, join the local club. All serve our purpose to save the sport.

The $200 you spend on the can would be less damaging if you sent the $200 directly to the Sierra Club. Sit on the can and you can save 5 lbs every morning before you ride!

Sad but true, most off-road enthusiests don't put land issues at the top of their list of things to do. Most of us work for a living and by the time we get off work and deal with issues at home, the last thing we want to do is spend time fighting for something we already believe is ours. We need to change our mindset and start thinking of it in terms of it not being ours and wanting to take it! That's what the enviro groups do and they seem to be terribly successful at it.

I got to talk to a BLM representative that was in charge of reviewing comments for the southern central montana region. He was the only one that was given the task of reviewing the comments, and flat out said that form letters carry little weight. "You read the first one and then just start putting them in a stack." He also said that angry letters just saying "I don't like you doing this" don't help either. "I get the point that you don't like it, but how do you want me to do it different?" You need to proposed a different course of action and give them logical reasons why your proposal should be considered. Those are the letters that cary weight.