http://www.thumpertalk.com/for...howthread.php?t=521597

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Southern California Deserts and Mountains....

Desert: 450R, 400EX
Technical Trail: Rancher 420 and 350 4X4's
Kids: Two 250EX's and TRX90
Dual-Sport Bikes: KLX250S and XT225

Past rides: 300EX, 2wd Rancher 350, Recon, TRX90, Z400, LT160, LT80, Warrior, Blaster, CRF230F

Unfortunately we are our own worst enemy in the fight to keep riding areas open.

Noise
Trespassing
Trash
Vandalism

Quick way to shut down a riding area.

Policing our own ranks would go a long way to helping our cause.

If we could clean up our ranks and get an more powerful effective lobbying organization with member and industry backing to oppose land closures we could at least hold the line or minimize the damage. Trying to do this with small groups and with limited funds I think will end up being futile when you're up against Federal bureaucrats with agendas allied with radical environmentalists who are lavishly funded. Add to that the outright hatred we are generating against us among landowners and members of the general public because of the actions of the bad actors among us, only a well organized, politically skilled and extremely well funded lobbying organization is going to be able to deal effectively with that kind of threat. That comes with a large membership base, large corporate backing with the ability to funnel corporate contributions to the organization (as well as membership fundraising of course) so that you can hire the best lobbyists and buy influence.

Unfortunately, and forgive me for being harsh, your average ATV rider appears to be too short sighted to worry about these sorts of things. He'll keep doing the same stupid crap until he can only sit in his garage and rev his baffle-less piped quad and complain about how he can't ride anywhere anymore. As long as he can be annoying and do whatever he wants now, the future he could care less about. In fact he'll go out of his way to be annoying everyone else.

The future doesn't look too terribly bright and I'm afraid we mostly have ourselves to blame.

The issue of keeping National Forest open has little to do with public opinion, picking up trash or being an all around good guy..........A former Chief of the Forest Service......Bosworth.........determined that unmanaged motorized use was one of the main threats to the public forests. I suspect it came to him in a vision or some such thing. At this time most National Forests are in the process of CLOSING ROADS TO ALL MOTORIZED USE. The action comes under the heading of Access Travel Management. The Feds have decided the best management is to close almost all roads. The Wallowa Whitman is proposing to close all but 1500 miles of roads on our 2.3 million acre forest. By their own numbers there will be 120 miles left for legal ATV use. There is nothing about garbage, nothing about attitude, nothing about resource damage, there is no pretense of doing anything for the environment. In a meeting with the local chamber of commerce last week the USFS was ask what their objective was with thier proposal........More Elk? More Deer? More Trees? The response was "we will be managing access and travel".
The "We are our own worst enemy" means nothing with this issue. If Jesus rode an ATV he would be locked out too............Tass

Our Lord and Saviour (being the great leader that he was) would have never 'allowed' this issue to get this far out of control in the first place.

These lands were closed (and I believe that I'm making your point here) simply because the offroad community lacked both the willingness to work together under one roof to achieve the combined power needed....and just as importantly....the guts required to actually dare question those individual 'leaders' who continually prevented just that from ever happening in the first place.(and if anybody believes that these massive closures haven't accelerated their arrogant 'see, you need us' attitude to a whole other level...they are kidding themselves).

It was a divided house that collapsed like a deck of cards with very little effort from the opposition; as there was absolutely no professional leadership on our side to honestly argue what were in some cases....some pretty darn good arguments.(they didn't want to approach us with god forbid the concept of "pay-to-play"...while the government meanwhile was expected tlo both manage and maintain these resources to complicated and expensive 21st century standards on a shoestring budget with added demands on same every day).

I define an effective leader as somebody simply willing to stand up like a man and say what is needed to be said....and we all have known for years now that there are absolutely no professional-type leaders in our "every sport for themselves" community willing to do just that.

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Forming a "Long Range Financial Subcommittee" in MI.:
Take two inexplicably expired term motorcycle reps. still serving on the board (one names yet another motorcycle rep)
Add 1 full-size and but 1 atv rep.
Arrogantly claim that the entire process should be finished in 4 conference calls with absolutely no public involvement or any meeting minutes recorded.
Result?
No complaint whatsoever from sheep-like atv clubs with literally tens of millions in play.

This is the kind of garbage the anti-orv crowd puts out there to get people to send emails to usfs to close the national forests we own closed to all motorized vehicles.

It only takes a few seconds to write a short email opposing these closures to all motorized use and look up the addresses and send them. Please go out and send those emails, faxes and letters opposing closing the national forests to all motorized use.

Motorsports D:

Thanks

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"Sorry if anything I posted caused you any offense or pain"

Here are a few of those addresses:

Apache-Sitgreaves NF - Chris Bielecki, Supervisory Forest Engineer, PO Box 640, Springerville, AZ, 85938, ph. 928-333-6271, csbielecki@fs.fed.us

Carson NF - Steve Okamoto, Forest Engineer, Carson NF, 208 Cruz Alta Road, Taos, NM, 87571, 505-758-6370, sokomato@fs.fed.us

Cibola NF - Mary Bean, Zone Recreation Staff, 2113 Osuna Road, NE, Suite A, Albuquerque, NM, 87113, (505) 281-3304, mebean@fs.fed.us

Coconino NF - Jim Beard, Landscape Architect, 1824 S. Thompson St, Flagstaff, AZ, 86001, ph. 928-527-3474, jbeard@fs.fed.us

Coronado NF - Laura White, Wilderness and Zone Trails Coordinator, Federal Building, 300 West Congress, Tucson, AZ, 85701, ph. 520-803-2832, laurawhite@fs.fed.us

Gila NF - Lisa Mizuno, NEPA Coordinator, 3005 E. Camino del Bosque, Silver City, NM, 88061, 505-388-8267, lmizuno@fs.fed.us

Kaibab NF, Chip Ernst, Forester, 800 S. 6th Street, Williams, AZ, 86046, 928-635-8317, cfernst@fs.fed.us

Lincoln NF - Peg Crim, 1101 New York Avenue, Alamogordo, NM, 88310-6992, 505-434-7231, pcrim@fs.fed.us

Prescott NF - Bruce Fahrni, Recreation Team Leader, 344 South Cortez St, Prescott, AZ, 86303-4398, ph. 928-443-8070, bfahrni@fs.fed.us

Santa Fe NF - Robert Potts, Forest Planner, 1474 Rodeo Road, Santa Fe, NM, 87505, ph. 505-438-7829, robertpotts@fs.fed.us

Tonto NF - Tammy Pike, OHV Coordinator, 2324 East McDowell Rd, Phoenix, AZ, 85006, ph. (602) 225-5235, tpike@fs.fed.us

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"Sorry if anything I posted caused you any offense or pain"

Motorsports,

To get an idea as to where any of these different managing agencies actually are with their individual plans; I would suggest simply giving them a call. I have had more than pleasant conversations with land managers in the UP areas affected (which basically confirmed the wholesale non-involvement of our downstate Michigan orv leaders in this process beyond creating yet even more 100% single-track "me only" mileage) and these people are not hard to talk to (in this area) from my experience.

"Some of them" were handed a job that was mandated by the federal govt. and are doing their best to follow through with it. Others took the opportunity (see the UFWDA's threatened legal action in the Manistee NF) to partner with these "me-only" motorcycle types and used the rule to restrict even more access for the 4-wheeled vehicles that both of their rabid constituents hate with a passion.

In any case, I'd approach these individual units with a question as to exactly who is in charge of the process at any given time (seems to change with the wind). Maybe you'll find a future ally in the process that doesn't necessarily believe in these motorcycle leader's attempt to lock down massive mileage for strictly 'their' exclusive pleasure or the value of multi-use trails in general on our public lands. (believe me, some of these employees view arrogant bastards such as this and even 'shut down the entire forest' greenies the exact same way that we do).

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Forming a "Long Range Financial Subcommittee" in MI.:
Take two inexplicably expired term motorcycle reps. still serving on the board (one names yet another motorcycle rep)
Add 1 full-size and but 1 atv rep.
Arrogantly claim that the entire process should be finished in 4 conference calls with absolutely no public involvement or any meeting minutes recorded.
Result?
No complaint whatsoever from sheep-like atv clubs with literally tens of millions in play.

blackballed,

I oppose the closure of all national forests to ALL MOTORIZED VEHICLES!
Not sure where you stand on this.
But maybe you and the others in this forum can please send a short email opposing these closures to all motorized use?

IMO all the orv trails should be able to be accessed by all.
I think you called it
IMO maybe start another thread about?

Motorsports

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"Sorry if anything I posted caused you any offense or pain"

Originally posted by: Motorsports
"blackballed,
I oppose the closure of all national forests to ALL MOTORIZED VEHICLES!
Not sure where you stand on this...."

(blackballed):
In my opinion, the closures were forced on this community because the government and anybody else in a position of power.... pretty much recognized the fact that our overall leadership was both disjointed or in many cases just plain professionally incompetent...and that the people's resource was pretty much hanging in the balance after absolutely no concrete proposals over the years involving the very simple concept of pay-to-play.(which would have fostered the sustainable maintenance and enforcement programs needed to actually mangae this exploding use properly).

These guys would get together on wrote-off weekends while their wives lounged by the pool and talk about everything under the sun except one very important issue....money and how we were all going to raise same (across the board) so that the govt. and all these legislators wouldn't view us as being the ignorant cheap arses that we finally all got the reputation for being.

"....IMO all the orv trails should be able to be accessed by all.

I think you called it

multi-use trails

IMO maybe start another thread about?

"me-only" motorcycle

Motorsports...."

I couldn't agree more; yet you have the largest off-road group in the nation not necessarily looking at it that way...and at the same time demanding that none of us view this huge morally-based split as certainly not affecting our overall potential power in these matters to begin with.

And as for starting a thread about it(?)....

....who would take 'our' side on these matters; as I know you've already witnessed red-headed-step-child atv groups here in Michigan not willing to do so or even speak up publicly for how many years now?

I mean, c'mon guy!....we can't even get these easily herdable sheep to even admit that they've got a couple of motorcycle guys up there running the show on years long expired board terms, for pete's sake!

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Forming a "Long Range Financial Subcommittee" in MI.:
Take two inexplicably expired term motorcycle reps. still serving on the board (one names yet another motorcycle rep)
Add 1 full-size and but 1 atv rep.
Arrogantly claim that the entire process should be finished in 4 conference calls with absolutely no public involvement or any meeting minutes recorded.
Result?
No complaint whatsoever from sheep-like atv clubs with literally tens of millions in play.

Opps sorry, I meant to keep this on-topic



Link to info about the Travel Management & Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Program:
http://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/programs/ohv/

Link to Ottawa National Forest travel management rule: http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/ottawa.../travel_mgmt/index.htm

I would think writing and sending letters asking for more access. I doubt the travel management rule is going away, but writing to the forest service asking for more connector routes and more trails and roads open to OHV use will help. Plus writing to your elected politicians in congress will help too. The more they hear from us OHV/ORV users that we still want access too will help.

TIA,

Motorsports

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"Sorry if anything I posted caused you any offense or pain"