Federal forest policy Monkeywrenching forests Politics and politicians Private land policies Useless and Stupid
by admin
Magic Wilderness Implications
The redoubtable bear bait makes an important observation [here] that everyone should study intently.
The BLM has invented a new legal and quasi-ecological concept, that of “natural rehabilitation”. In the case of the new Elkhorn Ridge Designated Wilderness, a mere five years of no (or reduced) human activity on 11,000 acres of ranches, homes, timber harvest tracts, etc. was enough “natural rehabilitation” to turn an area of Mendocino County CA into “primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which… generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable.”
In just five years a working landscape transformed naturally into primeval wilderness. That is, according to the experts at the BLM.
So when the supremely tamperistic Ken Salazar declared [here] that he would “restore balance and clarity to the management of public lands by establishing common-sense policy” by designating “appropriate areas with wilderness characteristics under its [the Dept. of Interior's] jurisdiction as ‘Wild Land’ and to manage them to protect their wilderness values”, he meant every single acre of the 245 million acre BLM empire.
After all, if five years of “natural rehabilitation” is all it takes to restore primeval character, erasing the imprint of man, then every acre is a mere five years away from being wild as a goose in the wind.
The inconvenient fact that human beings have been living on and imprinting North America for 10,000+ years is moot. It’s as moot as a dead duck. All the BLM has to do is put up a gate, lock it, and five years later presto! it’s wilderness.
Congress is also moot. What difference do they make?
And the science of Ecology is also moot. Wilderness is a state of mind, not an actual condition, or else Mother Nature is magic and with a wave of Her wand, bingo! it’s wilderness in five short years or less.
La, la, la. Merrily we skip down the garden path. Only it’s not a garden anymore, it’s wild wilderness, untrammeled and unimprinted.
Detroit, you’re next.
by Scott A.
The Payette National forest is proposing adding 247,000 acres of “defacto wilderness.”
Details can be read on the USFS official website: http://tinyurl.com/PNF-SEEKS-TO-SCREW-LANDUSERS
by Al
More than five years ago, I attended a city council meeting in Albany, CA. People were seriously discussing the quality of the wilderness experience on the former city dump (a filled area of San Francisco Bay near the junction of I-80 and I-580). I guess now it really is wilderness…
by Foo Furb
Yay, USFS! Five years of doin’ nothin’ really pays! Hope it don’t burn down and waste all that standing around (unhappy face emoticon).
We’re not talking pristine intact virgin wilderness anymore. Now it’s been down to the docks to greet the sailors a few times wilderness.
Perhaps we should call then “barbed wire wildernesses”, or “Bob Ware” as they say around here, because of the prevalence of that modernity in the neo-wilderness areas.
As in “Hey, hey Ken — thanks a heap for the new Bob Ware Wilderness. Got any spare jobs there Kenny boy? ‘Cause my family is starving.”
by YPmule
Drive the paying users off the land (ranchers and energy) and lock it up so the wilderness girls can use it for free! But where will the money come from for the administration it will require?
Reply: The Feds spend $2 to $5 billion per year on firefighting. That’s tax dollars they stuff in their private pockets. The more fires, and the larger the fires, the more money the Ruling Elite gets to steal. Obama, Salazar, and the BLM want more bigger fires (as does the USFS). The timeless adage, “Follow the Money”, applies. They don’t make anything off “multiple use”. They spew those words out past their forked tongues, but they mean the exact opposite.
Who knew that “passive restoration” could be sooooo fast and sooooo effective?!?!? Now we can have wilderness EVERYWHERE!!!! The ghost of John Muir can now re-embrace the Forest Service, from the grave!!!