Wilderness designations have cons for hunters as well. I'm not saying having a road to everything is a good thing but I can't even access Wyoming wilderness without a guide and it's bullshit. Look into it further before you support it.
Agreed.
Wilderness designations have cons for hunters as well. I'm not saying having a road to everything is a good thing but I can't even access Wyoming wilderness without a guide and it's bullshit. Look into it further before you support it.
Holy crap. Do you reread these posts before you fling them into cyberspace, or is your internet presence some sort of weird stream of consciousness experiment?
Designating wilderness always has accepted uses that are grandfathered in. Airstrips in Frank Church, vehicle access for cattle, etc. But requiring permits and guides to access wilderness is bunk. Also I believe existing multiple uses agreements must be maintained.
And as for the closing roads complaint, who should pay for upkeep? Oft times out west a road is built for a timber sale. When the specified quantity/area has been logged, the road is no longer needed. So it gets closed.
Finally, the argument that everyone has the right to access the most remote areas of this country is entitled crap. There are many people, several on this website in fact, who work their asses off all year to maintain a level of fitness required to not only access, but enjoy these remote back country areas. If you're too fat, too broken, or smoke too many darts to be able to get back into these remote areas, that's on you and it's too bad. There are plenty of amazingly good hunting areas with roads that you can drive to.
Thanks for trying to derail the thread with an ignorant comment.is that the rationale for the "bow hunters have all the fun" argument?
I'll gladly answer your question and pursue a cordial discussion, if only you answer my question first. Quid pro quo, Mr. T. A road system is built to access a timber lease. Once the predetermined board foot amount or area logged is achieved, and the contract is complete, who is supposed to pay for the maintenance of these roads that are now unneeded, according to the contract under which they were built? It's a simple question.
That is a response to a bigger picture than just ND and how these designations impact all public lands. If we only want to look at and concern ourselves with what impacts us here in our state, why not have these lands managed by the state?Gst Are you talking about snowmobiling in ND? or elsewhere? I assume you do mean ND I would think that there would be ample areas to continue to do that here. Without this 5%, I honestly didn't think that would be a very big industry here.
Apres, sorry for participating in the derailment of your good thread. Seems every discussion about wilderness drives our minds to the west. Having a small percentage of ND that's already roadless remain that way seems like a good idea to me
Apres, sorry for participating in the derailment of your good thread. Seems every discussion about wilderness drives our minds to the west. Having a small percentage of ND that's already roadless remain that way seems like a good idea to me
I wasn't derailin anything. It's the same argument you make time and time again. You can't do it so let's change the rules. Sounds like something a millennial would say.Thanks for trying to derail the thread with an ignorant comment.
Glad to see you care little about those that do not meet YOUR requirements for public access. The simple fact is off roading is a "multiple usage" under recreation most times it has nothing ot do with hunting. Snowmobiling these areas that are being designated wilderness is a pretty big deal many communities in the winter months after the hunters go home.
do a little research into what is happening next door in Mt regarding catastrophic fires and the closure of access roads some times thru wilderness designations that are impacting the ability to fight these fires.
Not all designations grand father motor vehicle usage in. On ocassion even hunting has been limited. Wilderness designations pretty much stop logging and mining so how do you rectify that contradiction?
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Wildfires are not worse because we don't have enough roads to access and fight them. Wildfires are worse because we've so aggressively suppressed fire since the 1960's that we have built the fuel load in our forests to a relatively high level. Fire suppression, which is what you're advocating more of, is the precise reason why we have these "catastrophic" fires as you like to refer to them. Your short solution simply increases long term risk.
Dank you are absolutely right. We learn as we go, but sometimes a few people don't. Smoky the Bear was a real bad idea. Now that we have applied a little more forest ecology to our brain we understand that the idea promoted by Smoky was destructive in the long run.
So which came first the chicken or the egg.
This is an easy chicken or egg question. Increased fire suppression created higher fuel loads which in turn causes more aggressive fires. Done. This hasn't been a linear trajectory either. The giant tracts of single aged timber stands created by human intervention became veritable petri dishes for pests to thrive in, thus the rise of the western pine beetle which in turn very rapidly turned millions of acres and trillions of board feet of living forest into match sticks in a matter of a decade.
As a hunter, I wish there was significantly more logging. Hunting old burns and old logged areas is fantastic. Unfortunately, even if the feds didn't impose any of the early 90's regulations that industry would have still faced the challenges it ended up facing. It was not the government that put logging towns out of business, it was economics and technology. Mills got bigger and more efficient, equipment improved over time, cheap Canadian lumber hampered markets, significant production transition from western public lands to eastern private production, etc. From the 1950's to the 1990's, eastern timber growers more than doubled their production efficiency per acre. We simply can't log our forests into health as the economics will not allow it. The nation can't build enough houses or make enough coffee tables to allow for enough logs to be harvested to transform the forest.
I go back to the statement that I think that logging for the most part is a great addition to the multiple use of our western lands. But we have to accept the limitations of the market. Your assertion that the feds disinterest in multiple use is to blame for wildfires is at best a hollow argument.
I wonder who logged these areas and fought the fires before the white dude came upon the scene?