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Motorized Access Desired Condition In The Blue Mountains.

keepitopenfafa

As the Forest Service begins its initial planning meetings in February for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision, are you aware that they have already made decisions without public input? Even more concerning, they established an "intergovernmental" council to make these decisions, ignoring public requests to join the group, but permitting non-governmental entities to influence what the public wants, without considering public comments on their vision for the future "conditions" of the Blue Mountains.


At the core of this process is an organization called the Blue Mountains Intergovernmental Council (BIC) https://bluesintergovernmentalcouncil.wordpress.com/ and https://www.pdx.edu/policy-consensus-center/blue-mountains-intergovernmental-councili. There are two different webpages because the group has changed facilitators over time, but the handlers remain the same: the Region 6 Foresters Office and the three forest supervisors of the Wallowa Whitman, Malheur, and Umatilla National Forests. What few times members of the group did try to talk about an open forest the agency staff was there to quickly shutdown discussion.


Although all four "desired condition" areas are significant to FAFA, the one that most concerns us, and we believe you as well, is the Forest Access and Set Aside Final Desired Condition (also attached below) chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://bluesintergovernmentalcouncil.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/bic-access-desired-conditions-final-recommendations-wminorityrpt-jan-2022.pdf.


The Access Final Condition was established not by the residents of Eastern Oregon, but by a group pursuing their own personal interests. For example, the currently developed desired condition states that "The public has a desire to be well informed on forest access, therefore a current and comprehensive inventory of all forest roads and trails is displayed on an easily read map which clearly lists status is essential." This statement does not reflect the expressed desires of the Eastern Oregon public for over 15 years. Thousands of comments, whether verbal or written, have clearly indicated that the people of the region want open motorized access to the forest, not a situation where some roads are restricted to "administrative use," others are entirely closed, and all cross-country travel (such as off-road access for firewood, elk, or non-designated camping sites) is prohibited.


During these discussions, it was notably mentioned by group members that "we have to give them something," and what "they gave them" was your motorized access to public lands. Essentially, they proposed relinquishing your access to these lands. This was done under the pretense that 'if we don't give them something, we'll lose our grazing permits,' which is fundamentally untrue but was employed as a scare tactic to secure agreement within the group.


At the beginning of this planning process, it's clear that the decision has been made to restrict and often close motorized access to the Blue Mountains. Far Eastern Oregon is the sole area in the US where public lands still operate under an open forest system for motorized access. For years, maintaining an open forest for public lands has been viewed as a problem and an embarrassment by the Forest Service. Although it may seem overwhelming that these processes have already taken place, it's not the end of the world; we've faced this before. However, it demands effort and determination from the people in the region to reverse it, and we need your support in this fight to keep our public lands accessible to everyone, not just those with the right jobs or physical abilities.


Your support means attending these meetings and voicing your desire to keep open access to our public lands and we hop you will participate.





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