Public Land Issues

We need your help now - please read!

This photo show a special place we used to be able to go on a 4x4 trail, enjoy the fantastic scenery, and have a quiet picnic.

We even carried a Sierra Club hiker out 10 miles after she severly sprained her ankle.

Now we can't go there anymore. The trail has been closed and will likely never be opened again. This is typical of what's happening all over the west. WAKE UP FOLKS! We are being locked out of our own public lands!

Currently the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), under pressure from the Sierra Club, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and other GAGs (Green Advocacy Groups) are illegally closing 1000's of miles of roads and trails each year. These groups are really well organized. One of their clearly stated goals is to remove motorized travel from as many public lands as possible. To do that, they get the BLM and USFS to declare areas wilderness. But wilderness areas must be pristine and not contain, among other things, nasty old ROADS. They get around that little issue by redefining a road !

So here's how the BLM has redefined a "road"

"The word 'roadless' refers to the absence of roads which have been improved and maintained by mechanical means to ensure relatively regular and continuous use. A 'way' maintained solely by the passage of vehicles does not constitute a road."

If we don't take action and fight back now, we will lose many of our trails. And for those clubs that run on private land - watch out! The next wave of crap from the GAGs will be to lobby to make modifications to vehicles, such as lifts, emission changes, etc. illegal, just as has happened in New Jersey, for example.

Get involved! If you have a local club, urge them to keep their members informed about changes in local and national policies and laws that will affect our hobby. To catch up on the latest issues, check the links here, on my Public Land Site page.
Write letters to the BLM, your state and national lawmakers.

Send the url of this page to as many e-mail contacts of yours that you can. We need to send as many letters and e-mails as possible. Our government responds to numbers. If we don't flood them with letters and e-mail, the truth is, our opinions and concerns will be totally ignored!

Names and addresses of those in congress who represent you	At the bottom of this site, enter your zip code. This will give you names, addresses and e-mail addresses of your representatives.
Additional Sites	Check out these sites that are dedicated to keeping our public lands public. Also included are sites of those who want to close up our public lands. Surf them and understand their logic - we can't fight back if we don't know what our opponents are using for ammunition!
Public Land Use articles	There are many excellent articles about Public Land Use, a lot of them written by Del Albright. Check them out.
How to write effective letters	Writing letters are fine, but they can do more harm than good if they are not written " politically correct. " (Sorry, but that's just a fact of life.) If you want to roll your own letter instead of using one of the templates listed on this page, read Bob Telepak's article on how to write EFFECTIVE letters.

Created 05/01/99.
Last Modified: