The Great Clinton Land Grab
The Great Clinton Land Grab
UP FRONT
David Edwards
MOTORCYCLES HAVE TAKEN ME MANY places, but none this grand-quite literally. A well-maintained series of dirt roads and trails had delivered me to the very edge of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. No parking lots, no guardrails, no tourist trams unloading herds of gawkers making like dimestore Ansel Adams with their cheap cardboard cameras.
This was the Grand Canyon in its true glory, as the ancient Indians might have seen it. Of the five million people who visit Arizona’s Grand Canyon each year, only a relative handful-mainly off-roaders on bikes and in SUVs-get this sublime view.
No longer, though. In January, more than a million acres along the Grand Canyon was declared off-limits to OHVs (off-highway vehicles). If all goes according to plan, the prohibition could soon become permanent. Up to 440,000 acres of California’s Sequoia National Forest will likely come under the same kind of ban-never mind that most of the locked-up land would not contain the giant sequoia trees that environmentalists insist need protecting.
Blame all of this on President Clinton’s poor cigarmanship.
Wanting to leave a legacy other than his Oval Office hijinks with Monica Lewinsky and the stain (sorry) of impeachment, Clinton has turned to environmental issues, one of these being the matter of OHV use on federally owned lands. Most of this property is located in the 1 1 Western states (excluding Alaska), where the Feds hold the deed on 40 percent of all land. Fully half of all U.S. Forest Service land is threatened with closure or restrictions. Most ominous is that Clinton can enact these limitations unilaterally, without waiting for public debate or ratification from Congress, by simply invoking the socalled Antiquities Act of 1906 and declaring the affected areas “national monuments”-as he did in Arizona.
Prodding the president is a series of powerful and well-funded GAGs, or green advocacy groups, better described as preservationists rather than environmentalists. The more radical among these want to turn the clock back to pre-horse & buggy, establishing ecological conditions in forests similar to those that existed “prior to European settlement.” Many of these
GAGs are manned by the same people who for the past 30 years have fought the timber industry at every turn. Having declared victory over logging on public lands, they now have their sights set on off-roaders.
Last December, the Bluewater Network, a coalition of more than 60 preservationist groups, petitioned the National Park Service for a compílete ban on all OHVs, including personal watercraft and snowmobiles. Calling all such vehicles “thrillcraft,” the coalition claimed, “Overall, the use of thrillcraft appears to serve as high entertainment for the minority of motorized ‘cowboys’ who behave as though national parks are their personal tramping grounds,” and then went on to blame OHVs for everything short of the Kennedy assassination.
Nowhere does the coalition acknowledge the family-oriented recreational attributes of off-roading. Nor does it mention the millions of dollars spent by off-roaders in gas taxes and user fees, all earmarked for maintenance of public lands. There is no recognition of the countless manhours OHV groups-environmentalists in the best sense-volunteer each year for the upkeep of the trail system. And, of course, there is no consideration for how the proposed ban would negatively impact the multibillion-dollar OHV industry. (As a close-to-home example, 2A of some motorcycle deal-
ers’ new-unit sales comprise dirtbikes, ATVs and dual-purpose bikes.)
There’s more. One of Clinton’s pet projects is his “Roadless” initiative. This would take some 50 million acres of public land that currently have no established dirt roads (a road is defined as any route wider than 50 inches) and permanently bar future OHV use/development of any kind. Trouble is, most motorcycle trails-certainly the best ones-are less than 50 inches wide, and so would not alter an area’s “roadless” status, meaning that the initiative would close off many prime riding opportunities.
Contained within the Roadless initiative’s literature is this nasty little bombshell: “The proposed planning rule would make ecological sustainability the primary goal of National Forest Service land management.” This goes against the Forest Service’s prescribed duties as noted even on its own website. “As set forth in law,” the statement begins, “(our) mission is to achieve quality land management under the sustainable multi-use concept to meet the diverse needs of people.” In fact, in a recent 55-page Forest Service strategic-planning document, the phrase “multiple-use” is mentioned not once, a radical shift in policy. This end run around the law is clearly an attempt by Clinton & Co. to administratively alter the direction of the U.S. Forest Service.
“This is the biggest assault on offhighway riding on public lands that motorcyclists have ever seen,” warned Rob Rasor, the AMA’s point man on government relations. “These initiatives target thousands of miles of trails nationwide. And it’s been done through federal agency rule-making or presidential fiat, bypassing Congress completely.”
Don’t think for a minute this vilification of motorized recreation will stop when the current administration leaves office, either. Environmentally, Al Gore makes Bill Clinton look like an evil strip-miner. In his 1992 eco prattle, Earth in the Balance, the vice president calls for completely eliminating internal-combustion engines, claiming “their cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy...”
Write your Congressman today, remember to vote this November.
