Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison - draft

[jps8460]

Hey all you cool cats n kittens, if y’all like wheelin in southwestern colorado, you might want to take a gander at these draft plans.

they need to hear your opinion.

Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests - News & Events

Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests - News & Events

www.fs.usda.gov

Looks like one of the options is to just close everything cool.

if you’re having trouble finding the details, check here.

Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests - Planning

Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests - Planning

www.fs.usda.gov

 

[DaveInDenver]

FYI, just so people are clear this is the forest management plan, not just travel or motorized. So it's going to affect a lot of stuff. And it's generalized management direction. Do they target resources (lumber, grazing), human-powered recreation, OHVs? What archeological and geological features, flora and fauna are being protected? What chunks of land get set aside, what is left open or managed differently, what are summer vs winter use priorities?

We just got 32 new miles of singletrack from the Mesa top to Palisade done this year and Silverton Singletrack Society has just started working on a bunch of new trails. I don't want to stop the momentum regarding bikes that we have with local USFS offices.

So I was waiting for the GIS data to come online to dig into details but suffice to say as of right now my main concern isn't protecting OHVs. The draft appears is recommending new Wilderness and special management areas, for example, so preventing more loss of access (specifically mountain bikes for me but generally) is critical.

There's statements in the document that bother me that seem to be putting the cart before the horse. There's lengths of the Tabegauche Trail (for example south of Bangs Canyon) that are going to fit the pre-existing criteria and I've thought in danger of de-facto Wilderness-ization, being consumed because they are cherry stemmed.

Standards
MA-STND-RECWLD-02: Recommended wilderness shall be managed consistently with the adjacent designated Wilderness. Pre-existing non-conforming uses may continue so long as they do not impair the area’s wilderness characteristics.

Objectives
MA-OBJ-RECWLD-03: Within 5 years of plan approval, physically close all unauthorized routes within recommended wilderness and take actions that promote restoration along such routes.

Realize that the OHV situation is real out here so the threat of closing access completely exists in places. The risk seems to be splintering user groups to eventually push out all users. And it's a tough one, the OHVs are really pissing me off lately and I'm on their side generally. There's been jerks from other user groups (MTBs, nor indeed hikers even, are certainly not immune) but the biggest problem is SxS without a doubt and their actions tend to undermine snowmobile, 4WD and dirt bikes users.

 

[jps8460]

FYI, just so people are clear this is the forest management plan, not just travel or motorized. So it's going to affect a lot of stuff. And it's generalized management direction. Do they target resources (lumber, grazing), human-powered recreation, OHVs? What archeological and geological features, flora and fauna are being protected? What chunks of land get set aside, what is left open or managed differently, what are summer vs winter use priorities?

We just got 32 new miles of singletrack from the Mesa top to Palisade done this year and Silverton Singletrack Society has just started working on a bunch of new trails. I don't want to stop the momentum regarding bikes that we have with local USFS offices.

So I was waiting for the GIS data to come online to dig into details but suffice to say as of right now my main concern isn't protecting OHVs. The draft appears is recommending new Wilderness and special management areas, for example, so preventing more loss of access (specifically mountain bikes for me but generally) is critical.

There's statements in the document that bother me that seem to be putting the cart before the horse. There's lengths of the Tabegauche Trail (for example south of Bangs Canyon) that are going to fit the pre-existing criteria and I've thought in danger of de-facto Wilderness-ization, being consumed because they are cherry stemmed.


Realize that the OHV situation is real out here so the threat of closing access completely exists in places. The risk seems to be splintering user groups to eventually push out all users. And it's a tough one, the OHVs are really pissing me off lately and I'm on their side generally. There's been jerks from other user groups (MTBs, nor indeed hikers even, are certainly not immune) but the biggest problem is SxS without a doubt and their actions tend to undermine snowmobile, 4WD and dirt bikes users.

Thanks Dave!

 

[DaveInDenver]

And I'd point out that there are 1,350 pages in the documents between the Plan and two EIS and 39 maps (many are duplicative in data just being zoomed in detail). It's overwhelming to me the shear volume of it and I just started reading it Friday when they dropped it.

Every-dang-thing is put into a category of this or that. Wilderness, recommended Wilderness, Roadless, wildlife management area, special management area, primitive, semi-primitive motorized, rural, etc, etc, etc. It's almost 1GB of PDFs and it all has to be gone over to find the important nuggets.

The comment period ends Novermber 12, 2021.

 

[DaveInDenver]

I've sat through some of the informational webinars now. This is going to have to be watched. They are introducing Special Management Areas that are managed like Wilderness but no Congressional designation. Pearl Pass appears to be within one of these SMAs and presumably could be closed if that's accurate. When asked about the "citizen's initiatives" they respond "We don't know too much" but it's GMUG not the "grassroots" groups implementing it. It's going to be very important for people to comment on this and with each day they delay the GIS we get one day less time to review what the hell they're doing. It's looking like we need to do everything possible to get Alternative C (or is it maybe Alt A, which might or might not be an option?), which is the least invasive it appears and stop Alternative D, which is where I think the new Wilderness-that-isn't seemed to be included. They have trail density calculations where things like no more than 1 mile of trail can exist per square mile of land that I need to read more to understand.

 

[DaveInDenver]

The USFS got the GIS data up. My curiosity was piqued regarding the comment made during the presentation about Pearl Pass. I think I'm getting up to speed.

This the current situation. Pearl Pass sits right on the Wilderness border.



Alternative D presents two things. One is a proposed Star Peak Wilderness and the other a Double Top Special Management Area (the SMAs are Wilderness that isn't Wilderness, wink-wink). I think the existing route would have to be cherry stemmed if this all of that comes to pass. It already braids in-and-out of the Wilderness.

From what I understand this round of revisions isn't supposed to change any routes, roads or trails but give planning direction to the GMUG when travel plans are done. That's when they'd actually change a route officially.



The other three alternatives all show various additional designations from roadless to semi-primitive with the same boundaries. So only 1,299 more pages to figure out what's going down. If feels like you have two choices - spend your time trying to figure out comments to make that will be ignored or spend your time traveling to places before they are inevitably closed. Like I say, overwhelming as an unpaid individual doing other stuff to keep the lights on and fridge stocked. There simply isn't enough time and too much apathy to oppose the machine.

 

[rover67]

I started looking at it all last night and was overwhelmed. I picked a few places I knew and examined but even then I had a hard time figuring out what exactly was going on. Thanks Dave for taking the time to look at it more closely, at least your analysis helps me make more sense of it all.

I will comment ASAP and encourage others to as well even though it may seem hopeless it seems like a small effort to put forth. I'm curious if any other groups are doing anything more substantial.

 

[DaveInDenver]

I'm curious if any other groups are doing anything more substantial.

There's lots of groups bending the ears of USFS planners. I don't think it's ones particularly friendly to OHV or MTB users though.

Just as one example, the San Juan Citizens Alliance. They are behind proposing a few things, like the San Juan Wilderness Act which is part of CORE. They have 8 paid staff members and a 12-member board of directors and around 1,200 members with an annual budget around $600 million (they BTW, got $76,000 in PPP in 2020 to protect 7 jobs, because, you know, they were in serious peril sitting on $388 million in cash). I wager that's probably more people than the USFS has working on this and that's just one group, relatively small compared to Trout Unlimited, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, etc.

 

[rover67]

I was wondering about OHV groups

 

[DaveInDenver]

I was wondering about OHV groups

On the Zoom call I attended there was a person from Thunder Mountain Wheelers (ATV club) and one from Ridgway Area Trails (MTB club).

I'm in COPMOBA (same umbrella as RAT, not sure total membership, maybe 100?). There's a USFS/BLM point of contact but nothing I'm aware of formally to review stuff and I've not seen them put out a boilerplate for members to send in for comment periods.

https://www.tmwatv.org/
https://www.copmoba.org/ridgway/

I'd like to think Stay The Trail and CORE (Brian O’Connors, wonder if he's aware of this?) should be involved. Probably Blue Ribbon, too. I have to think Grand Mesa Jeep Club knows about this but I haven't seen anything mentioned by them yet.

 

[jps8460]

It’s wayyyy overwhelming. It’s nutz that we’re supposed to just figure out what it all means and comment intelligently. My guess is that we haven’t heard anything from blue ribbon etc is because they are still trying to distill what alternative looks worth commenting on.

I’ve got about 4hrs into it and I’m not really getting any closer to writing an email. Can you imagine this level of communication in a business setting? Everyone on the project would be fired for such an atrocious approach.

 

[AimCOTaco]

Here is an update and some summary information from CORE on the Grand Mesa/Uncompahgre/Gunnison Master plan with call to action for comments. (Follows some of our discussion from Wednesday night)

GMUG Forest Plan Comments — CORE

The Grand Mesa Uncompahgre Gunnison (GMUG) National Forest released its Draft Forest Plan and Draft Environment Impact Statement (DEIS) and your input is requested. This Forest Plan provides a broad vision for the National Forest moving forward and will guide where motorized use is all

www.keeptrailsopen.com

 

[AimCOTaco]

Comment period has been extended to 11/26 so there is still time to be heard.
You don't even have to read the whole shebang, CORE has summarized and suggested the most appropriate plans to support for OHV'ers.

Thanks all!