This Land Use Thing

Hey its that time again. Sittin writing land use stuff. You do realize that when the summer hits and I'm out every weekend on the trails, cutting new ones, doing clean ups, land Use seminars, etc, that you won't have this wonderful literary masterpiece to look forward to each week. HaHaHa.


Anyway... what do we have going this week?


As I have mentioned previously, we have a situation where, between the clubs in NEA and our EC4WDA Northeast Region clubs, and those unaffiliated with either, there are well over 25 groups out wheeling every month, mostly on the public roads that they find by surfing the web, going over maps, etc. The most popular ones (like OFR, OCR and even quasi private ones like MaBell and Gutter) get massive use every weekend.


Well, far be it for us to sit idly by and fuss over it. By joining forces, we are generating lists of other old town roads, listed as unmaintained on the town records in both CT, MA and NH currently. The Map6 program in NH was up and running with NEA but I haven't heard any new news as to whether its usable yet. I believe there are still lots of class 6 roads that need to scouted in southern NH. The same holds true for CT and MA. The first club to step up and volunteer has been Cape Cod Jeep Club. I have been working with them to get them out to these locations to check out whether this road or that is actually something one needs 4WD for or if its simply a grated dirt road. JT4x4 has also volunteered.



I am puting the CT list together this weekend to get to them both. They have been "educated" on how to scout, what to do if someone meets up with them and confronts them, mapping and GPS ideas, etc. Hopefully, this will help decrease the amount of travel taking place on our more popular roads as hopefully at least a few more will be found that will suite our brand of wheeling.


The same landowner that owns Gutter makes mention on their website that their property is open for use for everyone to use and share. Hikers, ATVs, horses, etc. They do not give out locations of their properties. Overuse/abuse of the privileges given will get the land taken away. The owners used to be members of a New England 4x4 club years ago and the original contacts are still there. We are currently working to scout the known properties for more possible locations. If anything is found, please, contact me and I will make sure that the original contacts are made fully aware of the location and what was found. I am purposely being vague because we need to keep this organized and we can't have a whole bunch of people out looking, bumping into each other, doing twice the work, etc. We also don't want to get the landowners confused by having to deal with lots of people instead of just one Point of Contact (POC).


That brings up another quick point. Each piece of property that our clubs have established have POCs. For DeadFall, its me; for the Ranch its Steve Alheim; for Crazy 8s, its Paul Taranto; etc. We would ask that if you are interested in running a property or attending a ride that is already taking place on the land, that you contact the POC for that property.


On to some good news. Aili and I met Saturday with my senator, Ed Meyer, who represents the CT 12th District; Branford, Durham, Guilford, Killingworth, Madison & North Branford. I will simply post both Aili's and my own "report" of the meeting: Aili's:

This morning Dave B and I sat down for breakfast with Senator Ed Meyer, co-chair of the Environment Committee. It was very insightful. He asked many questions, in particular we touched on universal registration. We reitterated the fact that universal reg will not solve the problems that its proponents think it will. Getting trails is the important task, that once trails are open, riders will willingly register. . He noted that he was pretty sure they got last year's bill out of Enviro and that it got stuck in Trans., and we stated that if we keep any mention of registration out of this bill, we won't have to take it to Trans. He has concerns about opposition without a registration component, but understood that with a short session there's just no time to shuffle it through both committees.


A few other topics we discussed was the internal workings of the Governor's office, issues with budget and funding to the DEP, internal workings of the DEP and things of similar nature. The Governor is being very stingy with money this year and has already rejected a few proposals. We may need to do some letter writing to her office, and we may request a meeting with her chief of staff. Sen. Meyer has met with Gina McCarthy. He actually said the DEP is "in shambles" since Gov. Rowland's cuts back in 2000.


The meeting was brief -- his grandson is in the hospital and he was on the phone several times -- we actually talked for perhaps 20 minutes. It was an excellent opportunity for Dave in particular to establish a relationship with his senator, and it was fun for me to have Dave buy me breakfast (that doesn't happen very often).

If anyone would set up a meeting with their legislators, I'd be happy to come along or if not, give you a set of our position papers for them. Even without getting outright support, I'm sure Sen. Meyer has a better understanding of what we're looking for and now has faces to attach to the issue.
Contact Ali at: defygravity@snet.net

and my take on the meeting:

We met up my Senator (Ed Meyer) at a diner. Reasoning we found out was because our state senators and representatives don't have regional/district offices. The state doesn't have the money to fund district offices for all of them and have their offices at the state capitol. So, many meet up with their constituents at diners or other public places. This made it difficult to play the DVD but combined with the other info we gave him including the video, he was VERY impressed. We definitely enlightened him to many aspects of our use he was not aware of.

We truly believe the he was expecting us to be dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, and sit down and complain. We had glossy printed material, stuff from Tread Lightly!, NOHVCC; our own position papers, tucked into a professionally printed folder and of course, the DVD. VERY professional indeed. With all this "slick" PR stuff, he outright asked us.."Just how many people are we talking about here.. because this doesn't seem like the PR of a small grassroots CT organization." When we said that in CT alone, he is looking well over 50,000 ATV enthusiasts, 25,000 OHM enthusiasts and 5000+ 4WD enthusiasts, he nearly choked on his eggs. He was also totally unaware that the ATV law, on the books right now, stating that the Commissioner of DEP shall make land available for OHV use, has been a law for 21 years and nothing has been done about it.

He has invited us to take part in the bill writing process with his Environmental Committee secretary (yeah, here in CT citizens don't write the bills. Ideas are submitted to the committee chairs and are written by those committees' secretaries.) So, getting invited to actually be part of that writing process is a big deal.
We have a short session so we'll see how well this bill gets moving or if it dies in committee.

I have a promise from the Senator that he is going to show the video to his fellow enviro comm members. Seeing as he lives a mere five minutes away from me, I will pick up the video within the next couple of weeks.


Speaking of the video, I have rec'd 15 copies of the DVD. It is very slick. Glossy photo cover, plastic jacket. Looks just like something you'd buy at Best Buys. I got enough for a copy for each club, please notify me of who you would like to receive it in yours. I will keep the extras and use for the rest of EC4WDA's regions.

From the "what we are up against" files:
Wildlands CPR is a national organization formed to fight road building. Not just paved roads mind you, ALL roads, dirt, etc. Not only are they against building roads of any kind but they actively work to get roads decommissioned/destroyed.

Here is a link to a page from their site "Roads Impacts on Ecology,Wildlife, etc"

Another page from the same site: OHV's Impacts. Wildlife, Social, etc

If you just want to peruse their site you can see that what we feel is over the edge is rather commonplace for extreme anti-access folks:
WildlandsCPR

and to finish up. Here is a recent article written on the Center for Biological Diversity, the same group who has just expanded to VT.

Group a force of nature for endangered species

Center has won hundreds of lawsuits vs. feds B. POOLE From a cluttered, borrowed warehouse in an industrial neighborhood on Tucson's near North Side, a small group of environmentalists is changing the world - one lawsuit at a time.

The Center for Biological Diversity staff brandishes the Endangered Species Act like a blunt-force instrument. Leverage from its petitions and lawsuits - more than 500 in 18 years - helped gain protection for nearly a fourth of the 1,351 endangered or threatened plants and animals in the United States.

The nonprofit organization that started in 1989 as three idealists in a Phoenix apartment, two of them on unemployment after being fired by the U.S. Forest Service, has grown to more than 40,000 members with 11 offices in six states. The center's budget grew tenfold in the past decade.

In southern Arizona alone, center petitions helped add the Mexican spotted owl, cactus ferruginous pygmy owl and jaguar to the list of endangered species (The pygmy owl was de-listed in 2006 but the center is trying to get it back on the list).
Its lawsuits forced the government to protect habitat for spotted owls, Pacific pocket mice and northern right whales. Dozens of plants the center helped protect are so rare they have no common names. In 2005, the center petitioned Fish & Wildlife to list polar bears as threatened. It is the center's attempt to show that global warming is affecting wildlife. A listing decision is due in coming weeks.

Critics accuse the center of helping to hobble Fish & Wildlife, the federal agency with the task of protecting the nation's endangered species. Since 2000, the agency has spent nearly all of its endangered species listing budget complying with court orders arising from lawsuits such as the center's. But the lawsuits are only to force the federal government to follow its own laws...
Continued here

If we could garner a third of the fervor these extreme groups have, we would have OHV parks in every state and plenty of public land to use.

Thats it for this week.
Any questions, please contact me at E4WBrill@aol.com

Talk soon,