GOP lawmakers rip green group's 'self-serving actions' at N.M. forest

[lobsterdmb]

PUBLIC LANDS: GOP lawmakers rip green group's 'self-serving actions' at N.M. forest

Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Monday, August 11, 2014

The Republican co-chairs of the Congressional Western Caucus lashed out at the Center for Biological Diversity for challenging a recent travel management plan at southwest New Mexico's Gila National Forest, saying the "radical" environmental group's attempts to restrict public access to the forest will harm tourism.

At issue is the center's formal administrative appeal of the Forest Service travel management plan, approved in September 2013, for the 3.3-million-acre national forest, which is the sixth-largest in the continental United States.

The center says the travel management plan fails to protect the San Francisco River, as well as imperiled frogs, fish and birds, and potential wilderness areas from what it describes as "rampant off-road vehicles" on roughly 3,000 miles of designated trails.

But the travel management plan also closes off hundreds of miles of roads and trails from OHV use, said Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), co-chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus.

"The Center for Biological Diversity decided that their lawyers should have the exclusive right to dictate where citizens can go in the Gila National Forest," Pearce said in a statement the caucus released late Friday. "Their self-serving actions will jeopardize tourism in Western New Mexico, calling into question radical environmental groups' constant declarations that sectioning off our lands will create tourism jobs. There is no tourism without access."

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who co-chairs the caucus with Pearce, added that national forests like Gila fall under the multiuse mandate that requires them "to accommodate a variety of uses," including recreation.

"We must curtail attempts like this to undermine the multiple-use ideals upon which these lands were established," Lummis said in a statement. "Proper public land management requires balance, including consideration of the needs of those who live near the land."

The Center for Biological Diversity said in an emailed statement to Greenwire that the Forest Service's travel management plan needs to strike a better balance between recreation and conservation.

"What these representatives are forgetting is that the Forest Service is a public agency with a responsibility to manage our public lands for all Americans, not just those that like to use off-road vehicles," Katie Davis, the center's public lands campaigner, said in the statement. "Part of that responsibility includes protecting precious water resources and wildlife so that future generations can enjoy them."

The center says in its appeal that the travel management plan violates the National Environmental Policy Act by designating unauthorized routes and trails without site-specific analysis and that the Forest Service should close off these routes until such an analysis is completed. The group also wants the Forest Service "to close to motorized use" two wilderness study areas -- the Lower San Francisco River and Hells Hole.

"The Gila National Forest continues to have more miles of roads and trails open to motorized vehicles than it takes to travel from San Francisco to New York," Davis added in the statement. "Our appeal seeks to protect the most sensitive wildlife habitat from being destroyed by off-road vehicles -- responsibly managing motorized access is the only way we can preserve our public lands for the future."

The appeal also said the Forest Service needs to formally consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the plan because it does not address how the plan would impact the narrow-headed gartersnake and the northern Mexican gartersnake, both of which were recently listed by the service as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

"Ongoing motorized recreational use, by causing adverse impacts such as soil compaction, bank erosion, and damage to vegetation, will not only harm the ecological, biological, and recreational values of this area, but will also brush up against, if not exceed, legal thresholds provided by federal law," the appeal said. "Additionally, as a principle of both ecology and common sense, it is far easier to prevent degradation to riparian areas than to attempt -- with little guarantee of success -- to repair it."

 

[USFS91XJ]

This far left group in Santa Fe is nearly always behind the scenes of most New Mexico radical environmentalism:

Conservation Voters New Mexico

Website: http://www.cvnm.org/
Email: [email protected]
Address: 320 Aztec Street, Suite B, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Phone line 1: 505-992-8683
Fax: 505-986-0339

Categories

• Environment

Description

"Conservation Voters New Mexico, a nonpartisan, non-profit 501c(4) organization, works to protect New Mexico's natural environment and our cherished way of life. Our mission is to make sensible conservation policies a top priority for elected officials, political candidates, and voters across the state."


Check out this list of endorsements and see who gets 100% support.

This group works with the BioDiversity Junta quite a bit. Check out the signatories on the bottom of the document.

Michael Robinson, Conservation Advocate from the Center for Biological Diversity and Demis Foster, Executive Dire ctor Conservation Voters New Mexico often work together.

Tracking the BioDiversity Junta back to its supporting groups makes activism easier. The activist groups are more vulnerable to political-people-protest pressure.