Reply #27: ATV Manufacturers and Dirt Bike Groups

[losthills]

Are in league with the big timber and mining companies to open up our last wildlands to exploitation. That's why this is such a huge issue. We still have 78 million acres of Roadless wildlands, and most of them qualify for wilderness protection. But Wilderness designation is a long drawn out process reqiring a vote in congress. The game that these guys are playing is to break up these wildlands with roads and ATV trails before they can be protected.

Bill Clinton banned new road construction on Roadless lands by executive order, But Bush removed that protection immediately upon assuming office, and a lot of these lands have been lost to logging roads and ATV trails in the last six years. There is legislation in congress to give them permanent protection, but it's slow going.

ATV groups and timber and mining companies have an umbrella group called The Blue Ribbon Coalition that mixes ultra right-wing philosophy with public lands management. They are very agressive and well funded and they consider all environmental legislation an affront to their "freedom." Their primary targets are The Endangered Species Act, The Wilderness Act, and the Roadless Rule.

The role of the dirtbikers in this undeclared war against the environment is to punch illegal trails into all of our roadless lands and then lobby the forest service a BLM to acknowledge and legalize them, thus disqualifying these lands from future Wilderness Protection-- because Wilderness Designation is the only thing that protects our land from logging, drilling and mining.

This is a service the Forest Service and BLM are happy to provide because they are run by Bush appointees...