Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

• • Political lifeline • ~ E • • ....-----Bulletin-----.. New . ff-road regs coming o I~ res ponse to the U.S. District Court case. National Wildlife Federation vs, Rogers C.B. Morton . et al, the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation has issued a new se t of administrative guidelines and a new Environmental Impact Statem en t fo r the regulation of OR Ys on Federal lands. The draft EIS (InL DES 76-27) . titled "Departmental Im p lemen ta ti on of Executive Order I 1644 Pertaining to Use of Off-road Vehicles on the Public Lands", dated J u ly. 19, 1976, is available by contacting the Office of Environmental Affairs, Bu reau of Outdoor Recreation. U.S. Dept. of the Interior. Washington, D.C. 20240. Information can also be had from your regional BO R office. Check your phone book where you live. Commen t deadline is October 7, 1976. All com ment should be sent to the above-men tioned address. Back to basics with the BLM By Lane Campbell R emember those two lawsu its that had everybody hanging in suspense last year? You know - the one in California that we "won" and the one in Washington that we " lost". It left everybody wondering "If we won one and lost one, where does that leave us?" Remember? It was the sort of thi ng it wo uld have taken a lawyer to figure ou t - and even then, said lawy er would be hard-pressed to communicate to a non-lawyer what he h ad learned. So th e upsh o t of it all was: we still retained our limited rights of access on Fe deral lands, and we'd have to wait and see what the BLM did in response to the Washi ngton, D.C. suit - the one we "lost". Quickee history refresher - the National Wildlife Federation sued the Department of Interior, claiming that the Feds had not lived up to the terms of Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11644 in .regulating off- road vehicle use. The court agreed, and ordered the bureaucrats to go back to square one , rewr ite their regs and do a new environmental impact statement, They did it, and the result is sitting on my desk. Reading it has given me a splitting headache. I don't recommend it as light reading. However, it is "must" reading for anyone who is actively involved in 't he land-use con troversy, That goes for M.O . R.E. chapters, the desert defense fund task force, AMA, CORYA, and any club or industry organization big enough to commit some money and/or some legal h osep ower. It is a qui te changed document fro m the fina l EIS issued in 1974, the Interior Department's original (and now discredited) attempt to comply with EO 11644. It is patronizing to ORY users in a subtly insulting way, and it is loaded with political dynamite . . Highlights Skimming ju st the surface. these were the m ost noticable points: he new draft EIS totally omits the references to the beneficial social impacts of ORY recreation. The 1974 Final EIS dwelt on the benefits in terms of family recreation and relief of social pressure in the cities as the ORY-ers unwind in the open spaces. In 1974, the posey-sniffers objected veh emently to the inclusion of family and social benefits-in the statement. It appears that in 19 76 , they'll get their w~ u nless the writers receive an overwhelming public outcry. Family trail-riders, fhis is your cue. he new draft EIS contains a comp lex and confusing array of al ternative proposals: six "designation strategies" crossed with five scheduling strategies for a possible thirty different combinations. The dy-ne-mite (from our standpoint) is that their proposed action is an "undesignated" status fo r BLM lan ds. pe nding designation (open, closed, whatever); combined with a designation schedule that would be complete by 1987. If adopted, it could be a real boon to us, and a real backfire to the environmental fringe who initiated the lawsuit. It's hard to believe that this would actually be done, because "un designated" would mean free access for properly muffled, spark-arrested machines outside of any specific Wilderness or Natural areas. Please note, ho wever, that clubs and organizations will still have the same permit process to go through in order to hold organized events. ' o r the first time, the Interior staff raises the question: Why not rescind or modify EO 11644? Good question! There is ' considerable argument for doing just that - as numerous writers have in the past suggested. Again, letter-writers, get on it, second argument for changing the wording of EO 11644 stems from the outcome of the Washington law suit itself. BLM originally set up its ORY regulations to allow any use that did n o t impair the "sustained yield" of the lands involved. This was because sustained yield h as historically been one of the major objectives of Federal land use policy. (Note: "Sustained yield" is a conservation concept, as opposed to a preservation concept as expressed by Sie rra Club, EDF, et al. Regulating according to sustained yield means looking at the lo ng term and doing nothing that would impair the land's ability to produce goods and services. This was what. intelligent lan d management was all about before the environmental radicals came on the scene.] , But the judge told them , in effect, "That's not what the Executive Order says. It says you are to minimize environmental impacts (such as erosion, siltation, wildlife disruption, etc.), " 'So they are forced to rewrite their regs in these terms; and the blanket ap plication of such terms can be a Catch-22 type disaster for ORv-ers. Knowing these things, it behooves us as citizens, in this Pres ide ntial election year, to ask the future President of the United S tales, "Which is m ore in the national interest - sustained yield or environme nta l impact?" If the answer is "sustained ) yield", then a rewri te of EO 11644 is a necessity ; and only the President can do it. There's more. Much. much m ore. I urge anybody with the time and the necessary ' expertise to get in bed with this document, get intimate with it, and be prepared to pick it to pieces in detail, in public. . ~ T T · F A The bottom line ---- The net payoff is the entire future of off-road motorcycling in the United States. A whole new chapter is unfolding, during an election year, in the prolonged land-use con tro versy. We can help write it. We can become involved, make it an entirely new poker game, turn much of it to our advantage. Or we can remain silent and get the perennial shaft, \ We've been through too much to pretend we don't understand what's happening and don't know how I'D deal with bureaucracy . In this year 1976, there should be no surprises. Our age of innocence is over. Bar I · your "average" racer? . . Yes, just your everyday, run-of-the-mill Superstar, Barry Sheene can relax a bit, after clinching the 500cc World Championship at the Swedish GP road race. Quite a com back f rom that painful broken -leg recovery/debut at Daytona. :' II J J J J J , ~ .. sr v c r, Ll I , (. " I .\ : .,

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