Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/776700
IN THE WIND P34 WHAT WILL A DONALD TRUMP PRESIDENCY MEAN FOR LAND USE ISSUES? T here's some significant change underway in Wash- ington D.C. You heard it here first. With Donald Trump now at the helm, an all-new cabinet is coming together, and Trump has tapped Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke as secretary of the Department of the Interior. What will this new leadership mean for land-use issues facing motorcy- clists? We did some research on Zinke, and also sat down with iconic OHV land-use advocate Don Amador to find out more about the forthcoming adminis- tration and what it could bring to the off-road motorcycle industry. Congressman Ryan Zinke (R-Montana), President Trump's pick for interior secretary, has a degree in geology from the University of Oregon is a former commander in the Navy's Seal Team Six special-forces branch. From there he went into politics, campaigning on the platform of achieving North American energy independence. He is currently on the House Natural Resources Committee as well as the Armed Services Committee. He's been accused of "devel- oping and exploiting resources on public lands," which has earned him a lifetime score of 3/100 from the League of Conservation Voters. And he is also called "an unshakeable foe" of selling federal lands to the states. The 55-year-old was even at odds with his own party recently, and resigned from his position on the GOP platform writing committee over the disagreement of transferring federal land ownership to the states. Zinke remains in staunch opposition to public land trans- fers (Trump is reportedly op- posed to it as well, although the provision did make it into the GOP platform). This may seem counter-intuitive, but Amador explained why this is actually a good thing for OHV use. "The federal government— Forest Service and BLM in our case—have a congressional mandate to manage for multiple use, which includes OHV," Ama- dor explained. "The states and counties have no such mandate. "The States and counties are a lot more susceptible to politi- cal sway. On the surface, that might sound like a good idea, but what about that county that has a real popular OHV area in it, and an election occurs and you now have three out of five county board supervisors and they take a vote one Tuesday af- ternoon and they go, 'You know what, we just ordered the Forest Service to close their OHV area?' We're much more sus- ceptible to the whims of elec- tions that sway back and forth [at the state and/or county level] whereas the federal government is national and it's much harder to change things. Sort of like turning a huge tanker around in the ocean, if you think of the Forest Service and BLM as a huge ocean tanker, it might takes years to turn that around. Whereas if you're in a 20-foot fishing boat, you can whip it A look at Trump's pick for U.S. Department of the Interior, reveals what's in the future for OHV land-use issues. PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK KARIYA