Forum Index > Public Lands Stewardship > Wheels in wilderness bill gets hearing.
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PostThu Dec 28, 2017 3:03 pm 
Schroder wrote:
The area cited in this article is a public watershed
Indeed. As I said, it is not designated Wilderness. But again people are showing that they only know a single local example. Not all watersheds are treated the same as Cedar or Tolt Rivers for Seattle. Consider the Redmond Watershed, which has a network of trails. Though it's also not really used as a water supply, so it's a bad example. But I can site plenty of good ones: in CA, Marin, East Bay, SF, Arcata all have watersheds which allow multiple users on trails, though there are arguments in some of them about resource protection (user groups, water, plants, animals). Consider the Fairmont Park System of Philadelphia, which was one the first large urban parks and created for watershed protection. It's still both. Consider the Ware watershed I referenced. Did you read the article? You can *drive your car* within the watershed today, but certain trails are closed to all users. The public record disclosures discussed in the article show the officials desperately searching to find how mountain bikes caused issues, and failing to find them closed trails to all users. Even though their own records showed water quality increasing at the same time usage (among all users) was increasing. Again, this is a political/philosophical issue. Both for Wilderness (fed designation) and other designations. It has little to do with science or actual risks to resources or users.

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PostThu Dec 28, 2017 5:46 pm 
No, these watersheds are just bad examples to use. Many of ours used to be open as well and they are open for logging and some for hunting but very tightly controlled. They're closed due to perceived risks to public health rather than any proven risk. Spada Lake/Sultan Basin is still open only because it was a condition of the dam's original operating license to allow recreation. If P.U.D. and Everett Water had their way it would be off-limits to all the public. Some cities open their sewage lagoons to walking and riding; others have them closed off with 10' cyclone fences and razor wire. Most of the private logging roads used to be open for travel also, but they began to shut them all down in the 80's.

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PostThu Dec 28, 2017 6:28 pm 
Wouldn't be surprising if they'd rather fence everything off, generally institutions just want the simplest and most controlling thing. But their mandate apparently includes recreation, as do various other agencies who got land by eminent domain in the mid 20th century. (Is that what happened in Everett?) But they weren't closed for just resource protection. Travel is allowed on roads and also cross country, just not on trails. Take a look at this map: http://www.nemba.org/sites/default/files/PDF%20%20Files/wrw_nemba_map_20161123.pdf I can't tell what was actually closed--maybe everything in blue? See how the roads (orange) cross into red areas (presumably that's the important category) And yeah, I suspect that the un-checkerboarding of property in the west is leading to loss of access. In the past it was to both sides (private/public) to allow access so each could get to each other's land in a simple fashion. But now that they have it all, they go for the institutional model of 'protect myself', most simply done with exclusion. But that has very little to do with Land Designation.

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Forum Index > Public Lands Stewardship > Wheels in wilderness bill gets hearing.
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