Grave Situation on BLM lands

[bps]

I spent some time researching the Federal Registrar and what I found is very disturbing. Please keep in mind that I'm still gathering the facts, so everything you read here may not be the letter of the law.

Here is what I found in the Federal Registrar, Vol. 65 Number 241 Pages 78,357 to 78,376:

"The period for public comment on the proposed rule originally expired on February 18, 1997. In response to public requests, BLM extended the comment period until April 21, 1997. BLM received nearly 1,600 public comment letters or other communications during this four- month comment period."

"ADDRESSES: You should send any inquiries or suggestions to: Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Mail Stop WO-172, 1849 C St., NW., Attention: Jeff Jarvis, Washington, DC 20240."

Bryan's comment: The following becomes effective January 16, 2001

"Mechanical transport means any vehicle, device, or contrivance for moving people or material in or over land, water, snow, or air that has moving parts. This includes, but is not limited to, sailboats, sailboards, hang gliders, parachutes, bicycles, game carriers, carts, and wagons. The term does not include wheelchairs, nor does it include horses or other pack stock, skis, snowshoes, non-motorized river craft including, but not limited to, drift boats, rafts, and canoes, or sleds, travois, or similar devices without moving parts."

"In subpart 6304 you will find provisions implementing the special provisions of the Wilderness Act that allow specific uses of wilderness areas. In Sec. 6302.20 you will find a list of acts that are explicitly prohibited within wilderness areas."

"Sec. 6302.20 What is prohibited in wilderness? Except as specifically provided in the Wilderness Act, the individual statutes designating the particular BLM wilderness area, or the regulations of this part, and subject to valid existing rights, in BLM wilderness areas you must not: (a) Operate a commercial enterprise; (b) Build temporary or permanent roads; (c) Build aircraft landing strips, heliports, or helispots; (d) Use motorized equipment; or motor vehicles, motorboats, or other forms of mechanical transport; (e) Land aircraft, or drop or pick up any material, supplies or person by means of aircraft, including a helicopter, hang-glider, hot air balloon, parasail, or parachute;"

"Penalties Sec. 6302.30 What penalties apply if I commit one or more of the prohibited acts? (a) If you commit a prohibited act listed in Sec. 6302.20 in a BLM wilderness area, you are subject to criminal prosecution on each offense. If convicted, you may be fined not more than $100,000 under 18 U.S.C. 3571. In addition, you may be imprisoned for not more than 12 months, as provided for by 43 U.S.C. 1733(a). (b) At the request of the Secretary of the Interior, the United States Attorney General may institute a civil action in any United States district court for an injunction or other appropriate order to prevent you from using public lands in violation of the regulations of this part."

Bryan's comment: Please note that it says "wilderness area". Which areas does this cover? But keep in mind that it's still an important issue...many cliffs lie in wilderness areas. The following may be our "ray of light":

"Sec. 6304.21 What special provisions cover aircraft and motorboat use?

(a) Subject to such restrictions as BLM determines necessary to protect wilderness values, we may authorize you to land aircraft and use motorboats at places within any wilderness area if these uses were established and active at the time Congress designated the area as wilderness. (b) BLM may also authorize you to maintain, utilizing non-motorized means, aircraft landing strips, heliports or helispots that existed and were in active use when Congress designated the area as wilderness."

Bryan's comment: BASE jumping has existed at these sites since 1997...the local BLM office could allow us to continue. But this is still very important -- what about the hundreds of cliffs still waiting to be discovered?

Folks, from what I see so far, this is a very grave situation for our sport. I am headed to Moab and will continue to research this. Any and all help from those with more contacts/clout/pull etc. would be very appreciated! IPBC, CJAA, Vertigo, or anyone else out there. Please contact me if you have ideas/suggestions.

If we're not careful, the door might be slammed behind our back before we even know what happened.

I'll post again as soon as I know more.

C-ya,

Bryan

[imported_badenhop]

Thanks for the information.
I'll be able to call the BLM tomorrow.

What is, and what is not a widerness area?
That is the question.

BASE, per se, precedes this designation, and precedes it specifically at some popular sites.

Is Kane Creek Canyon a wilderness area?
What about Candyland?
And as the previous gentleman mentioned,
what about all those places we haven't found yet?

I am not overly concerned today, because.....
I have already been issued a permit by the BLM,
for a sporting event to be held on BLM land,
which will involve the use of parachutes,
and will be held after January 16, 2001.
I may be concerned tomorrow.....

[guest]

Bryan-

This certainly could be a very grave situation, but conversly, it may not be at all, depending upon enforcement most likely. Wilderness areas are carefully defined, outlined on most maps, and generally fall under one of three jurisdictions. National forest, BLM, or dept of interior, I believe, basically run by NPS. They all have their own rules and regulations regarding recreational activities and the enforcemet of recreational activities. Wilderness is a very small subset of the land these agencies oversee, so that is a plus. But it isd often very good land for jumping, a minus. Over the last 4 yrs there has been a very long. lengthy and HUGE discussion with climbing organizations re the use of "fixed anchors" for climbing. There will be huge amounts of info available in that regard, how much it will relate I don't know. Masters and doctoral theses have been publiished on this recently.

NF wilderness does not specifically prohibit jumping, hence it is acceptable (though not necessarily encouraged!). Obviously, in general I believe we have a good rapport and history w/ BLM in the moab area as a legitimate, responsible, and successfullly self-policing recreational group. the vast majorty of the BLM lands being jumped in the Moab area are not wilderness areas, so should be outside of the area of concerne re this recent regulation. Again, any good map will ahve wilderness areas well marked. Though many of them are wilderness study areas, such as the Kane creek plateau area SE of tombstone, and much of the mill creek/slick rock plateau area.

W

[guest]

Avery,
In response to your question, "What is wilderness?" you will find the answer in the Wilderness Act of 1964.

DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS

(c) A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this chapter an area of underdeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.


You can find more info on this act which not only defines Wilderness but also goes into the extent of what the Wilderness System, Prohibition of certain uses, Special Provisions, etc at:
http://www.wilderness.net

[base311]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Dec-18-00 AT 02:43 PM (PST)[/font][p]Hey Bryan how are you? Hope this note finds you well.

Well, I must say you did a better job getting people's attention than I did back in May when I posted this message(the board will probably choke on this link):

http://www.blincmagazine.com/cgi-bin...rd&archive=yes

Okay, so where to start? The public comment period has passed for this rule and it will have the force of law (effective date: january 16, 2001). The public comment period had already expired before I made my original post in May, so there wasn't much any of us could have done about it then, anyway.

...but the situation is not as bad as one might expect. This particular rule (43 CFR 6300 et seq) applies only to areas designated as 'Wilderness Areas' - which is a very exclusive designation requiring the approval of Congress, so there's not as much land at stake or already designated as one would think. This is in contrast to a 'Wilderness Study Area'(WSA), which is lands set aside for study to see if they meet the (strict) requirements of being worthy of recommendation before Congress to become Wilderness Areas. WSAs are managed under a different set of rules (which I will cite later - don't have them in front of me). The controlling management document for WSAs is called the Interim Management Policy for Lands Under Wilderness Review. I highly recommend studying this management document. find it at:

http://www.ut.blm.gov/wilderness/wimpcontents.html

Of particular note, Chapter 3, Section H, subsection 7 - Aerial Activities relates to parachutes. Check it out (you'll have to scroll down to subsection 7). find chapter 3 here:

http://www.ut.blm.gov/wilderness/wim...tml#RECREATION

You also asked about which areas in moab are either Wilderness Areas, existing WSAs and/or which areas are 'planning areas' (could become WSAs in the future). The following list will help you:

http://www.ut.blm.gov/wilderness/reinv-report.htm

Further, check out the mother document to the prior link, which is the Utah Wilderness Inventory:

http://www.ut.blm.gov/wilderness/wrpt/wrptcontents.html

Oh, and just in case anyone wants to read the Final Rule in its entirety, you can find it at the Government Printing Office Webpage by clicking this link:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-...id=fr14de00-21

First notice of proposed rulemaking (December 19, 1996) can be found at this link:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-...id=fr19de96-40

I'll post more soon. I do think that we all need to pay very close attention to these sorts of things; however, it's more than a full time job. I guess we need to figure out how we're going to work in concert, as Robin mentioned.

bsbd,
Gardner

P.S. I'm gathering a number of sources and building a one-stop-shop page of links that I will link from here for all of you to peruse. I'll post the link in the next few days. Oh, also, for all you CJAA/It's Our Park Too higher-ups... I have a t-shirt design finished. I need to get the original artwork to someone who can actually do the production - i figured maybe some percentage of sales would go to the access fund. Somebody interested in helping me with this? Robin? Beuhler? anyone? anyone?

[guest]

Way to go Bryan, Avery and Gardner. You did a great juob quickly sorting through the junk to get to the heart of the matter.

Obviously the situation isn't as acutrely critical as I feared, but just as obviously, the longer term danger remains and we need to collectively monitor it closely because there is a continuing goal among the elitist treehuggers (who never actually get out of sight of the pavement) to ban everything and everyone from wilderness areas -- and then expand wilderness areas to include everything that isn't paved.

Thanks again for your diligence and quick action.

Robin Heid
BASE 44

[guest]

Hi Brian,! How's life? Without question this is part of what was originally called the "Wilderness Act", then the "Forest Plan", then it was named the "Roadless Area Initiative" and now appears to be called the "Draft National Off-Highway Vehicle Management Strategy." It should be called "How I Screwed America In My Spare Time" by Bill Clinton.

I originally posted information about this move back on the "Board" on March 16th titled "Clinton's Land Grab." (Portion included: http://www.pcisys.net/~bazair2air/rai.htm) It is my understanding that Clinton has signed it and it's over. (The extended cut off to protest to your state representatives was earlier this year) It was relatively hush, hush as Clinton wanted it. (Notice they didn't put THIS on the news until it was over) which is why you probably did not hear of it. And, if you did, it would have been hard to follow it as they changed (updated!) the title so often. However, there was some protest and the original plan that Clinton had in mind was scaled back somewhat. To what point it was scaled back, I'm not sure.

MAKE NOTE THAT THIS WAS DONE WITHOUT A VOTE! IT WAS SIGNED OFF AS AN EXECUTIVE ORDER BY CLINTON HIMSELF BEFORE HIS LEAVING OFFICE.

It is now being studied for it's constitutional validity and SOME of the areas MAY be reversed. However, once it is signed off it is impossible to go back to square one. He has stolen vast areas from the tax paying public.

I have read several sections of this theft in writing but never ran across any specific mention of parachutes in it. This does not mean it does not exist.
There is not one thing concerning this action that is about vehicle access, this is simply prohibition. Do not think, even for a second think that you are not included.

This is the last information I have on the land Clinton was attempting to grab. I am not sure that there is a published version of the final figures.
http://www.pcisys.net/~bazair2air/land_grab.htm

Bazil

P.S. Robin, I appreciated your input back in March.

[guest]

Thank you, Robin, for bringing this note up on the board a few days ago and getting everyone to notice.

And thank you Bryan, Avery, and Gardner for all your research so far.

And my gratitude to all who have posted on this in days past and who are currently researching. Please let me know, either via this board or by personal email when and who we should write or call in order to let our BLM know our feelings on this.

Fingers crossed...
Denise