Creative Fab
January 26th, 2006, 09:15 AM
Homer and all:
This is precisely the type of issue that we (collective of every member of United) needs to know.
I had a brief email exchange in December from some people in New Mexico about procedural issues. The exchange ended with an "I'll get back to you." when specifics were requested.
Overall, I believe we can get the "wilderness" issue stopped.
It will involved two things:
1 - I need specifics about the proposal. Those specific will be submitted to the House Resources Committee. One key element is county officials that are NOT IN SUPPORT of the proposal need to be vocal and recreation groups need to weigh in on the issue.
2 - This session of congress is short lived in that it is the second year of the session with elections coming and a new congress will be seated in January 2007.
That means the first order of business is to kill the proposal in the House through interaction with the House Resources Committee.
The second order is to wound the proposal in the Senate.
The House is easy, the Senate will take a little work.
We have at our disposal an collective resolve among the "national OHV groups" to work together on issues of concern.
Okay, here is an issue of concern that requires involvement outside of the local groups.
Folks, this is something WE (at the national level) can assist the local organizations. WE (at the national level) need to know WHAT you are doing and WHAT issues you cannot resolve locally. Then, together, we can devise a strategy on HOW to fight the issue.
Now that we have an issue identified, we can look at several venues to provide assistance.
One step that we (UFWDA Board of Directors) will under take is to establish a dedicated "forum" for this type of issue on the UFWDA web site.
That effort will take the commitment of individual associations to monitor AND submit issues AND provide comment on issues other associations submit.
Now, I will caution everyone that there are a number of "land use" forums in existence. Adding another one is a risky venture from the point of "Will people use it?"
However, within the realm of UFWDA, there is a defined need for UFWDA member organization to have a forum to discuss "land use issues". Okay, we can make that happen.
Now, it is up to the members to make it work.
And, bear with us as we work out the issues in the new-found alliances with other "national OHV groups". Different groups have differing levels of effort in place. As we move forward, we (collective of the national OHV groups) will be focusing efforts to become effective and efficient in the use of resources we have at our disposal.
At 6:57 PM -0700 1/25/06, Homer R. Van Zandt wrote:
Since the concensus for now is to use this list for land access matters, here goes.
All:
I've been trying for months to get peoples attention on this matter and now it looks like the peanut butter is hitting the fan seriously.
We are facing a concerted push by wilderness groups to score a major coup by locking up a huge amount of mountain and desert land in southern New Mexico. The two NM senators, Bingaman and Dominici, are planning to introduce legislation in the very near future to confirm the WSAs in the area as formal wilderness as part of a plan that involves selling off 65,000 acres of federal public land around Las Cruces for development. We learned of this two months ago, but have not been able to get much information out of the senators' staffs. I don't know for sure who lined up the senators on this but it appears to have "bipartisan" support and I strongly suspect that real estate development interests are at the bottom of it. Now, we hear that the Dona Ana County Comission is set to try to have even more land added to the mix than just the existing WSAs.
I urge all of you to go online to www.lcsun-news.com and read the story in today's (Jan 25) Las Cruces Newspaper, which claims that a majority (55%) of citizens support "creation" of 330,000 acres of wilderness in the Las Cruces area. The numbers came from a poll conducted by a California polling outfit funded by the Wilderness Alliance. Needless to say, the development of their questions and selection of persons to contact were carefully structured to get the result their employers wanted. Please read the article soon, as the Sun-News only archives stories for seven days.
This is big trouble that needs some serious attention from everyone who uses motorized transportation to access public lands. If we can't turn this around somehow, we might as well give up, stay in the house and take up canasta or bridge. It's not just about southern New Mexico. If they succeed here in something as blatant as this, it will snowball everywhere.
The Las Cruces Four Wheel Drive Club can't do much in the face of something of this magnitude. We need help and a lot of it. I hope someone will pay attention.
Homer R. Van Zandt
SWFWDA Delegate
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
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This is precisely the type of issue that we (collective of every member of United) needs to know.
I had a brief email exchange in December from some people in New Mexico about procedural issues. The exchange ended with an "I'll get back to you." when specifics were requested.
Overall, I believe we can get the "wilderness" issue stopped.
It will involved two things:
1 - I need specifics about the proposal. Those specific will be submitted to the House Resources Committee. One key element is county officials that are NOT IN SUPPORT of the proposal need to be vocal and recreation groups need to weigh in on the issue.
2 - This session of congress is short lived in that it is the second year of the session with elections coming and a new congress will be seated in January 2007.
That means the first order of business is to kill the proposal in the House through interaction with the House Resources Committee.
The second order is to wound the proposal in the Senate.
The House is easy, the Senate will take a little work.
We have at our disposal an collective resolve among the "national OHV groups" to work together on issues of concern.
Okay, here is an issue of concern that requires involvement outside of the local groups.
Folks, this is something WE (at the national level) can assist the local organizations. WE (at the national level) need to know WHAT you are doing and WHAT issues you cannot resolve locally. Then, together, we can devise a strategy on HOW to fight the issue.
Now that we have an issue identified, we can look at several venues to provide assistance.
One step that we (UFWDA Board of Directors) will under take is to establish a dedicated "forum" for this type of issue on the UFWDA web site.
That effort will take the commitment of individual associations to monitor AND submit issues AND provide comment on issues other associations submit.
Now, I will caution everyone that there are a number of "land use" forums in existence. Adding another one is a risky venture from the point of "Will people use it?"
However, within the realm of UFWDA, there is a defined need for UFWDA member organization to have a forum to discuss "land use issues". Okay, we can make that happen.
Now, it is up to the members to make it work.
And, bear with us as we work out the issues in the new-found alliances with other "national OHV groups". Different groups have differing levels of effort in place. As we move forward, we (collective of the national OHV groups) will be focusing efforts to become effective and efficient in the use of resources we have at our disposal.
At 6:57 PM -0700 1/25/06, Homer R. Van Zandt wrote:
Since the concensus for now is to use this list for land access matters, here goes.
All:
I've been trying for months to get peoples attention on this matter and now it looks like the peanut butter is hitting the fan seriously.
We are facing a concerted push by wilderness groups to score a major coup by locking up a huge amount of mountain and desert land in southern New Mexico. The two NM senators, Bingaman and Dominici, are planning to introduce legislation in the very near future to confirm the WSAs in the area as formal wilderness as part of a plan that involves selling off 65,000 acres of federal public land around Las Cruces for development. We learned of this two months ago, but have not been able to get much information out of the senators' staffs. I don't know for sure who lined up the senators on this but it appears to have "bipartisan" support and I strongly suspect that real estate development interests are at the bottom of it. Now, we hear that the Dona Ana County Comission is set to try to have even more land added to the mix than just the existing WSAs.
I urge all of you to go online to www.lcsun-news.com and read the story in today's (Jan 25) Las Cruces Newspaper, which claims that a majority (55%) of citizens support "creation" of 330,000 acres of wilderness in the Las Cruces area. The numbers came from a poll conducted by a California polling outfit funded by the Wilderness Alliance. Needless to say, the development of their questions and selection of persons to contact were carefully structured to get the result their employers wanted. Please read the article soon, as the Sun-News only archives stories for seven days.
This is big trouble that needs some serious attention from everyone who uses motorized transportation to access public lands. If we can't turn this around somehow, we might as well give up, stay in the house and take up canasta or bridge. It's not just about southern New Mexico. If they succeed here in something as blatant as this, it will snowball everywhere.
The Las Cruces Four Wheel Drive Club can't do much in the face of something of this magnitude. We need help and a lot of it. I hope someone will pay attention.
Homer R. Van Zandt
SWFWDA Delegate
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
_______________________________________________
UnitedDelegates mailing list
UnitedDelegates@six.pairlist.net
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/uniteddelegates