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The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

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Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#141

Post by justinator »

wavefunction wrote: post #133
justinator wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening in Colorado. Every Fourteener (14,000+ foot mountains) used to be publicly accessible but we got some greedy folks who moved in and shut down that traditional access to at least five of them so far. Which ones? I just did all the 14ers this year, and didn't have problems with access to any. (Culebra was one I paid for a reservation)

Culebra has always been the problematic one but I guess I am quite behind the times after I've checked the current situation. Culebra is only open one week a year from when I checked last year. Lincoln, Bross, Democrat and Cameron had their access blocked in 2005 by people who acquired land via old mining claims. It appears a happy impasse has since been reached with the town of Alma leasing the land and taking on th…

> Culebra is only open one week a year from when I checked last year

In 2017, it was open for dates in June and July you could reserve in June and July. Normally, it's also opened in August, but they've closed it for wildlife reasons. But this is a different situation than what the fine article is about - Culebra Peak isn't public land blocked by private land; it's just private land itself. It's been private land before the National Forest and the Dept. of the Interior were a thing.

Access to Mt. Democrat/etc has been open since 2012. Only Bross remains closed. The closure in total is a sign saying, "summit closed". Again, different from the article where private land is blocking public access.

Many other 14ers are actually on private land, but access is not limited. Lindsey is one example - it resides almost completely in the Trinchera Ranch, which was just sold. But there is a conservation easement to Colorado Open Lands as part of the sale of the ranch - you can't develop on the land, and access to the summit is allowed from the Huerfano Valley.

Mt. Shavano's summit is also on private land as well, but the mining claim was bought recently by the CFI, and will be transferred to the NF soon.

http://www.14ers.org/mount-shavano-private-lands-acquisition...

From my experiences, easy access of public land is actually really good in Colorado. I'm sure there are issues, but they seem at least to me minimal in most of the popular areas, like 14ers.

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#143

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #85
ewhanley wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in central Montana but now live on the west coast too, and I’m astonished at how quickly it’s changing. The bellwether for me is the fact that stream access law* is being challenged (most notably by Gianforte and other wealthy, often absentee landowners). If public stream access is lost, I’ll know the state and it’s civic makeup has changed irreversibly. *Everything below the high water mark is publicly acc…

> Everything below the high water mark is publicly accessible per Montana state law Huh, does that mean you can legally travel through someone's private property by walking/wading the length of a stream that passes through it? (i.e. the stream is effectively a public footpath?)

[deleted]

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#144

Post by vogt »

dboreham wrote: post #118
typeformer wrote: post #40

I grew up in Livingston MT just a 20 min drive from the Crazies, I know these trails, and this is one if the saddest things I have ever read on HN. Now I live on the West coast but I miss Montana all the time and visit whenever I can. To be honest, I really can't fathom how terrible things have gotten politically with the likes of the despicably corrupt Zinke and Gioforte. Personally, I watched everything change so f…

I've lived in Livingston for nearly 20 years and I know Alex, and his kids are classmates of mine. This has been big news locally for a while but interesting to see it hit the national wires. However, I grew up in Scotland where we have a somewhat longer history of dealing with access to land and rich people ;) The solution there is that there is a legal right to access wild land. Note this doesn't just apply to "pub…

OT, but I have to imagine (as someone who has visited Livingston) that you might well be the only person to ever grow up in Scotland and live in Livingston for 20 years. Kinda interesting.

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#145

Post by adrianratnapala »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #105
djrogers wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local representatives don’t get to counter the almighty EPA, which writes and enforces all of the environmental regulations affecting this kind of thing.

Sure, but they have some influence with the EPA. They will at least be able to get a meeting with someone reasonably high up at the EPA and if that fails they can introduce legislation to force the EPA to change the regulations.

Perhaps you are wondering why you are being down-voted, since your comment is well-meant and deserves a response. The problem is that arguments like yours are a bit of a fig-leaf covering a system that is designed to work around exactly the process you are talking about.

For the last seventy years or, western democracies have moved power away from traditional branches of government and into the hands of agencies, because political movements were fed up with the slowness, dark compromises and voter-oriented showmanship of traditional democratic machinery.

And indeed those systems really are slow, messy and give incomplete results. So when agencies do behave badly, it is not very helpful (or even true) to say that the tedious checks-and-balance systems that the agencies exist to work around are an effective recourse.

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#146

Post by ewhanley »

derefr wrote: post #85
ewhanley wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in central Montana but now live on the west coast too, and I’m astonished at how quickly it’s changing. The bellwether for me is the fact that stream access law* is being challenged (most notably by Gianforte and other wealthy, often absentee landowners). If public stream access is lost, I’ll know the state and it’s civic makeup has changed irreversibly. *Everything below the high water mark is publicly acc…

> Everything below the high water mark is publicly accessible per Montana state law Huh, does that mean you can legally travel through someone's private property by walking/wading the length of a stream that passes through it? (i.e. the stream is effectively a public footpath?)

It certainly does. You just have to enter from a public access point. This point could be as formal as a maintained fishing access or as informal as any bridge on a public thoroughfare.

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#147

Post by wandernotlost »

nickik wrote: post #116
barsonme wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than using the federal lands more _and_ contacting your representatives (via phone!!) to express your support for keeping public federal lands, yes, donate. While your money probably won't be ill-spent with your run-of-the-mill environmental groups, I'd really recommend searching out right-leaning groups that support public federal lands, like the American Conservation Coalition ( https://acc.eco ). Sadly, the…

I don't think 'the right' (whatever that means) has abandoned the environment. At least libertarians have not. Check out www.perc.org, these are free market people who are extremely passionate about the environment and they are quite popular and have made great inroads to provide an alternative way of thinking about the environment compared to the leftist big government bureaucracy style of protecting it. They suppor…

PERC is partly the subject of the article:

PERC’s affiliation with politically connected outfitters that stand to profit if trails are closed bolsters the sense, to Wilson and others confronting locked gates, that a void in coherent policy about public land management is being filled by cronyism that rewards wealth and connections above all else. Another co-owner of the Wonder Ranch, Frank-Paul King, a friend and former student of Anderson’s, served on PERC’s board. Hudson, the man who got Representative Sessions involved, is King’s brother-in-law, and he’s also a board member and the former president of the Dallas Safari Club, a group that made national headlines in 2014 when it auctioned off a trip to Africa to hunt an endangered rhinoceros.

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#148

Post by mikestew »

njarboe wrote: post #107
davidw wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been pretty consistently anti MTB over the years. There are absolutely wilderness areas where there should not be bikes, but it should be decided locally, just as certain trails outside of wilderness areas are, justly, hiker only. For instance, this is a Wilderness area east of Bend, Oregon. It is not, however a "wilderness" - indeed many of the trails are former jeep roads: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.00…

Give me bikes over horses every day. Not sure exactly why hiking in a bit of horseshit, here and there, bothers me so much. I think it mostly is that I imagine that when you are on a horse you are much higher off the trail and don't have to deal with the stink your horse created.

The shit is the least of it, as horses will pound a trail to dust. How anyone argues with a straight face that MTBs are more impactful than horses is beyond my comprehension.

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#149

Post by cbcoutinho »

dbcurtis wrote: post #37
cbcoutinho wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend right-leaning groups as well, but that's mostly because of the hunting communities are usually associated with the actual 'use' of public lands, and have been supporting most of the ecological/wildlife research. There's recently been a big push towards historically sustainable wildlife systems, and that's a topic that resonates with most of the more conservative hunting communities.

Yup. A lot of people don't want to admit that hunters were the original conservationists. And also, a lot of non-hunters don't support hunting-oriented conservation methods. For instance, just because you buy a duck stamp it doesn't mean you have to go duck hunting. Duck stamps support the preservation of duck habitat and other wetlands. Buying a duck stamp is an easy way to directly contribute targetted money to wet…

Yea this is exactly what I was talking about. Buying a fishing tag or a hunting tag is also an excellent way to get money directly into the hands of those who work in environmental conservation

Re: The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

#150

Post by tryingagainbro »

seems to me like eminent domain might work. It's my property and I do not want you to pass through it, seems kinda simple. And the law backs it.

Now the Gov can catch them breaking a law or five in Fed land and make deals for access but that's not scalable.

So, go to court and force them to sell a 20 yard strip of land to be used as a road to the Fed property. Or offer them 10x in fed land on the other side of their property.

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