Park Record | 2004-04-07 | Page 15

Viewpoints, A-15 WEDTHURSFRI, APRIL 7-9, 2004 THE PARK RECORD EDITORIAL Protect migration corridors while there are still moose among us It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when our reactions to spotting moose went from thrilling to heartbreaking. heart-breaking. But they have. This winter, in particular, it seems moose have been turning up in neighborhoods, on trails and in traffic. Far from awe-inspiring, the weekly confrontations between man and moose have become mundane and at times dangerous. Earlier this winter a moose caused a near fatal car wreck on Interstate 80 near the Jeremy Ranch interchange. More recently a moose trampled a hiker in Summit Park. In the interim, dozens of reports were filed with Summit Cbunty and Park City dispatchers about moose in backyards, on playing fields and blocking block-ing trails. Often the callers complain about property damage or a perceived safety threat from the large beasts, but just as often citizens are actually worried about the moose's welfare. Unfortunately, those concerns are articulated long after anything can be done to rescue an errant moose that has wandered into human habitat. And it is not just moose - the buffer between all kinds of wildlife and residents has nearly disappeared thanks to ski-area expansions, new developments and extended trails. Moose are just big canaries, warning of the growing environmental conflict. If there is any hope of preserving the wildlife after countless subdivisions, subdivi-sions, streets and ski runs are named. Summit County must move forward with identifying and preserving integral inte-gral migration corridors. If the county does put an open-space bond on November's ballot as commissioners have suggested it will, protecting migration corridors should be a top priority - equal to trail connections and viewsheds. Between the continuing drought and the ongoing urbanization of previously previ-ously uninhabited meadows and hillsides, hill-sides, Summit County will have to be proactive conservationists if residents want to resume admiring, rather than feeling sorry for, the wildlife they encounter. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Military Wild West hotel Editor: Since moving to Park City five years ago, I have heard many rumors of a military mil-itary recreation center coming to town. I look forward to this! However, while the recent idea of making a military hotel with only 10 beds on Main Street may be a charming idea... it misses the potential of what a recreation center can bring to the area. Park City has shown tremendous support sup-port to the Armed Forces. I think that a recreation center for troops to visit while on leave, retirees to stay at, and even onsite facilities for military conferences confer-ences and conventions would be a huge boost, not only in tourism, but also employment to thank the community for its support of the military. I have stayed at a few other rec centers and hope that something can be worked out to increase the draw of this area from the military community. Park City would be another great resort for military families to visit and to tie in with Oahu, Seoul, Garmisch, Orlando and other destination locations. loca-tions. Semper Fi, Rick Warmbold United States Marine Corps GUEST EDITORIAL fundraiser Editor: I am writing to thank The Park Record in particular and Park City in general for your generous support of our recent fund raising event, "Wild, Wild West Casino Night. Jennifer Merback's article was thoughtful and well written and she went to the trouble of getting background information infor-mation on the school as well as parent and teacher perspectives. Scott Sine came, he saw, he photographed and he captured the "rootin' tootin'" fun of the event. Special thanks to Nancy Tallman for organizing the event and all of the teachers teach-ers and parents of Soaring Wings who contributed con-tributed to the success and fun of the night. Many local businesses also contributed generously as they have, over and over again. The number of fundraisers in Park City grows each year but The Park Record and the local community have always been very kind in supporting the activities of our school. Our seventh annual fundraiser was a huge success and funded scholarships scholar-ships and on-going charitable organizations organiza-tions for another year. Thank you, Park Record and Park City! Namaste, Duna Strachan, Director Soaring Wings Montessori School OHVs belong in backcountry By DAVE SKINNER I've had motorcycles in some form, on-or on-or off-road, since I was 11 years old. That's how I went fishing or just exploring, dodging dodg-ing logging trucks as I gallivanted through the Flathead National Forest in Montana. It was. and still is, great fun; try it sometime. some-time. That's not to say that there aren't problems prob-lems with motorized recreation. Most things worth having - motorcycles, guns, automobiles, ORVs, chainsaws, power tools, snowmobiles, cell phones all share a common trait. Stupid people shouldn't have them, and there's the rub. Only a small number of recreationists of any kind especially dummies - belong to organized groups that try to teach responsible respon-sible behavior outdoors. For example, while there are 65 million gun owners, less than five million actively defend their rights as National Rifle Association members. mem-bers. On a smaller scale, the same reality faces motorized recreation advocacy groups such as the BlueRibbon Coalition, to which I proudly belong. Just like the NRA, groups like the BlueRibbon Coalition, based in Pocatello, Idaho, the American Motorcyclist Association and many smaller clubs, spend a lot of money on educational efforts. BlueRibbon has jumped in with both feet on damping down noise from our vehicles, a position I agree with. There is also the "Tread Lightly" campaign, which seems a nice way of saying, "Don't Be Stupid." Manufacturers such as American Honda are a bit more blunt, running safety safe-ty ads themed: "Stupid Hurts." Really. From what I've seen, most of us aren't stupid when we recreate, and many are helpful. Locally based wheel-sport clubs have donated hundreds and thousands of hours on the ground for trail maintenance and repair. But I suppose our organizations organiza-tions will keep growing our efforts to reach the unreachable, and yes, the lazy. We'd have it no other way: It's the right thing to do. But now, it seems, another challenge looms. In April, on last year's Earth Day. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about the four "great issues" facing fac-ing today's Forest Service. Bosworth did not talk about the usual environmental bugaboos of grazing, mining and logging. After all. those other multiple uses on the public lands are pretty much gone, much to the regret of many Westerners, myself included. So what's next? Fire and fuels, invasive species, habitat fragmentation, and, said the agency chief, "unmanaged recreation." As someone who has lived in sight of Forest Service land pretty much all my adult life, I've got lots to say about each. But since Chief Bosworth specifically stated, "OHV use alone affects more imperiled species than logging and logging roads combined," it's kind of obvious which fan the fertilizer will hit next. Chief Bosworth's talk added urgency to a long-running debate among motorheads. In a nutshell: Do we compromise with our critics or change our credo from "Tread Lightly" to "Don't Tread on Me?" Must we fight fang-and-claw against every closure, clo-sure, every restriction? I'm with the fang-and-claw faction. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the chief of the Forest Service would someday declare motorized recreation a "peril." But I never imagined that the log trucks (and my logger neighbors) would disappear, either. , .- What happened? Well, as my friend Bill Sutton puts it in every issue of his off -road recreation newsletter: "Stay on the road, smile at the hikers, eat a good breakfast, don't pick your nose, and it will not make any difference to the greenies. They don't like you." Sadly, I think Bill is right. Selfish environmentalists seem to think "multiple use" means two people hiking the same trail. They want to get rid of logging, log-ging, mining, cattle and any recreation that doesn't meet their pristine standards. That I washed my bike before loading up to prevent pre-vent seed spread, that I have a quiet muffler, muf-fler, that I stay on the trails (that I've helped maintain), that I wear safety equipment equip-ment that I use a hanky - it won't make any difference, ever. To uncompromising critics, I and 36 million mil-lion other motorheads, like the loggers, ranchers and miners who literally "have gone before" from the public lands, are not to be lived with but eliminated. The rights of all Americans to use and enjoy their public lands in a responsible manner don't matter. Well, those rights matter to me. They should matter to everyone. And they dang sure better matter to Chief Bosworth. Dave Skinner is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes and rides in Whitefish, Mont. Pk OKAY GENERAL PARK CITY WILL Sk fl A k GIVE THE AIR FORCE THE mVk. U ft IMPERIAL HOTEL ON MAIN ifjff Yfc Jj STREET FOR THE 30 ACRES Jg Cx & IN PROSPECTOR OH AND IT r" Sim V, WOULD BE NICE IF YOU U&&!&1M COULD THROW IN A GET OUr HhF rU Hl-n OP JAIL CARD. ALTHOUGH I AM V A0 V I THE MAYOR, I'M ALSO IN A d i6rZ) I Da V X BAND SO IT COULD COME IN AXY JOHN KILBOURNR4fW( RECORD GUEST EDITORIAL Off-road vehicles are chewing up public lands By TONIA WOLF It's hard to find anybody these days who'd even try to argue that off-road vehicles don't damage public lands throughout the West. The U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded in 1999 that "with an increase of off -highway vehicle traffic, i.e., motorcycles, motor-cycles, four-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have observed the spread of noxious weeds, user conflicts, soil erosion, damage to cultural sites and disruption of wildlife and wildlife habitat." In response, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth formed a national OHV Policy Team in January 2004. One hope of the team is that designating trails will eliminate' elimi-nate' a lot of the destructive cross-country travel, lessen damage and reduce conflicts con-flicts with hikers and other, quieter recreationists. Unfortunately, studies have already shown that once a trail is designated on public land, more riders are drawn to the area. This increases damage and also increases the creation of side trails. In the Paiute Trail in Utah, for example, an established OHV recreation area with 47,000 annual riders, even OHV users express frustration at being unable to tell designated trails from user-created trails. The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation wants to attract tens of thousands thou-sands of riders, so it has proposed nearly 500 miles of designated routes in central Idaho. These routes would link the communities com-munities of Challis, McKay and Arco and wind throughout the Pioneer Mountains, the Big Lost River Valley, the Lost River Range and the Little Lost River Valley. This is an area of approximately 3,500 square miles that is already crisscrossed by 3,000 miles of roads and user-created trails. Unmentioned in the Idaho agency's proposal is that within one mile of the trail there are at least 50 threatened, endangered or state-sensitive wildlife and plant species. In addition, many of the streams crossed by these trails are choked by sediment. The state agency plans to eventually expand the trail system sys-tem south to Richfield. Idaho, northeast almost to Montana, and north to Salmon, Idaho, resulting in thousands of square miles of public lands dominated by a single sin-gle use: off-road vehicles. Does off-highway use conflict with other visitors to public lands? The increased numbers, dust, noise and threat to safety are not what most non-motorized non-motorized users seek. Peace, solitude and the feeling you are alone with nature are all destroyed by the intrusive whine of even distant OHVs. Clark Collins, founder of the BlueRibbon Coalition, which represents motorized recreationists. has acknowledged acknowl-edged that "noise is the single most important issue that can effect our future on public land use. It's an extremely serious seri-ous issue, and I know it's a difficult one for me to deal with." While noise is transitory, what wheels do to trails and their surroundings persists. per-sists. Funds are available to rebuild OHV trails, but not for repairing the damage that rugged vehicles do to streams, hillsides or habitat for wildlife. Because not even OHV riders like to ride in damaged areas or on washed-out trails, riders explore new areas, climb new hills, ride through different streams and seek out different meadows - abandoning aban-doning their destroyed and unwanted playground. Off-road drivers are responsible for the damage they do while riding. The push, however, for public land-based multi-county OHV-designated areas comes from politicians and businesses, which have sniffed out yet another commodity com-modity to exploit on our publicly owned lands. If there is a solution, perhaps it is the same one we've arrived at for heavily rafted rivers or over-hunted lands: restricted use. Institute a permit system that limits the number of users, and when and where they go. Strictly enforce it. Place the burden of proof on the OHV users to post a bond, just like any other consumptive use that ultimately requires extensive restoration. Meanwhile, those of us who value our public lands because we like to stretch our legs, listen to birds, hear the wind in the trees, fish in clean streams or photograph photo-graph unmarred landscapes, must make our values known to land managers, politicians and certainly to motorized users. To quote writer Edward Abbey, "Machines are domineering, exclusive, destructive and costly: it is they and their operators who would deny the enjoyment enjoy-ment of the backcountry to the rest of us. About 98 percent of the land surface of the contiguous USA already belongs to heavy metal and heavy equipment. Let us save the 2 percent - that saving remnant." rem-nant." Tonia Wolf is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service oHigh Country News (ltcn.org). She writes in Boise, Idaho, where she is a board member of the Golden Eagle Audubon Society. Park CitySummit County Government Directory Park City Council Members Marianne Cone, 649-961 3 Candy Erickson, 640-3498 Kay Calvert, 940-0850 Joe Kernan, 645-8423 Jim Hier, 649-5900 Mayor Dana Williams, 615-5010 Summit County Commissioners Shauna Kerr, 649-6718 Bob Richer, 647-8066 Ken Woolstenhulme, [phone] Summit County Planning Commission Chairmen East side: Arlin Ovard, [phone] Snyderville: Donna Vanburen, 649-5351 Park City School Board Kim Carson, 649-1743 Kathryn Adair, 645-0819 David Chaplin, 649-9613 Jim Santy, 649-9285 Supt.Dave Adamson, 615-0225 Carol Murphy, 649-3385 State Government Governor Olene Walker, [phone] Sen. Scott Daniels, [phone] Rep. David Ure, [phone] Sen. Beverly Evans, [phone] Rep. David Gladwell, [phone] The Park Record welcomes letters to the editor on any subject. We ask that the letters adhere to the following guldellnesThey must Include the address and telephone number ot author. No letter will be published under an assumed name. They must not contain Ifcelous material. Writers are limited to one letter every 28 davs. Letters must not be longer than 350 words (guest editorials, 550 words) and should if possible, be typed. We reserve the right to edit letters If they are too long or If they contain statements we consider unnecessarily offensive or obscene. In addition, thank you letters may be limited in length with regard to businesses and event sponsors. Send your letter to: Editorparkrecord.com The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER Editor Staff writers Contributing writers Editor's assistant Classified advertising Office manager Circulation manager Accounting manager Advertising director Advertising sales Editorial production Photographers Production director Production Distribution Cartoonist Andy Bemhard Nan Chalat-Noaker -Jay Hamburger Pat Parkinson Monika Guendner Jennifer R. Merback Casey Basden Brett Larsen Joe Lair Tom Clyde Teri Orr Jay Meehan Joan Jacobson Silvia Leavitt Linda Gorton Linda Jager , Courtney Herzinger Inkarna Black Alice Hummons Patti Christensen Michael Duffy Kate Keesee Valerie Deming Wendy Halliday Anne Anderson Cathy Vandeweghe Christy Wilson Molly Ballard Erin Donnelly Cheryn McNicol Wendy Mair Rena Jensen Teresa Chavez Kat James Scott Sine Grayson West Matt Gordon Kristi Ruppert Scott Schlenker Jason Plawecki Kyle Burress Shannon Rogers " Kaya Darko Carrie Winston Justin Deuel John Kilboum Contents of the the Park Record are copyright 2(104. Diversified Suburban Newspapers. All rights reserved No portion may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the managing editor or publisher. The Park Record (USPS 378-730) (ISSN 0745-9483) 0745-9483) is published twice weekly by Diversified Suburban Newspapers. 1670 Bonanza Dr., Park Citv. Utah. 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