The Forest Service says they will start three separate projects designed to return old roads that are not part of a designated system back into natural forest land. The meetings will take place Tuesday, February 12th in Bishop and Wednesday, February 20th in Mammoth Lakes.
According to a Forest Service press release, the proposed projects will unfold in the Mono Craters, Upper Owens River Watershed, Bishop Creek Watershed and 2009 wilderness additions. The Forest Service says they will promote revegetation and recovery of roads or allow them to do so naturally. In other words, they won’t be routes any more but will go back to a natural state.
The Forest press release says that surveys of the areas revealed that some changes need to be made to “provide key access to important recreation opportunities and to protect various resources.” The details of these changes are in the project proposals. Check out the Forest Service website for more, or attend upcoming meetings.
In Bishop at the Inyo National Forest Supervisors Office, a meeting will be held Tuesday, February 12th at 6pm. Next Wednesday, February 20th, the Forest Service will hold a meeting in the Mammoth Lakes Community Center at 6pm.
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I am a member of a large group who also considers this land to be “Ours”.
Just use Google Maps, Satellite Views to see the enormous number of illegal trails in the back country.
I look on various OHV Forums, and see many threads advocating llegal use, fence cutting, and an Outlaw mentality couched in the phrases of Freedom and Liberty.
So, If OHV users want to feel welcome on our land, they need to organize, and police the irresponsible members of their community.
LOL .. that’s pretty funny .. Enough … yeah I have seen that too, there a M/C trail leading from the Freeman Canyon road over to the Shannon Canyon road. It has been there for at least 20 years that I know of, one year .. several years ago someone gathered a bunch of broken insulators and other crap from down on the power line area and scattered it with brush and rocks across the north end of the trail.
What struck me the most was how they hid the pieces of broken insulators and rocks behind pieces of dead brush, trying to booby trap riders, and to discourage them from taking the trail.
But it all looked like crap! Not to mention they littered the area with the broken insulator pieces. It never stopped anyone, just made the area look crappy.
I was out behind the The Glass a while back. I know the roads pretty well. So I came to this spot that used to be a road. It was a very short road to a primative camp spot. The road was less than 100yds from start to end. Somebody (the USFS) went to great measures to hide/disguise/erase the old road by inserting old dead sage plugs. Broken pieces of sage barely re-planted in the sand. For 30 ft the old road had these sage plugs inserted. (But behind plugs the old road is still very visible.) You could pull them out with ease. So that was funny enough that they decided to use this method to close and hide this old short road to nowhere. Knowing how the UFSF works this project took a day or two. The capper is that they went this far to make the road disappear ,right next to their work they put a “road closed” sign. Nobody was supposed to know that there was a road there. That is why they put the plugs in….to ride the very exsistance of the road. Then they put the sign in to let you know that the road they spent all that time to hide was closed! What road? Oh’ that road! Good job guys! Keep up the good work!
What a nice way to say, get off our land and stay off it.
This is how the USFS operates. They say that they want to open roads when in fact they want to close them.
Watch what the outcome will be at the end. They will open a few roads for PR purposes, then secretly close hundreds on old roads.
My Bad. They are making roads they have already closed even more difficult to travel on.
I didn’t get it either until reading and re-reading the press release. I hope I have made it more clear for readers – the USFS is re-vegetating, etc.
what used to be roads so they no longer will be. However, the press release says something about access to recreation areas.
Benett Kessler