Forest Service isn't listening on travel rules

The off-roaders picketing the Shasta-Trinity National Forest headquarters last Friday complain that its "travel management plan" is nothing more than a bureaucratic exercise designed to close off public lands - no matter the opinion of the public. Does the U.S. Forest Service really have to work so hard to prove them right? It would be nice to be able to defend the agency, which started restricting all-terrain vehicle use in part due to legal pressure from environmentalists worried about abuse of sensitive lands, and which has the challenging task of managing the forests with the interests of all 300 million of their owners in mind. Unfortunately, recent road-closure decisions are so at odds with plain sense and have so little to do with the stated aims of the travel management plans that it's hard not to conclude that the ultimate goal is simply to make recreation such a pain in the neck for off-roaders - whether they're harming the landscape or not - that they give up and go away...read more