Frank Church Wilderness to allow chain saws......

[SAJ-99]

once you start it's hard to put the motor back in the bottle.

Exactly. If the trails haven't been cleared for 10 years, I am probably more open to chainsaws to do it. But it will still have to be cleared every year and that should revert back to manual saws. All this requires money and there isn't any of that, except for the ballroom. So it will be the outfitters that do it and they had a part in letting it get to this condition. (I have been on an outfitted wilderness hunt and the outfitter had to clear those trails every year with a cross cut, and they did.)

To the point of the article in the OP, Idaho outfitters have long wanted to use chain saws in the wilderness. Now they get to. My view is be careful what you wish for. Next up will be an automated walkway.

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

In 1960 full time FS employees numbered around 13,000, from what I could find. Then in 1964 Congress enacts the Wilderness Act. A reasonable person would assume this would require an increase in FS headcount given that maintenance within Wilderness areas would require more people to accomplish the same work. Appears now the FS headcount is around 30,000. All while FS total land acreage has remained relatively stable. Once again from what I could find. I would assume at least some of the 17,000 person increase would be folks to handle maintenance. Wondering if anyone with better knowledge knows where the headcount increases have been allocated.

 

[BuzzH]

Wondering if anyone with better knowledge knows where the headcount increases have been allocated.

Fire.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Exactly. If the trails haven't been cleared for 10 years, I am probably more open to chainsaws to do it. But it will still have to be cleared every year and that should revert back to manual saws. All this requires money and there isn't any of that, except for the ballroom. So it will be the outfitters that do it and they had a part in letting it get to this condition. (I have been on an outfitted wilderness hunt and the outfitter had to clear those trails every year with a cross cut, and they did.)

To the point of the article in the OP, Idaho outfitters have long wanted to use chain saws in the wilderness. Now they get to. My view is be careful what you wish for. Next up will be an automated walkway.

There will always be those who seek to push the boundaries of what is acceptable and prudent. That's entirely why I'm grateful guys like Buzz are around to remind us what happens when accommodation turns into entitlement.

There should always be strong resistance to allowing motors in wilderness. If it's an emergency, prove it.

 

[sclancy27]

Fire.

I would also add both land management agencies have added a lot of positions above the field level. My experience with these GS 13 and above positions is they enjoy the $$$ but push the responsibility back down to field level employees. I haven't seen a lot of productive value from most of them.

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

Fire.

All 17,000? Assume fire crews also have maintenance responsibilities at times or are Fire personnel always working on fires?

 

[elkduds]

If the budgets had not been slashed for my entire 39 year career, and we hadn't been asked to do more with less the whole time, I would be more sympathetic to your point of view.

But, as you so clearly pointed out, there's been a lack of budget and associated crews to deal with maintenance for decades. Now, because the final wheel fell off the bus, we get to change the rules to accommodate congress's lack of giving a shit about the FS budget and management of our/MY public lands.

Tough, start appropriating a budget, start hiring, and start taking care of public lands without taking a giant dump on the Wilderness Act.

Correct, this is the camel's nose under the tent to erode the wilderness act's non-mechanized rule. Staffing and budget cuts pave the way.

 

[sclancy27]

All 17,000? Assume fire crews also have maintenance responsibilities at times or are Fire personnel always working on fires?

Alot of fire staff is seasonal or career seasonal. I saw a lot of PT done, lawn mowing and Pulaski sharpening.

I have no idea what the permanent staff is supposed to do on a day to day basis outside of fire season. What I've observed is alot of walking around with a coffee cup in hand. Depending on the office they try to get out and prescribe burn as much as they can. Years like this that's not a lot because of the hot, dry, windy conditions.

 

[Bighorner]

I don't think there is an emergency in our wilderness. The emergency is the policy and the people outside the wilderness eroding the intent of keeping our last few wild places wild.

 

[elkduds]

Here in Southern Oregon, we have a wilderness area called the Kalimopsis Wilderness. The entire wilderness area burned in, I think, 2003 and since it is near the coast it gets lots of rain which makes the brush grows back real fast. Which, along with falling snags, makes trail maintenance a real nightmare. There was never a real high volume of hikers anyway, so the forest Service just gave up on the idea of maintaining the trails. A group of hikers got tired of bitching about the crappy overgrown trails and decided to do something about it. They formed a non-profit to raise money to clear the trails. They put together a crew each year and all the logistics are handled by the non-profit. All the forest service has to do is decide which trails they want maintained each year and make sure all the rules and regulations are adhered to. I don't know how sustainable this system is, but it has been going strong for better than 15 years now.

While I applaud the effort, the principle of this is for the Fed to abdicate responsibility for aspects of government this administration wants to end. Budgets reflect not only financial oscillations, they display values and are political tools to promote those values. The clear intent here is to devalue public lands to the extent that they aren't worth keeping, GOP policy for 20 years before it's latest iteration in Project 2025, which surreptitiously replaced previous statements of GOP national policy platforms. Those went away because they were much too honest in communicating the motives of the Party, in this case to eliminate federal public lands.

 

[Gellar]

So it will be the outfitters that do it and they had a part in letting it get to this condition. (I have been on an outfitted wilderness hunt and the outfitter had to clear those trails every year with a cross cut, and they did.)

How much does a license to operate in a Wilderness area cost an outfitter? Maybe if they can show they have cleared X amount of trail this year the fee can be waived? Cleared trails affects them more than it does most other people, they should have more skin in the game than most people.