Blue Ribbon Coalition

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Linda B. Merims lbmerims@curl.com

I had never heard of the Blue Ribbon Coalition until I attended the Horse Trails in Forest Ecosystems
conference at Clemson University in 1998.  A main purpose of that conference was for horse people
to hear from activists in other user groups and their take--both pro and con--on horses sharing
public trails.  BRC's Executive Director Clark Collins spoke at the conference and I had several
additional conversations with him during the conference.

If you want to learn more about the BRC, you can visit their web page:  http://www.blueribbon.org
(also maps to http://sharetrails.org).  All-in-all, it is a very good web site.

Since the conference I have been receiving their Blue Ribbon Coalition monthly newsletter.  It is
a good source of information on national issues related to trail use on public lands (for example,
the big controversy over the Forest Service's "roadless" initiative).  Current and back issues
are available on the web site.

Personally, I would never join BRC nor publically ally myself with their organization.

There is a spectrum of positions on land use.  BRC is too far to the radical right for my
taste.   For example, we have all watched what happened to the Outlaw Trail ride when
Clinton made Grand Staircase/Escalante a "national historic and scientific" preserve.
That is a case of land preservation fervor being taken too far.  However, the Blue Ribbon
Coalition's solution to Grand Staircase/Escalante was to open it to all mining interests
and to use the revenue generated by the mining concessions (estimated at around 6 million
annually) to develop the remainder of the land for active recreational use--build more
ORV trails and hotels and restaurants, rather (it sounded) on a Disneyworld model.
Sorry, but that's going too far in the other direction.

I believe there is a middle course to steer here.  The choice isn't Sierra Club or Blue Ribbon
Coalition;  tree huggers who aren't sure they even want to allow *people* in the wilderness,
never mind horses or mountain bikes or ORVs, nor radical land rightists allying themselves with
the timber and mining industries because they can piggy-back on their blank check in National Forests
under sympathetic administrations.

Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
lbmerims@curl.com
Massachusetts, USA