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[RC] Restrictions in SE National Forests - Linda B. Merims

This just came through on the Blue Ride Trail Riders'
newsletter:
 

>Cherokee National Forest: those who live near or ride in the Cherokee, north or south, need to >sit up and take notice! The Management Plan calls for limiting horses to classified roads and >designated trails which will concentrate all the traffic in just a few areas. Many of the customary ->use areas will be off-limits, and trails crossing streams and passing through wildlife openings will >be closed. Equestrian access to wilderness areas could be drastically curtailed. Riders first of all >need to do an inventory of the trails they ride: which are designated and which are not?

>Your access to the National Forest is in jeopardy! The folks in the Chattahoochee and Oconee >Forests in Georgia expect to lose camping areas and trailheads as well as trails by the end of 2003! >This could happen in TN as well. What we need is a planned system that will disperse the use and >additional camping areas and trailheads to keep them dispersed, but the USFS lacks the funds to do >all these things and plans to pull back to a limited plan that is easier to maintain. Equestrians need >to be involved in this planning process as well as in the construction and maintenance of the >remaining horse access points. Find out just how these restrictions would affect you and, area by >area, help plan for a sustainable trail system which the Forest Service can afford.
 
What is going on down there!  It almost seems as though
all the effort at education being put forth at the SE Equestrian
Trails Conference isn't improving horsemens' relations
with land managers:  it's going the other way!
 
Since it is looking ever more likely that I'm going to
shortly be a Tennessee resident, these things
will begin to affect me very directly.
 
Will somebody who knows what's going on in these
places please tell me?
 
Linda B. Merims
Massachusetts, USA