Re: [RC] re: RC] Bryce Canyon 5 day - Karen - Joe Long
Truman Prevatt wrote:
I grew up in the strip mining belt of Western KY back before there was
any regulation. Western KY is in a coal rich area know as the Illinois
Basin. Dig a pit, take the coal, walk away. There are many areas of
Western KY that still to this day look like a moon scape dotted with
old stripper pits. The only thing that will grow there is scrub oaks,
rattle snakes and copperheads. Then came the regulation that required
reclamation. That meant they filled as best they could the pits and
then walked away. However, the top soil was lost in the mining process
and the land is forever worthless for much of anything except maybe
scrub oaks, rattle snakes and copperheads.
What we have going on here is an example of the "fallacy of the
excluded middle." The idea that if we don't lock up land in wilderness
with such tight restrictions on use that only a tiny minority of people
will ever set foot on it, the land is going to be destroyed the way
strip-mining did.
The Wilderness Act was well intentioned and has much good about it.
The problem is that, like strip mining, it went to extremes. We,
through the AERC and other means, need to work toward not eliminating
Wilderness designation but improving it. Moving away from the extreme
and toward moderation, that allows non-destructive uses such as
endurance rides.
If Truman and others want to have organized trail rides without
competition under existing Wilderness regulations, more power to them.
I'd probably come ride one of those. But they don't need the AERC to
do that, and IMO the AERC should not go down that road.
