Must be nice

[KWJams]

SUWA Bids for Land Near Zion Park
Sunday, May 13, 2001



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Utah environmental group has offered to buy a parcel of state land on the edge of Zion National Park in an effort to stop the town of Kanarraville from opening it up to off-road vehicles.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance bid $113,750 on Thursday for the 91 acres along Spring Creek, more than the town's offer.
"This is a very special place," said Liz Thomas, an attorney with SUWA's Moab office, adding she would like to see it protected as part of the greater Zion National Park ecosystem. "There are mountain lions, bald eagles and wild turkeys."
But opening the fragile canyon to ATVs will inevitably diminish its wilderness qualities, she said.
Kanarraville Mayor Randy Williams said local residents just wanted to preserve their historical access to a canyon where generations have hunted, hiked and picnicked. The town's water source also is in the canyon.
"We want to keep it the way it has been," Williams said. "SUWA comes in and treats us like a bunch of heathens. It's our back yard and we love it."


Must be nice to have so much money within an organization to just buy up areas!

Like in the old days when ranchers would buy just the land where a water hole was, making ownership to thousands of acres around it worthless without the water. :(

 

[XRpredator]

Can you just imagine the outrage if our side had the financial backing and bought land to preserve it for off-road vehicle use?

The double standard really torques my nads.

 

[Coop]

I agree XR. I bet if OHV users tried to do something like that, there would be so many law suits filed it wouldn't even be funny.

If you guys watched the Vanishing Freedoms on Fox news it talked about the double standards and the raw deal americans really are getting. One really irritating example was how Evo's felt a sucker fish was more important than a ranchers lively-hood. They made it so they couldn't irrigate there crops with water from a lake. Their fields were just dry dirt, no crops growing. Since when is a fish's life more important than a humans? I have great respect for animals, but that isn't right. And don't get me started on the Wildlands Project. Ok I got way off topic here sorry :)

Coop

 

[lawman]

update: a federal judge has ruled that the gov't has to compensate the farmers & ranchers for the loss of value to their proerty as a result of the cutoff of the water to benefit the sucker fish.

 

[firecracker22]

Originally posted by XRpredator
Can you just imagine the outrage if our side had the financial backing and bought land to preserve it for off-road vehicle use?

The double standard really torques my nads.

That's what is happening here in Washington regarding a couple of private club tracks. The club owns the land, specifically, one of the club member's father owns the land. There is a 35-member limit and you must be a member or a guest of a member to ride there. They have owned it and been riding there for 10 years or so. Well old grumpy guy down the road decides he doesn't like the vehicles running up and down the road so he calls the county and tells them the club is having races and parties and 60 or more people riding all over the place. So the county pokes their noses in. The old guy exaggerated; the track isn't exacly at the end of the dirt road, so a large percentage of the traffic has nothing to do with the track. His house is well off the road so the dust and noise can't be a huge issue. You can't even hear or see the track from the road as it's downhill a ways. They have never had races; the most organized events are club trail cleanup parties. There aren't 60 members. So the guy just wanted to raise a fuss.

The thing is, the club is 100 percent legal. They haven't moved enough dirt, held competitions, or anything else that would require special zoning or permits. But they have to tread on thin ice, limit their hours, guests and number of vehicles, and schmooze with everybody just to keep doing something they had every right to do in the first place.

That's bull-hooey. :think

 

[KWJams]

The BMC ( Billings M/C) has bought up land for years surrounding their club grounds to insure that there will be a place to ride in the future.

There is one land owner that lives along the road everyone drives on going into the club grounds, he hangs a dirt biker mannequin by the neck from a cherry picker crane. :(

Pretty sick. :(

 

[Snowblind]

This guy reminds me of a guy that called a landowner to ask him to make me stop riding there he refused so he would do every thing he could to get me hurt.

This land was close to my house I would leave for a break and come back and there would be a big hole on the other side of a hill trash on the trial, etc never seen him do it though but I'm pretty sure it was him.

Keep in mind i was 13 or so at the time, pretty lame to try and hurt a kid

He made it very clear that he didnt want me there.

Now that I'm older and it seems everyone out to take others rights away, I want to lead the fight to remove these types of people rights to breed :p