**Resource Advisory Council**

**Off-Highway Vehicle Broadcast**

A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center

December 14, 2000

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast. It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

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Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, \"The
National Off‑highway Vehicle Strategy, an Overview for BLM Resource
Advisory Councils.\" And Now, the Host of Your Program, Rodger Schmitt.

R. Schmitt: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to Our Overview of BLM\'s
National Off‑highway Vehicle Strategy. As Many of You Know, the Bureau
Has Released for Public Review a Draft OHV Strategy Which Was Posted on
the BLM Website December 4th of this Year. The Federal Register Notice
of Availability Was Published December 8th. The Official Comment Period
for The Draft Strategy Will End January 3rd, 2001, and at That Time
Public Comments Should Be Received at the BLM Washington Office. This Is
Where You Come In. Today\'s Broadcast Is Aimed Primarily at You, Our
Resource Advisory Council Members, Who Are a Great Help to Us During The
Listening Meetings Last Summer and Our BLM Staff and Field Managers Who
Will Be Charged with Implementing Many Of the Actions Envisioned by the
Strategy. We Wanted to Inform You of the Status of the Draft Strategy
and Get More Feedback from You since The Time Is So Short Between
Drafts. Speaking of Field People, I\'m Joined Today on this Show by a
Great Group of BLMers from Around the Country. To Help Explain Many of
the Features of the New Strategy, Jim Keeler of BLM\'s Washington Office
Is with Us. Good Morning, Jim.

J. Keeler: Thank You Very Much, Rodger. I\'ve Been Involved in this
Strategy since When I Was Working in California. I Got to Do
Presentations at All Four of the RAC Meetings. I\'ve Been Enjoying Very
Much the Whole Opportunity to Work with This Issue Deeper.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim. To Give Us an on the Ground Look Of OHV
Management We Have with Us Robin Fehlau, Rec. Planner in Utah\'s
Monticello Field Office. Welcome, Robin.

R. Fehlau: Thank You, Roger. Appreciate the Opportunity to Be Here and
Be Part of This. Like Jim, Ilisened at Our Listening Meetings, and I\'ve
Really Enjoyed Getting to Work On the Strategy. Thanks.

R. Schmitt: Also with Us from BLM\'s Safford Field Office Is Warren
Templeton, District BLM Ranger. Good Morning, Warren.

W. Templeton: Good Morning. I Appreciate the Opportunity to Be Here. Not
Only Do I Have Interest in This as a District Law Enforcement Officer
but Also My Personal Life as an OHV Enthusist. I Have Great Interest in
How This Will Shake Out.

R. Schmitt: Last but Certainly Not Least, from the Washington Office, We
Have Henri Bisson, BLM Assistant Director For Renewable Resources and
Planning. Thanks, Henri for Taking Time Out of Your Business 83 Day and
Schedule to Joinness Phoenix.

H. Bisson: Thanks, Rodger. I Want to Begin by Especially Thanking All
the BLM RAC Members, Both Those That Are Watching the Broadcast Today
and Those That Were Unable to Make It to a BLM Office. Your Help in
Conducting Many of The Listening Meetings That Were Held Across the
Country Was Invaluable to Us. Your Role in Working with Our State
Directors, Field Managers, Local, State and Tribal Governments and
Constituent Groups as We Implement this OHV Strategy Will Be Essential
If We\'re Going to Make Appropriate Decisions on the Ground.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Henri. RAC Members Have Been a Vital Part of this
Strategy Development So Far, and Hopefully That Will Continue. With
Today\'s Broadcast We\'re Looking to RAC Members for Feedback on the
Draft Strategy. BLM State and Field Offices Were Provided Copies of the
Strategy On December 4th When it Was Posted to the Web. Hard Copies of
the Strategy Also Were Mailed to All RAC Members Earlier this Week. For
Those of You Who Have Not Seen it Yet, it Is Currently Available for
Download off the Internet from BLM\'s Main Homepage, www.blm.gov. It Has
Also Been Mailed to Everyone Who Participated in the Process or
Requested Copies. We\'re Pleased to Be Able to Use This Broadcast to Get
Information out to You. It\'s Important That as We Move Forward Everyone
Understands the Complex Issues We\'re Dealing With. RAC Involvement Is
Critical in Helping BLM Make Sound Decisions About OHV Management.
Decisions That Have the Best Long‑term Benefit to Our Western Landscapes
and the People Who Care about Them. We All Know this Is a Very Hot Topic
at the Moment, and BLM Really Believes That Finding Common Ground Is the
Best Way For All of Us to Move Forward. With That We Would like to
Invite Your Participation Touring this Telecast. We Want to Hear from
You If You Have a Question or a Comment for Us, Please Give Us a Call or
Send Us a Fax at the Numbers Listed on Your Screen. Faxes Can Be Sent at
Any Time. And We\'ve Reserved Time During The Second Half of Our Show to
Take Phone Calls. Now I\'d like to Have Henri Give Us Some History on
this New Strategy. Henri?

H. Bisson: Thanks, Rodger. The Process to Develop this Strategy Actually
Began a Year‑and‑a‑half to Two Years Ago When Tom Fry Came on as Our
Acting Director One of the First Things He Asked Our Leadership Team to
Do Was to Identify Issues That in Our Experience Needed Some Attention,
Things We Need to Do Focus on and One of The First Things We Did Was Do
Some Brainstorming and the Results of Much of the Brainstorming Actually
Was a Budget Implementation Strategy For Which We Were Quite Successful
this Year That Allowed Us to Gain Some Resources to Work on the Wild
Hearse and Burro Program, to Begin to Amend the Land Use Plans and to
Address Other Issues. One of the Issues That We Talked About Early on
Was the Impact That We Were Seeing of Encroaching Growth, and We Really
Began to Focus on the Fact That What We Were Seeing on The Ground Was a
Growing Use of Off‑highway Vehicles, Vehicles Of All Types and Impacts
of Those Vehicles Throughout the West and We Were Very Concerned That We
Weren\'t Doing All That We Could Do to Prepare for the Greater Changes
That Are Actually Coming to Us in the Future. The Foundation of the OHV
Program as We Currently Know it Goes Back to an Executive Order That Was
Signed by President Nixon Back in 1972 and Then Another Executive Order
Was Signed by President Cart Inner 1979. The Off‑highway Vehicle
Regulations That We Use to Manage this Program Were Actually Published
in 1979. If People Will Think Back a Little Bit, You\'ll Recall That The
Federal Land Policy and Management Act Was Signed in 1976, and the OHV
Regs Came a Few Years Later. At That Same Time, We Began Work To Produce
Resource Management Plans Which Were Prescribed by Flpma. Many of Our
Land Use Plans That Are Currently in Place Were Developed Between the
Late \'70s And the mid to Late \'80s Are the Most Recent Ones and So
What We Have Is a Situation Where Our Management of Off‑highway
Vehicles, Which Is Normally Prescribed Through Our Land Use Plans, Is 15
to 20, in Some Cases, Some of These Land Use Plans Are 25 Years Old.
We\'re Very Concerned with the Adequacy of Those Plans, Given The
Stronger Focus That We\'re Seeing Right Now by the Public, Concerns
about Environmental Impacts on Public Lands, Given The Impacts We\'re
Seeing from Urban Growth on the Ground. We\'re Seeing More and More
Uses, As I Mentioned Earlier, as a Result of It. We\'re Also Seeing That
Adjacent To Many Communities the Land That\'s Available for OHV Use Is
Shrinking. In the Past, You Know, Kids Could Come Home after School and
Jump on a Mountain Bike or Jump On an Atv or a Quad and They Could Go
Riding on Areas Adjacent to Where They Lived. A Lot of That Was Private
Land, Some of it Was State Land. But That Land Is Being Developed, and
These Uses Are Being Pushed out on the Public Lands. We\'ve Also Seen
Very Significant Advances in Vehicle Technology, Bigger Machines, More
Vehicles Out There with All the Suvs That The People Are Purchasing,
Seeing a Lot More People out There on Weekends and We\'re Seeing
Different Types of Inventions Almost Every Year, Different Sorts of
Vehicular Recreation Activity That We\'ve Never Seen Before. During this
Same Period, What We\'ve Faced a a Declining BLM Budget and a Declining
Workforce. Our Budgets at this Point and Over the past Ten Years Have
Not Been Sufficient for Us to Address the Issues That We\'re Facing on
the Ground and That We\'re Going to See More Of. We Have Fewer Outdoor
Rec. Planners, Fewer Park Rangers and Our Law Enforcement Rangers Who We
Depend on a Great Deal as People Who Meet the Public, Greet the Public
and Address Issues That Are on the Ground, We Just Don\'t Have Enough
People To Go Around at this Point. I Wanted to Take a Second and Reflect
a Little Bit on Some of The Differences That We Face out On the Ground.
I Guess I Got a Real Awakening In 1992. I Had Been the District Manage
Or BLM\'s Phoenix District in Arizona, and We Had Some OHV Activity, but
it Was Not Significant. Much of the Use That We Were Seeing Was Actually
on State Lands That Were Surrounding Phoenix, and Much of That Land Is
Now Being Developed or Has Been Fenced and Is off Limits And I Think Now
the Folks in Arizona Are Seeing a Lot More Use out on Public Lands, but
on Thanksgiving Weekend in 1992, I Actually Drove over from Phoenix To
El Centro to Try to Get a Glimpse of the Kinds of Use That We Were
Seeing on the California Desert, Which Is Where I Moved To as a District
Manager There, And I Will Never Forget Driving Between Gila Bend and
Yuma, Arizona, That I Saw Thousands And Thousands and Thousands of
Vehicles Coming Back from the Desert, All Pulling Off‑highway Vehicles
with Them, Sand Rails And Dune Bug Ease and All Sorts Of Things and They
Were All Coming to Arizona and What I Discovered When I Got to the
California Desert District Was That in Fact Our Off‑highway Vehicle Open
Areas in California Are the Playground for a Number Of States, Not Just
Southern California and We Had Folks Coming There from Nevada and Utah
and Arizona as Well as from The 18 Million‑person Population That
Existed in the L.a. Basin And San Diego at That Time. So We Were Getting
a Tremendous Amount of Use in Our Off‑highway Vehicle Open Areas. What I
Also Found There Was That When We Started Looking at ‑‑ I Started
Meeting with People, With Environmentalists and with The OHV Community
and Working With Our District Advisory Council We Decided We Had Some
Problem Areas on the Deserts That We Need to Do Address, and So We Went
Through a Process With Our District Advisory Council to Identify What We
Called Hot Spots, Places Where There Was Significant Inappropriate Use
Occurring. What We Found Was That the Bulk Of That Use Was Actually
Adjacent to Some of the Developing Communities on the Desert. So When
this Issue Began to Surface a Couple of Years Ago, We Started Hearing of
Concerns In Montana, Concerns in Nevada, Certainly Concerns in Utah as
Well about this Growing Use, We Started Talking about it and Decided
That it Was Time to Again Take a Look at Our Existing Regulations, Look
at Our Policies, Our Manuals and Open a Dialogue with the Public To Talk
about this Activity on Public Lands and to Seek Suggestions, Comments,
Ideas, Recommendations on What We Could Do to Improve Our Management and
To Ask ‑‑ to Identify an Opportunity for the Public to Help Us Get the
Resources That We Need to Get this Very Difficult Job Accomplished on
The Ground. I Think It\'s Been Successful. We Got a Tremendous Response
in The Way of People Attending Our Listening Meetings and in the Form of
Comments on the Strategy. So I Think That\'s Been Successful. Now What
We Look Forward to Is a Lot of Help from the RACs and Others to Actually
Begin to Implement the Strategy as We Move to Amending Our Land Use
Plans on the Ground. We this Year Were Quite Successful in Getting a
Sizable Increase in Our Land Use Planning Budget. We Got a \$19 Million
Increase For this Year. A Proposal to Congress in a Report We Submitted
to Congress Is to Increase Our Funding next Year to about \$50 Million
per Year over the next Ten Years Just on Land Use Planning. We\'re
Looking at More than 40 Planning Starts this Year, Many If Not All of
Those Are Going to Be Addressing OHV Issues. So I Think That We\'re
Getting Off to a Good Start. We Have a Lot of Work Ahead of Us and
We\'re Anxious to Get on With It.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Henri. It\'s Important, I Think, to Understand the
Background and Context in Which We Have Begun Development of the
Strategy. Next Jim Will Talk about Where We\'ve Been and Where We\'re
Heading. Jim, I Understand You Have the Latest Schedule to Share with
Us?

J. Keeler: Thank You, Rodger. The Outline That You Have in Front of You
Really Doesn\'t Have The Starting Date of Where I Consider the Strategy
to Have Started in its Current Form, and That Was about the Beginning of
Last Year. We Issued a Press Release Saying That We Were Getting Ready
to Do Some Kind of a Public Outreach Strategy to Get Some Additional
Ideas and Buy‑in from the Public In How to Manage Off‑highway Vehicle
Recreation. It Got Kicked off Publicly at The Beginning of June with the
First RAC Meeting in Ridgecrest. The First Public Participation Phase
Went from June 1st to August 30th. During That Time We Had a Number Of
Listening Meetings. We Opened it up to Get Electronic and Written
Comments, And Response Was Phenomenal. At the Close of That Period,
Beginning of September, First 15 Days or So, We Did a Very Exhaustive
Comment Analysis Phase Where We Went Through Every One of Those Comments
and Worked to Categorize Them and to Begin to Get the Outline for How We
Were Going to Make a Strategy. From September 15th Through December 4th,
Then, We Took All The Comments and Developed That Into a Written Draft.
The Draft Was Published on the Internet December 4th, and That Opened a
Second Comment Period, It\'s Just a 30 Day One, That Runs from December
4th Through January 3rd. Just for a Marker, We\'re Now on December 14th,
this Broadcast, So We\'re Almost a Third of the Way Through, or Just a
Third of The Way Through the Comment Period That We Have. After the
Close of That Comment Period from January 3rd to the 10th We\'ll Do
Another Comment Analysis, a Rewrite of the Strategy and Release it Back
on The Internet on January 19th. And Written Copy Will Follow Soon after
That.

R. Schmitt: Jim, I Want to Make a Note, this Is an Ambitious Schedule,
We Know, Particularly the Last Part of This to Get the Document out on
The 19th of January but I Wanted To Note That We Began Work on This
Document Actually Back in The Summer of \'99, So We\'ve Actually Been
Formulating the Idea of Doing the Strategy Itself for Quite Some Time.
So It\'s Been in the Works for at Least 18 Months or Longer.

J. Keeler: Yeah, it Is, Although I Think It\'s Also Important to Note
That When We Reopened the Comment and the Beginning Writing, We Were
Starting, like We Told the Public, with Very Much a Blank Slate. We
Didn\'t Know How to Organize The Document or Have Any Real Idea Where We
Were Going. So We Allowed the Public Comment To Start Our Process for
Us.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim. I Want to Shift Our Focus Now And Discuss the
Types of Public Comment BLM Received During the Three‑month Period Last
Summer. So, Warren, What Are Some of the Things That We Heard from the
Public in Their Comments?

W. Templeton: Well, Rodger, We Had a Loft Feedback During That Three
Months of Public Participation. With the Help of the RAC, We Sponsored
49 Listening Meetings, And All Totaled, We Ended up With Almost 5,000
Additional Comments. Comments Ranged from Very Specify Tyke Very Broad.
If You Would like to See a Summary of the Public Comments, They Can Be
Found Starting on Page 35 of Your Draft Gee. ‑‑ Draft Strategy. To Give
You an Idea of the Range Of Comments We Received I Would Like to Share
with You a Few Examples of Differing Points of View. As a First Example,
on One End We Had Eliminate Top‑down and One‑size‑fits‑all Management
Policies. In Other Words, They Were Concerned about Upper Level
Bureaucrat Making Arbitrary Decision and Just Cramming it Down
Everybody\'s Throat. On the Other End, We Had, There Should Be a
National Policy, Not Decided by Local Managers. So That Kind of Sets the
Stage Of the Broad Spectrum of Beliefs We Are Working on in Developing
This OHV Strategy. Some People Felt We Should Charge Use Fees to Create
OHV Areas and Trails. While Others Felt We Should Provide Free Access.

R. Schmitt: Warren, I Would Like to Make a Note That I Believe That
Comment Was Really Referring to Permits for OHVs Using Special Areas. It
Wasn\'t Aimed ‑‑ or Wasn\'t Suggesting That BLM Permit All OHV Use
Everywhere, Primarily For for Developed Special Use Areas.

W. Templeton: Right. In Safford We Have an Area Called the Hot Well Sand
Dunes And We Charge Fees There. We Have Relative Will He Good Fee
Compliance Simply Because Our Rec. Planner down There Has Done a
Fantastic Job of Utilizing the Funds You a Long With Grant Writing to
Put a Lot Of Stuff on the Ground, I.e., Picnic Tables and Verandas, and
The Public Sees That and They\'re Not as Noncompliant with When it Comes
to Paying the Fees. Another Comment We Had Was Do Not Ban Any Form of
Off‑highway Vehicle. Offset by the Other Side Which Stated OHVs Should
Be Prohibited On Public Lands. On the Issue of Sharing Trails, We Got
This. Some Believe We Should Open All Hiking Trails to OHVs and Horses.
While Others Thought We Should Ban Horseback Riding and Hiking From OHV
Trails. I Saw and That Thought, Yeah Who, That One Will Be Easy to
Enforce. And Finally it Was Recommended By Someone That We Should
Require Users to Check and Steam Clean OHVs Before Entering an Area.
Which Is a Little Different from This Other Viewpoint Which Stated That
the Desert Is a Wasteland, So Leave Us Alone. These Comments as Well as
Thousands of Others Were Comprehensively Reviewed by Comment Analysis
Teams. These Teams Primarily Were Made Up of All BLM Field Office Staff.
Once All the Comments Were Read, They Were Categorized by Issue And
Summarized for Drew by the Strategy Development Team.

R. Schmitt: Warren, Let Me Interject Here. There Is a Word
Comprehensively That Was Used There, and Let Me Ask Jim to Talk about
What That Means in Terms of the Review of The Comments.

J. Keeler: the Issues ‑‑ We Took All of Those Different Comments and
Broke Them Back Down into Issues and Looked at The Issues That People
Were Presenting and the Solutions That They Were Giving Us, and Then We
Also Ended up Having to Blend That Back with Our Own Personal Experience
and Our Own Knowledge to Produce a Document That Responded to the Issues
and To Some Extent Utilizes the Public Comment to the Best We Could. But
It\'s Sort of a Combination Of Both Things.

R. Schmitt: and the Comment Teams Actually Looked at Every Single
Comment, Read Every Comment and Used Them to Help Us Develop a Strategy?

J. Keeler: Yes.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Warren. Continue.

W. Templeton: One Last Thing I Would like to Mention Is When You Read
the Draft Proposal You Will See the Team Developed the Draft Strategy
with Extensive Use of These Comments.

R. Schmitt: Now to Get a Better Idea What this Document Is and Is Not,
Let\'s Turned to Robin from Monticello.

R. Fehlau: Thanks, Rodger. In Developing the Strategy it Became Clear
Very Early on That The Public Was Requesting Actions That Were Outside
the Scope of the Strategy. Because of This, We Felt it Is Important to
Clarify What the Document Is and Isn\'t and What It Can and Cannot Do.
The Strategy Is an Effort to Manage OHV Activities in Full Compliance
with Our Executive Orders, as Well as Our Policy And Manual Guidance
Which Direct The BLM\'s Management of Off‑highway Vehicles. The Strategy
Is Not a New Set of Regulations, Although it Does Call for an Update of
the Existing Off‑road Vehicle Regulations. The Strategy Is an Effort to
Develop and Promote Local Solutions at the Field Level Relating to OHV
Management. It Also Reflects Extensive Public Input and Offers the Field
Offices Flexibility, Meaning, it Can and Will Change Over Time,
Especially as Resource Issues Emerge and as We See User Conflicts Arise.
This Is Not like Warren Said a Top‑down or One‑size‑fits‑all National
OHV Designation. The Strategy Is an Effort to Enhance the Management and
Protection of Special Designated Areas. But this Is Not a Forum for
Discussing the Appropriateness Of Designating or Not Designating
National Monuments, National Conservation Areas or Wilderness. As These
Designations Are Strictly Within the Authority of The President and
Congress. And Cannot Be Changed by the BLM. The Strategy Cannot Revise
the Existing OHV Regulations, Although We Do Believe the Strategy Can
Clarify the Existing Regulations and Begin The Public Process for
Updating Them, and this Process Is a Formal Rule Making Process with
Full Public Participation. The Strategy Cannot Provide Additional Funds
or Staffing, Although We Do Believe it Will Highlight the Needs That BLM
Has For Additional Funding and Staffing.

R. Schmitt: Robin, Let Me Jump in Here Real Quickly. On a More Personal
Note for You, You\'re Soon to Be Moving to the Utah State Office as the
State Off‑highway Vehicle Coordinator Liaison There and We Did Provide
Additional Funding for That Position. So We\'re Not Asking the Field
Offices to Absorb the Burden of Moving You There and We Hope to Do That
as Much as We Can. We Did That from Our Existing Mlr Funding Base and
Didn\'t Have The New Money for It, but this Strategy Does Call for a New
Emphasis on the Part of BLM Is In Working with Our Constituents To Reach
out for More Resources And Funds.

R. Fehlau: That\'s Correct. The Strategy Can Highlight ‑‑ Excuse Me ‑‑
the Strategy Cannot Increase Any Fines or Penalties For OHV Violations
Which the BLM Did Only Do Through the Coordination with the U.s.
District Courts. Although it Can Promote Responsible OHV Use Through the
Implementation of the Strategy Recommendations. Finally, this Strategy
Cannot Be The Final Solution to All Our OHV Problems. We Know That.
Although We Do Believe it Can Provide an Opportunity for Long‑term
Involvement by All Interested Parties in OHV Management. Well, Rodger,
What Happens the Strategy Is and Is Not. Go Ahead.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Robin. Appreciate It. As We Can See, There\'s a Real
Disparity Between the Public\'s Perception of What We Can and Cannot Do
as Opposed to What We Have the Authority to Accomplish. Now Let\'s Take
a Look at the Key Features of the Strategy. If You Would like to Refer
to The Draft Document, You\'ll See There Are 18 Primary Issues Which Can
Be Found Starting on Page 8. But for the Sake of Time We\'ll Look at
Them as Four Main Groups, Organizational Improvements, Law Enforcement
or Regulatory Actions, Public Outreach and Education and Environmental
Concerns and Wilderness Management. I Want to Ask Jim at this Time To
Highlight Some of the Items In Our First Group, Organizational
Improvements. Jim?

J. Keeler: Public Comments Pointed out the Need to Improve Both Our
Internal and Our External Communications. They Also Expressed a Public
Desire for Local Involvement in The Decision Making Process as Possible.
Building on the Comments, We\'re Proposing to Improve Our Communications
with at Least Some of the Following Actions ‑‑

R. Schmitt: Jim, Let Me Jump In Here Real Quick. You Mentioned Local
Involvement, Our Desire for Local Involvement And I Wanted to Highlight
the Fact That Local Involvement Is One of the Strengths of BLM. We Have
Pushed down Local Management Decision Making, Authority to Make
Decisions to Our Managers and Local Decision Making as Well and Getting
the Public Involved and I Think BLM Has a Very Good Track Record and
History in this Arena.

J. Keeler: I Mentioned Earlier I Did Go to the Four RAC Meet in
California, the Listening Meetings this Summer And I Was Just Really
Amazed at The Level of Involvement, but Also the Willingness, I Guess,
To Work Across Everybody\'s Perspectives and Try to Accomplish Things
Together. I Think That a Vast Majority of The Comments We Got Supported
This Kind of Participation. So I\'m Really Excited about Trying to Make
‑‑ to Keep this Effort as Much as We Can.

H. Bisson: I Wanted to Jump In for a Second as Well. We\'ve Put a Lot of
Emphasis on Local Involvement and the Development, Refinement of the
Land Use Plans When We Go Back, But it Doesn\'t Imply That We Want to
Ignore or Should Ignore Or Will Ignore National Concerns. When You Take
All of These Local Issues, These Places Where We\'re Seeing Growth and
You Look at The Impacts as a Whole Across The West, It\'s a Very
Significant Issue, and We Absolutely Intend to Engage Our National
Constituents in the Discussions about This. So Everybody\'s Going to
Play a Role as We Proceed with Implementing the Strategy.

J. Keeler: and I Think as We Go Through These We\'ll Be Seeing That
There\'s a National and Maybe We\'ve ‑‑ Thanks for Bringing That Back to
Us.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim. Go Ahead and Talk about the Improving Our
Communication Actions.

J. Keeler: Rodger Mentioned With Robin We\'re Going to Be Trying ‑‑ a
Goal Is to Establish OHV Coordinators at Least at the State Office Level
or Regionally In Some States That Have Very Light Use, but We\'re Trying
to Have a Common Work Group Between All the States and the Washington
Office. So We\'re Trying to Keep Both Perspectives Going There. We Have
a Goal to Establish a Liaison at the Washington Level With Constituent
Groups and with Other ‑‑ or to Broaden the Liaison We Already Have with
Our Constituent Groups and with the Other Agencies That We Work in
Common With. At the Same Time, We\'re Recommending That the State Leads
Take That Responsibility At the State Level and Try to Build
Constituency Groups at the State and Local Level. So We\'re Trying a
Combination Both Ways. The OHV Coordinator Positions Are Intended to
Focus Implementation Workload to Kind Of a More Centralized Location In
the Field, Which Will Allow Field Office Staff to Focus More On the
Ground Problems and Keep Some of the Coordination Level At the State.
Using All These Positions Will Charter an OHV Strategy Action Team,
Including All the State Coordinators That Work with the Washington
Office to Implement The Strategy. Another Goal That We Mentioned Again
Was to Strengthen Our Coordination with Both Other Agencies and the
Interest Groups At a National and a Local Level Both. The Team Will Also
Help Us with One of the Big Goals, I Think, That We Need to Accomplish,
Which Is to Develop Better Internal Training or Training For BLM
Managers, Staff and Volunteers. Finally, We\'re Also Planning on
Creating an OHV Management Field Guide Which Will Be the Tool Box That
We Suggested at the Beginning of the Strategy. The Public Gave Us a
Whole Lot Of Really Good Comments, and We\'re Starting to Get Them ‑‑ We
Got Them Also from Internal Staff and from Other Agencies. There\'s a
Whole Lot of Good Ideas out There That We\'re Trying to Find a Good
Mechanism To Have a Notebook or a Website ‑‑ We Haven\'t Figured out
Just The Way to Do it Yet ‑‑ to Begin To Bring All the Solutions That
Various People Have Together.

R. Fehlau: Jim Could, I Jump In for a Second? When We First Asked for
Public Comment, One of the Things We Asked for Was Solutions to the OHV
Problems, and We Found That We Had So Many, We Just Couldn\'t
Incorporate Them All in this Document, and That\'s Where the Field Guide
Comes In, Is Using All Those Good Ideas That You Sent Us.

J. Keeler: Well, Now That We\'ve Outlined What BLM Needs to Do
Internally, I\'m Going to Turn This Back over to Robin, Who Will Talk
about Public Outreach And Education. Robin?

R. Fehlau: Many of the Comments Focused on the Need for Better
Education, Specifically, About the Use of OHVs on Public Lands, with an
Emphasis on the Need for a Stronger, Much Stronger, Responsible Use
Ethic. BLM, We All Agree That Education Will Improve the Public
Adherence to OHV Use Ethics, and To Improve Our Education Program The
BLM Proposes to Recruit and Train a Network of Tread Lightly
Instructors. Now, this Network Would Be Similar to the Leave No Trace
Network That Currently Exists. These Instructors Go to Special Events,
Church and Scout Organizations, They Go out to Schools, and Right Now
There Are Two Couples Traveling Around the Country Going All over the
Place Teaching the Leave No Trace Message. We Envision a Similar Type of
Program with an OHV Responsible Use Ethic Where the Instructors Are
Actually on the Machines That the People Are Using, the Dirt Bikes, the
Atvs, the Jeeps And They\'re out on the Ground Helping to Pass this
Message Along. Additionally, We Want to Incorporate the Principles of
Tread Lightly and Leave No Trace As Formal Guidance for All Activities
in the Agency. This Means That the Professionals Within the BLM, The
Range Staff, the Wildlife Biologists, the Folks Involved In the Fire
Program Would All Incorporate Leave No Trace and Tread Lightly into
Their Day to Day Activities. We Really Believe That We Need To Promote a
Stronger Responsible Use Ethic among Organized and Individual OHV Users.
We Had Some Suggestions of How To Do This, Including Adding it Into the
Hunter Education Courses, Putting it into the Atv And OHV Safety
Courses, as Well As Working with Our Cooperating Associations, Our
National and Local Organizations and Specifically with Manufacturers So
That Buyers and Users of OHVs Are Inundated with this Message And That
All Materials Pass on This Idea. We Also Want to Enlist Volunteers to
You a List in OHV Management. Now, I Understand Volunteers Are Not the
Entire Solution. It Takes Time and Effort on the Part of Any Field Staff
to Work With Volunteers. I Know. I\'ve Done it a Lot. But Volunteers Are
a Wonderful Resource at the Same Time and They Can Help Us with
Inventory, Monitoring, Signing, Keeping Our Bulletin Boards up to Date,
but Most Importantly, They Can Help Increase Our Presence on the Ground
and We All Know That That Visitor One on One Contact Is The Most
Effective Education Program. We Also Want to Develop Easily Understood
Informational, Interpretive and Regulatory Signs and Maps, Because Many
of Our Maps Are Either out of Date Or Not Very Effective, and We Believe
That We Can Do a Better Job with That. Finally, Part of the Public
Outreach Is the Public Planning Process. New Planning Guidance Has Been
Released, and the BLM Is Already In the Process of Initiating Multiple
New Plans, or Plan Amendments, as Henri Mentioned. This Planning
Guidance Requires That OHV Travel Management Is Addressed Specifically
During These Planning Efforts. To the Concerns ‑‑ in Addition To the
Concerns about the Outdated Plans, the Public Wanted the Strategy to
Address Environmental Considerations, And Specifically Wilderness.

R. Schmitt: Robin, Let Me Jump in Here and Turn to Henry And Ask Henri
to Help Us Understand Better the Planning Issue.

H. Bisson: Well, as You Know, In the Early Plans, We Actually Went
Through a Process Where Route Designation Was Prescribed In the Land Use
Plans and it Was Supposed to Be Followed up with Activity Planning to
Actually Designate the Routes. In the Land Use Plan We Frequently Said
That, You Know, In this Specific Geographic Area We\'re Going to
Designate this Area as Limited and Then Go Back And Identify Which
Routes Will Be Seasonally Closed or Left Open, but Frequently in Many
Locations the BLM Did Not Follow Through with Those Designations. I
Worked on the California Desert as a District Manager in Recently, and
in the California Desert Plan of 1983, We Identified a Need to Go in and
Do Route Designation Throughout The Desert and It\'s Just Now Being
Completed Through the Ecosystem Plans That Are Being Developed, They\'re
Going Through Route Designation for the Whole Desert. What We Wanted to
Do Was Prescribe a Process in Our Land Use Plans Where the Field Would
Actually Make an Effort to Develop a Transportation Plan to The Extent
They Could with the Best Information Available and We Feel It\'s an
Important Activity That Has to Occur at That Level Involving the Public.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Robin. Appreciate It. I\'m Going to Turn to Jim Now
and He\'ll Discuss How the Strategy Addresses These Important Issues
That Robin Touched on and Henri Touched On.

J. Keeler: So the Issues We\'re Talking about Now Is Environmental
Concerns and Wilderness and Wilderness Study Issues. The Public
Expressed Concerns About OHV Impacts. BLM\'s Assessment of These Impacts
in and Compliance with Statutes, Including the National Environmental
Policy Act or Nepa, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and
the Clean Air Act Are All Requirements That We Have to Meet Within the
OHV Program. A Couple of Those I Would like To Point out Include
Increased Emphasis on Conducting an Appropriate Level of Nepa Analysis.
Also, We\'ll Reevaluate BLM Administered Lands for Cumulative Impact
under Threatened and Endangered Specie Habitat. The Strategy Lists Way
Too Many Actions to Address These Concerns, So They Can Found Starting
on Page 10 of the Draft Strategy. In Addition to These Legal Mandates,
Other Recommendations In the Strategy Include, among Other Things,
Actions to Increase OHV Related Scientific And Social Research Projects,
to Actively Work to Reduce OHV Levels on Public Lands, Noise Levels, to
Improve Trail Design, Maintenance and Restoration Techniques to Enhance
Resource Conditions and Visitor Experiences, to Develop Sufficient
Baseline Data for the Purpose of Designating Roads and Trails and
Creating Route Maps. We\'re Striving to More Consistently Monitor Areas
for Resource Impacts.

R. Schmitt: Jim, Let Me Ask You to Touch Here Briefly on the National
Trails Training Partnership Program That We\'ve Been Embarked upon with
Other Agencies. It Has an Interagency Focus. Maybe Talk about Some of
the Trail Design, Training and Features of That Very Briefly.

J. Keeler: We\'ve Been Working For Several Years with Our Agency
Partners to Design a Whole Curriculum for Training Professionals or
Technicians Actually in the Basic on up Through Planning of Trail Design
And Maintenance Techniques. So We\'re Trying Again ‑‑ or Trying to Focus
Far More Attention Just on the Physical On the Ground Activities
Necessary for Trail Construction And Maintenance Work, and the Exciting
Thing There Is the Interaction, the Interagency Cooperation That We\'re
Developing That At.

R. Schmitt: Thanks.

J. Keeler: Going On, Besides Environmental Concerns, We Focused Several
of the Strategy Items on Another Related Group Of Topics, Which Was
BLM\'s Management of Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas. Management
Actions Addressing These Issues Can Be Found Starting on Page 19 of the
Draft Strategy. One of Particular Note Is That We Are Planning to Ensure
That OHV Designations Within Wilderness Study Areas Are Consistent with
Interim Management Policy or Imp. Another Action That We\'re
Recommending Is Increasing the Effectiveness and Frequency of Monitoring
and Surveillance of Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas, Finding
Better Ways of on The Ground Focusing Our Attention to Make Sure There
Is New Impairment Going on in Those Agencies.

H. Bisson: Jim, I Think the Two Items You Just Mentioned Are Absolutely
Essential. What We\'re Doing Is Strongly Encouraging, Mandating, That
Our Field Managers Begin to Monitor More Efficiently OHV Activities
Occurring on Existing Routes and Trails in Wilderness Study Areas And If
We Have Problems, We Expect Them to Take Appropriate Actions, Including
If Necessary Closing Roads. We Got Some Comments of Some People
Suggested That, You Know, What They Wanted Us to Do Was to Close All
Roads and Trails in Wilderness Study Areas, and That\'s Something That
We Had Never Really Anticipated. What We\'re Trying to Do Is Manage the
Lands Consistent with Their Interim Management Policy And If We Have
Problems, Make Sure the Field Managers Know, State Directors Know That
They Have Tools That They Can Use. They Can Do Emergency Closures. Now,
If They Have Wilderness Study Areas on Lands That Are Improperly
Designated, They Can Go Back Through the Planning Process and
Redesignate it So That They Are Consistent with Imp. And If They Need to
Go Through a Process to Close Some of the Roads, Even Though They May
Have Existed, When These Areas Were Inventoried and Made into Wsas, For
Management Reasons They Can Go in and Close Roads as They Determine
Necessary Using the Planning Process. So We Think That the Tools Are
There to Correct the Problems That We May Have Had in Our Wsas.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Henri and Thanks, Jim. I Think You Summed up the
Environmental Considerations Well. I Think That We\'ve Heard a Lot About
a Lot of These Things in The Comments That We Received From the Public
as Well. Before We Finish Looking at the Key Features of the Strategy,
We\'d like to Mention to Our Viewers That We\'ll Be Taking Your Calls
and Facts in a Few Minutes. So Now Is a Good Time to Get That Fax in or
Start Placing That Important Phone Call. And as We\'ve Mentioned Before,
We\'ll Be Taking Feedback from RAC Members First and Then as Time
Permits We\'ll Take Calls or Faxes from BLM Staff. I\'d Also like to
Remind Public Participants That Any Feedback In the Form of Phone Calls
or Faxes During this Telecast Is For Discussion Purposes Only and Will
Not Be Included in the Comment Record. So If You Would like Your
Comments to Be Considered in the Development of the Final Strategy, They
Need to Be Submitted in Writing to the Washington Office. For E‑mail
Comments Please Send Them to ‑‑ We Look Forward to Hearing from You. Now
We\'ll Have Warren Take Us Through the Rest of the Key Features of the
Strategy.

W. Templeton: Thank You. The Public Strongly Supported an Increased Law
Enforcement Presence as Well as Improvements To the Law Enforcement
Program. Some of the Strategy Recommendations Include Increased Presence
in and Visibility of BLM Staff on the Ground. In Other Words, Having the
Rec. Teches and the Recreation Staff Go Back to Triangles on the
Vehicles and Wearing Some Semblance of a Uniform out on The Ground.
Another Comment Was Hire Additional Law Enforcement Rangers. Currently
the Average Acreage Per Ranger Is 1.76 Million. A Lot of That Country Is
Broken One Private Land, State Land and Other Federal Ground. So it
Makes Us ‑‑ it Really Extends Some of Our Patrol Time. Also There\'s
Some Areas That Are In Dire Need of Help, I.e., California Desert, to
Where on Big Weekends They Are Overwhelmed to the Point of Almost
Officer Safety Issues. A Lot of the Other Areas Will Expend Their
Resources to Help Them out at the Expense of Leaving Their Areas
Basically Unattended. You Also Have to Realize That Law Enforcement
Provides Other Functions Other than Just Enforcement Actions. We Also Do
Public Education out There, Information into the Resource Areas and We
Also Provide Emergency Medical Support to the Sick and Injured. Another
Comment Was Improve Patrol Techniques. More So Getting out on the Ground
with the Folks and the Machines That They\'re Riding Instead of Riding
the Windshield. Another Comment Talked about Adopting Community Policing
Strategies.

R. Schmitt: Warren, Could You Define What That Means to the Layperson
That Doesn\'t Understand Maybe What That Means?

W. Templeton: Well, to Me, Community Policing Is Synonymous With
Community Involvement. That Means We Need to Be Involved in as Law
Enforcement In the Fairs, Parades and Avents In the Public, Be out There
Where the General Public Can Access to You and Discuss Things And Have
Communication. It Also Means to Be on the Ground Not Just for
Enforcement But to Visit with Folks.

R. Schmitt: It\'s Similar to What Many Local Departments Do, Putting the
Officer on the Ground, Walking the Beat, Riding Mountain Bikes in Some
Cases in Parks to Make Direct Contact With the Public?

W. Templeton: Absolutely. And Those Departments Have Realized Great
Success from Doing That.

R. Schmitt: Thanks.

W. Templeton: Another One That Was Suggested Was to Strengthen
Agreements Between Federal and Local Law Enforcement Agencies and to
Work With Federal Courts to Increase Fines for OHV Violations.

R. Schmitt: Warren, I Wanted To Talk a Little about Agreements. BLM Does
Enter into Agreements With Local Law Enforcement Agencies to Help Been
Forcement.

W. Templeton: There Are Some Areas, Manpower Permitting, a Lot of
Sheriff\'s Departments and Other Agencies Do Not Have the Manpower Even
If the must Not See There to Be Able to Supply That Kind of Service Us
To, Though Some Areas Do That Enjoy That Have Pretty Good Success With
Having Officers Go out There and Patrol, but There Again, it Comes into
the Funding Issue. In Order to Be Able to Provide These Departments with
That Kind Of Money for the Contracts, We Need the Bucks to Do It. The
Other Issue, I Believe I Already Covered It, We\'ll Do it Again, Was to
Work with the Federal Courts to Increase Fines For OHV Violations. One
of the Challenges Is That The Public Requested Actions Would That
Require the BLM to Change the Existing Regulations. As Part of the
Strategy, BLM Is Proposing Regulatory Revisions. So We\'re Responding to
Your Requests By, One, Proposing to Change the Regulatory Definition Of
off Road Vehicle and Had He Titling the Regulation to Vehicle Management
and Clarifying BLM\'s Management over Both Motorized and Mechanized
Vehicles. This Is a Change in the Regulations Would That Now Include
Mountain Bikes and Other Mechanized Vehicles under the Term Vehicle.
Another Set of Recommendations That the Strategy Outlines Is The Need to
Clarify to the BLM Field Offices and the Public, Several Policy Issues,
Including Consistent Evaluation of Requests for Special Access to Public
Lands for Persons with Disabilities, for Game Retrieval And Other
Special Needs. Special Considerations in Alaska, Such as Sustenance and
Use of Snow Machines. And Legal Authority for Managing Personal Water
Craft and Snow Machines on Public Land. So as You Can See, the BLM Is
Really Trying to Respond to the Public Requests with Regards to Law
Enforce Ment and Regulatory Changes. Rodger?

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Warren. From What I Saw in the Comments, There\'s ‑‑
These Things Are Upper Most in the Minds of the Public. That Concludes
Our Overview of The New Strategy and We\'ve Set Aside the Rest of the
Time to Hear from You. So Please Send Us a Fax or Give Us a Call If You
Have Any Questions or Comments about the OHV Draft Strategy. First Off,
I\'m Going to Take a Phone Call from New Mexico and I Believe It\'s from
Santa Fe and It\'s Chuck. Good Morning, Chuck, Are You There?

Caller: Yes, Thank You. I Certainly Appreciate the Ability to Comment
this Way. I Have Two Comments. The First Is the Comment Period For the
Draft National Off‑highway Vehicle Management Strategy. I Believe That
the Timing Is Ill‑fated for It. It Is out for Review During the Holiday
Season, and I Don\'t Think It\'s an Appropriate Time Of Year for Such an
Important Issue to Be ‑‑ to Have Comments Coming Back. The Second Part,
Which Is Interrelated, Is a 30‑day Comment Period, I Believe, Is Also
Inadequate. Not Only Do I Sit on the RAC, I\'m Also an Officer for the
Sierra Club Here in One of the Groups in New Mexico, and 30 Days Is
Really Inadequate for Us To Get Our Members Together and Present an
Array of Comments or Concerns That We Have about the Strategy. The Third
Part of That Same Concern I\'ve Got Is Our New Mexico RAC Meets Every
Two Months, and We\'ve Achieved, I Think, a Remarkable Ability to Talk
Through this and Share Our Differences and Our Similarities And I Am
Concerned That We as a RAC Meeting Formally Will Not Have an Opportunity
to Discuss This Plan. So the Basic Theme of My Comment, My First
Comment, Is I Would Certainly like to See an Extended Comment Period. My
Second Comment and Last Comment Is I Think it Is Admirable to Include
Nonmechanized Vehicles into Your Definition, However, I Hope We
Recognize the Differences of Impacts of Motorized Vehicles Versus
Non‑motorized and That We Have Separate Management Techniques for Them
Both. Those Are My Comments. Thank You.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Chuck. I Am Going to Ask Henri to Respond Directly
to You.

H. Bisson: Hi, Chuck. Regarding the Issue of Mountain Bikes, Obviously
We Recognize That There Are Significant Differences in the Kinds of
Impacts That You See from Normal Mountain Bike Activity Versus Intensive
Off‑highway Vehicle Activity. But Right Now Mountain Bikes or Bikes in
General Are Classified As Vehicles in Virtually Every Western State. We
Really Don\'t Have Any Guidance in Place Regarding the Management of
Mountain Bikes and We Are Having Some Problems in Some Locations with
Intensive Mountain Bike Activities. So What We Wanted to Do Was to At
Least Provide an Opportunity Through this Strategy to Develop Some
Further Guidance for Our Field Offices on How to Manage Mountain Bikes
And, Frankly, You Know, Where Mountain Bikes Are An Issue, and They
Aren\'t an Issue Everywhere, but Where They Are an Issue, the Land Use
Planning Process Is Also an Appropriate Place to Address and It to Make
Decisions about Where It\'s Appropriate and Where Not And to Resolve
Some of the Comments ‑‑ Conflicts They Might See on the Ground.
Regarding Your Concerns about The Comment Period, I Understand Those
Concerns. You Know, When We Started Through this Process, We Actually
Proposed to Have a Fairly Short Scoping Process This Summer, Which
Turned out to Be the Listening Meetings, and To Turn Our Regs and Pull a
Team Together and Look at the Public Comments and to Develop a Strategy
That Would Be Done Strictly from an Internal Viewpoint and Then Issued.
As BLM\'s Final Strategy. As a Result of the Efforts this Summer, We Got
a Lot of Comments From RAC Members like Yourself And Others Asking for
an Opportunity to Review the Draft Before We Issued it as a Final, And
So Looking at the Process We Went Through With, You Know, 5,000 Comments
and a Sincere Effort to Look at Those Comments, to Look at the
Suggestions, to Develop Issues, To Propose Solutions for Them, It Just
Took Us a While to Get To Where the Strategy Could Be Released to the
Public. We\'re We\'re Committed to Getting This Product Out. Our Staff
Is Going to Be Working Through the Holidays to Respond To Comments as
They Come In. We Have Congressional Hearings Coming up this Spring on
Our Budget. We Want to Be Able to Go to the Congress and Show That We
Have a Plan in Mind and That We Need Resources to Implement the Plan.
We\'re Beginning Amendments of New ‑‑ or Amendments of Land Use Plans,
the New Rmps this Year. We Wanted to Put Something in Place to Get Some
Guidance out So That as Our Field Managers Address this Issue in Their
Land Use Plans That They Have Something in Hand. I Wish We Had More
Time, but We\'re Absolutely Committed to Completing this Process by the
Middle of January.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Chuck. Did You Have Any Follow‑up at All?

Caller: I Think That Philosophy Is a Mistake. I Think It\'s More
Important to Get out a Good Product That Most Of Us Can Support and to
Have an Artificial Time Period, Again, I Believe Is a Mistake. I Would
like That Reviewed.

H. Bisson: I Respect Your Opinion, Chuck and I Promise You We\'ll
Certainly Discuss it with Our Acting Director.

Caller: Thank You.

R. Schmitt: I\'m Going to Turn Next to a Fax and I\'m Going to Ask Jim
to Respond to this and It\'s from Jill from Southern Oregon Resource
Advisory Council. The Question Is ‑‑ In Reading the Comments it Is Clear
That the National OHV Team Decide to Do Implement Some Comments That Are
Diametrically Opposed to Others. What Process Was Used to Decide Which
Comments to Support and Which to Ignore?

J. Keeler: I Honestly Believe We Ignored Nothing. What We Tried to Do
Was to Portray All the Different Range Of Comments, but We Were Looking
Really at Trying to Capture the Issues Rather than Allowing this To Be
Some Kind of a Voting Process. So What We Ended up Doing Was Looking at
the Different Issues And Trying to Capture Every One. The Document
Itself, When We Summarized Comments and Put Them In, That Was ‑‑ It\'s
Hard to Take a Five‑foot‑long Wall of Comments and Try to Get it down ‑‑
We Have it in about 40 Pages Here. So this Is Only a Very Small Fraction
of the Entire Comments That We Had. But What\'s Listed Here, We\'re Just
Kind of Trying to Do Our Best to Portray the Spectrum Within Each Issue,
Just to Demonstrate That We Really Had Tried to Cover the Entire
Spectrum of Comments. So What You See Here Is Not Necessarily
Representational of What Came in as Much as Represents the Spectrum of
Stuff That We Wanted Through. Did You Have Any Comments, Robin?

R. Fehlau: I Did. Kind of like Warren Pointed Out, That We Had Comments
That Were Diametrically Opposed, as She Says, and Yet Many Comments Were
Comments That We Couldn\'t Implement at All under Our Own Authority. So
There Were Some Things When We Had Those, Which One Did You Choose,
Well, the Ones That We Can\'t ‑‑ That We Can\'t Implement Because of the
Laws or Regulations We Didn\'t Choose Those. So That Was Also an Issue
in Looking and Developing the Strategy.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim and Robin, and Thanks, Jill, for Your Fax.
Appreciate It. We\'re Going to Turn next to a Fax That I Have Here from
Roger From the New Mexico RAC and I\'m Going to Turn to Henri and Ask
Henri to Deal with This. OHV Recreationists from Across The West and
Spoke in Listening Meetings and Pointed to Shrinking Areas. The OHV
Industries Statistics Show Growth in Sales Every Year Of Off‑highway
Vehicles. OHV Recreationists Believe Appropriate Terrain Can Accommodate
Growth Conscientiously but Small Sacrifice Areas Invite Focus on Damage
and Overuse. With Good Standards and Guidelines, Can You See the BLM
Facilitating an Increase in OHV Special Management Area?

H. Bisson: You Know, I Think That We Have ‑‑ I Guess I Have To Think
about What He Means by OHV Special Management Areas. We Have OHV Special
Management Areas Already. There Are Places in Southern California Which
I Would Categorize as OHV Special Management Areas That Have Been There
for Decades. In Some Cases They Get Pretty Intensive Use, and in Other
Cases, I Can Think of One, Which I\'m Not Going to Mention Because It
Will Probably Increase in Use, the Resource Conditions out There Have
Actually Improved in The Last 20 Years. There\'s Great Variation. I
Think That Special Management Areas Tend to Invite a Lot of Use, and for
Certain Types of Activities I Think That\'s Terrific. That\'s a Place
Where They Can Go And They Can Enjoy Themselves in Kind of a More
Uncontrolled Manner. But I Think That His Point about Looking for Places
to Ride ‑‑ I Think That the Bulk of the Comments That We Got Were from
People Who Simply Want to Get Out on Routes and Trails on the Public
Lands and Be Able to Get Away from People as They Do this Recreation,
and They Want to See That That Opportunity Is There And Available and
Doesn\'t Go Away, and All We\'re Doing Now Is Coming One a Process to
Make Sure That That Activity Can Continue but in an Appropriate Manner.
I Certainly See OHV Use in an Appropriate Manner Continuing For a Long
Time on Public Lands.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Henri. I Hope, Roger, That Responds to Your
Question. We\'re Going to Turn next to a Call That We Have from ‑‑ Ok, I
Guess the Call Is Still Coming Up and We\'ll Go Back to That One Later.
I\'ll Turn to a Fax, Then, from Arizona, and It\'s from a Member Of the
Public and I\'m Going to Ask Robin to Respond to This. The BLM Has
Included Low‑impact Mechanized Nonmotorized User Groups with High Impact
Motorized Vehicles in the New Definition of Vehicle under 43 Cfr. What
Assurances Can You Offer The Mountain Biking Community That You Are New
Management Plan Will Not Be Used for Restrictive And Exclusionary
Purposes Based Solely on a Definition Instead Of the Impact of the User
Group Resource. I Might Clarify That We Have Not Included this in the
Regs Yet. What We\'re Proposing in the Strategy Is to Take a Look at And
That Rewrite the Regs with Public Input. Robin?

R. Fehlau: Ok. Well, If We Do Rewrite the Regs And Bikes and Other
Low‑impact Vehicles Are Included, Remember That Every Land Use Plan ‑‑
this Is Only Going to Be Able to Be Implemented Through Land Use
Planning, and You as a Mountain Biker as Well as the Mountain Bike
Community or Other Vehicle User Would Be Part of the Planning Process in
What Trails Are Designated or Not Designated. There Would Definitely ‑‑
I See It Likely in My Own Resource Area That We Would Have Motorized and
Nonmotorized Trails. We Would Have Areas That Are Closed to All
Vehicles, as We Do Now. And That Includes Bikes. We Would Also Have
Areas That Are Open to Cross‑country Travel, Although Generally the
Low‑impact Vehicles Aren\'t Going Across Country as Much as the
Motorized Users. And We Do Recognize There Are Differences in Impacts,
Although At Some Point We Have Also ‑‑ Have Areas That Are Highly
Impacted by Mountain Bikes and We Do Want to Include Management Of Those
Bikes in Our Land Use Planning Process. I Hope That Answers His
Question.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Robin. Maybe You Could Address Part of This
Question, War Been. I Forgot to Mention this Question Came from Steven,
Who Is a Member of International Mountain Biking Association. You Can
Address Maybe the Enforcement Aspects of the Question Was Beef Some
Concerns Along Those Lines.

W. Templeton: I Don\'t Know Exactly What You Mean by Enforcement
Actions.

R. Schmitt: Specifically, One Of the Issues Is If the Definition of
Vehicle Doesn\'t Include, Say, a Mountain Bike, Then It\'s Difficult for
Our Enforcement People on the Ground To Lullly ‑‑ Actually Enforce
Regulations If the Regulations Don\'t Support That Definition of The
Vehicle.

W. Templeton: That Is True. That Would Be ‑‑ They Pretty Much Have to Be
Specific. There Are Other Regulations, You Know, Causing Resource
Damage, Destruction of Vegetation and Different Things like That, but In
Order to Turn That as a Vehicle Solely for this Regulation, its Would
Have to Be Included in That Wording.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Warren. I\'m Going to Turn Now to a Phone Call from
Dan in Susanville. Good Morning, Dan. Are You There?

Caller: I\'m Here.

R. Schmitt: Thanks for Your Call.

Caller: I Am on the Susanville RAC. I\'ve Worked and Lived All over The
West, Both as a Manager Myself and as a Citizen Activist And I Would
Just like to ‑‑ Been Involved in OHV Stuff for 40 Years Now. By like to
Compliment You on the Positive Up‑beat, Can‑do Attitude of this Plan and
Then Would like to Give Very Strong Support for Your Recommendation That
Managers Receive Training In OHV Management. So Often, Almost
Universely, I Run into a Negative Hopeless Attitude among Managers and
Your Positive Approach Is Going to Do More than Any Other Single Thing
To Get on Top of this Serious Problem.

R. Schmitt: We Appreciate Those Comments. We Know We Have a Lot of
Education Work to Do with Both Our Employees and the Public Because it
Is an Important Issue, and Education, We Feel Is An Important Part of
What We Do In Government in General and in This Program in Particular.
We Appreciate ‑‑

Caller: Good Start. Keep it Up.

R. Schmitt: Thank You. We\'re Going to Turn next to a Fax from Andrew
from the Eastern Washington RAC and I\'m Going to Turn to Jim to Respond
to This. The Question Is ‑‑ To What Extent Does the Strategy Inhibit the
Access of Disabled And Elderly Segments of the Population?

J. Keeler: the Strategy Reflects, I Think, the Current State of Where We
Are in Discussing That Topic. It Was a Source of Lots of Comments,
Frankly, in the Process, and this Is Another of Those Places Where
We\'re Kind of Limited in the Strategy to Where The Current Policy Has
Evolved, And Where We Are Is That Disabled Access Is a Thing That We
Have to Allow ‑‑ or We Have To Promote to the Same Level of Programmatic
Response That We Have Everything Else, in Other Words, We Are Not
Required and Are, Frankly, in a Lot of Cases, Unable to Give Special
Consideration for One Group of People over Another. We Are Required to
Provide the Same Level of Access to Disabled That We Provide to the
Nondisabled. So We Aren\'t Able to Go ‑‑ or to Say That Disabled People
Have Special Rights That the Rest of Us Don\'t. The Place That We\'ve
Made a Recommendation Is That Our Current Policy Really Is for All
Special Considerations That These Are Locally Decided Issues. So What
We\'ve Promised in the Strategy Is to Continue to Provide the Best
Information to Local Managers So That They Can Make the Most Appropriate
Decisions, Kind of Based Both on The Needs of the Resource and The
Special Needs of the People In the Group That We\'re Working With.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim. We Do Try to Proceeded Vie ‑‑ The Strategy Does
Call for Us to Provide Some Consistent Guidance So Local Offices Can Be
Consistent in How They Apply It. Thanks, Andrew. We Appreciate Your
Comment. I\'m Going to Turn to a Phone Call from Susanville. This Is
Going to Be from Lee From the California Northeast RAC. Are You There,
Lee? Good Morning.

Caller: Yes, Good Morning.

R. Schmitt: What Is Your Question for Us? I Understand it Relates to
Signage and Maps.

Caller: Yes, It\'s More of a Comment and a Couple Things in The
Strategy, Trail Marking and Maps and the Use of the Tread Lightly
Program All Go Hand in Hand and I Think They Will Do a Great Deal
Towards Accomplishing Our Goals, and I Would like to Also Thank Dan, One
of My Fellow Members There, for His Comment Relative to Training
Managers. I Think It\'s Outstanding. So All of You, Keep up the Good
Work and Let\'s Press Forward.

R. Schmitt: Thank You. I Think Henri Has a Comment.

H. Bisson: this Issue of Signage Is a Huge Issue for the BLM and All the
Federal Agencies. I Think It\'s Probably the Single Most Important
Action We Can Take on the Ground to Ensure That People Are Going Where
They Should Be Going and That They Know Where They Shouldn\'t Be Going,
and a Couple Weeks Ago I Saw a Presentation in Washington. We Had an
Individual out of Chico State Who Was Contracted To the BLM to Go out
and Look at ‑‑ Actually Look at Our Signage Across the West and Our New
Monuments and Adjacent Public Lands, and the Slides Show That Sigh Was
Pretty Incredible, the Variation in Signs, Not Just on BLM Lands, but
the Signs That He Showed on Public Lands, on Forest Service Lands and
Adjacent to National Parks. We Saw Signs That Were 25 Years Old That
Were Faded and You Couldn\'t Read. We Saw Some Fairly Good Signage In
Some Locations. And I Think That If We\'re Going To Be Successful Once
the Land Use Plans Are Completed and Effectively Managing this Issue On
the Ground, We\'re Going to Have to Find a Better Way to Provide
Consistent Signage from State to State So That a Person That Goes on
Public Lands in Montana Will See the Same Kind Of Signs There That They
Might See in Idaho or in Oregon. Another Issue That You Raised Was Maps.
I Think That in a ‑‑ Very Frankly, Maps Are Probably the Most Important
Communication Tool That We Have, No Matter Who It Is That\'s Going out
There, Whether It\'s a Hiker, Backpacker Or Somebody Going out in a
Vehicle, the Map Can Have Lots Of Important Messages about How To Behave
When They\'re out There, about the Rules That They Should Be Aware Of,
and the Maps Can Actually Encourage Them to Take Certain Routes, to Go
Certain Places Where They Can Be Guaranteed They\'re Going to Have A
Certain Kind of Experience. And, on the Other Hand, the Maps Can Be Used
to Direct People Away from Sensitive Resources by Not Highlighting Their
Existance. I Think as We Proceed with Developing Maps, We Need to Do It
Carefully Because It\'s Probably the Most Important Tool We Have on the
Ground.

R. Fehlau: I Wanted to Jump In about the Maps. For a Long Time I Think
Our Maps Have Been Inadequate Partially Because We\'re Using 7 1/2
Minute Topo Maps Based from 1954 or They Might Have Been Updated in
\'85, but They\'re Not Really Current of What\'s on the Ground And with
the Technology That\'s Throughout Today and It\'s Getting Better All the
Time, Much Easier to Use, with Gps, We Can Actually Go out and Map
Routes Accurately, Which We Haven\'t Been ‑‑ 10 Years Ago We Couldn\'t
Do That and It\'s Much Easier to Do and Produce a Map Than it Was ‑‑ I
Mean, in the Last Two Years Even It\'s Gotten Much Easier. So I Think We
Will Have Much Better Maps in the Future.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Lee, for Your Call from Susanville.

Caller: Yes and Thank You Again. I Wanted to Say the Way the Call Got
Through So Fast Is I\'m Calling from the State Office. I Avoided the
Snow in the Sierras Today.

R. Schmitt: That\'s Cheatedding. I Am Going to Turn Now to a Fax And,
Jim, I Am Going to Ask You To Respond to this One. It\'s from Dick from
the Southeast Oregon RAC. The Question Is ‑‑ The Permit System Will Be
an Effective Tool for Management But it Should Be Designed to Work in
Conjunction with the Current Systems in Use in Such States as Oregon,
California or Idaho. Could BLM Require Either/or Permits in These
Situations, Stacking Permits on Top of One Another Results in
Misunderstandings and Hard Feelings on the Users\' Part.

J. Keeler: I Totally Agree. There\'s a Recommendation in the Strategy
That\'s Kind of Snuck Up, I Think, on Us That Really Has Some Merit and
I Don\'t Think We\'ve Thought it Entirely out Yet. But What it Was Was
Not Necessarily Connected to the Fee Program but Maybe to Require
Permits for a Specific Type of Activity or a Specific Type of Area. Both
Motorcycles and Mountain Bikers Were Writing Us Asking For Someway of
Managing Single‑track Trails, for Example Where We Could Have Trails
That Didn\'t Continue to Grow as Different Types of Vehicles Used Them.
So It\'s Possible That We Could Have a Permit Trail That Would Allow a
Specific Kind of Use. This Might Be a Benefit, Frankly, to the
Motorcycles or The Mountain Bikers to Have a Single Track. I Could Go on
and Tell You Some Of the Different Ramifications, But Frankly We\'re
Just Beginning To Develop this Idea.

R. Schmitt: I Might Mention That BLM Is a Strong Proponent Of Doing
Things on an Interagency Basis and Wherever We Have These Situations
Where We Can Work Cooperatively with Other Agencies, Such as Our
Service‑first Program with the Forest Service Where We\'re Trying to Do
Things in Conjunction with Another Agency, We Are Very Supportive of
That.

R. Fehlau: and We Are Conscious There Are Other Permit Systems out There
and We Don\'t Want to Develop All New Permit Systems Everywhere. We Want
to Look at What\'s out There and Try to Become Either Part of That
Permit System or Do Something in Conjunction with It.

R. Schmitt: So, Dick, Rest Assured We Will Take a Look at These Things
as They\'re Implemented Locally and Do as Much as We Can on an
Interagency Basis. Thank You for Your Fax, Dick. I Am Going to Turn next
to a Fax And this Will Be for Robin and It\'s from Arlo from the North
Central RAC and I Can\'t See Where It\'s From, What State It\'s From. So
I\'ll Have to Pass That One By. But ‑‑ Excuse Me, Here it Is Down Here,
North Central Mountain RAC. The Question Is ‑‑ As to Signing Roads, Will
the Roads Be Signed \"Open Only\" or Will Roads Be Closed ‑‑ or Will
Roads to Be Closed Be Signed Only? I Think this Is a Response to That
One Thing We Dealt with in The Strategy.

R. Fehlau: Right. Well, in Talking with Our Law Enforcement Folks, to
Write a Violation, it Really Does Have To Be Signed \"Closed.\" So Even
Though We\'ve Had Suggestion About, Well, Only Sign the Open Routes and
Everything Else Is Closed, it Appears That Magistrates Do Not Want to
Support That in the Courts. So I Think We Will Still Have \"Closed\"
Signs but We Will Also Have \"Open\" Signs, Particularly In the Area ‑‑
One of Our Intensive OHV Areas We\'re Doing Both. The Areas We Don\'t
Want You to Go in We\'re Closing. The Routes That Are the Existing
Routes We Are Now Marking with The Little Arrows So You Know Which Way
to Go and We\'re Developing a Brochure Showing The Trail System. So I
Think That We\'re Going to Have Both, Open and Closed Signs.

R. Schmitt:. We Don\'t Have Any Calls on Hold Right Now. So I\'m Going
to Turn to a Fax For Warren. It\'s from Jerry from the Sierra Club, and
the Question for You, Warren Is, under Law Enforcement On Page 14 You
Say Vehicle Forfeiture Is Not a Possibility Because Would it Require
Legislation. Yet in Other Areas the Team Is Recommending Active Pursuit
of Regulatory Changes. Why in One Area and Not the Other? By Laying out
All the Reasons The Existing Penalties Are Weak And Making Excuses Why
BLM Cannot Use Impoundment as a Tool, Haven\'t You Given a Clear Green
Light to All OHV Users That Are Currently Causing Problems? Rather than
Spending All the Money and Manpower Required to Enact Legislation, Why
Not Build Some Storage Facilities. Couldn\'t BLM Do this Without New
Regulations and at a Lot less Expense?

W. Templeton: BLM Can Impound Vehicles but the Difference Between
Impounding and Forfeiture Are Two Different Things. Forfeiture Is
Forever and Ever, Amen. The Impounding, We Have to Give The Machines
Back upon a Successful or Unsuccessful Adjudication Through the Courts,
We Have to Give That Tool Back. Just as Evidence In, Say, Somebody
Cutting down Christmas Trees. We Could Seize the Chainsaw, but At the
End of That Environment When It\'s Seized as Evidence, it Has to Be
Returned in Most Cases.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Warren. Thanks, Jerry for Your Fax. I Have Another
Fax, It\'s from The Nevada RAC, and It\'s from John. In Local Meetings
One of the Largest Stumbling Blocks We Encounter Are Disagreements in
Terms, Rules and Definitions Among Federal Agencies Such as BLM, U.s.
Forest Service, the U.s. Park Service, Environmental Agencies and
Others. What Efforts Are Being Made by The United States Government to
Bring about Coordination and Agreement? Henri, Maybe I\'ll Ask You to
Respond to this One.

H. Bisson: Actually, One of The Recommendations in the Strategy Speaks
to this Issue, You Know, What We Proposed to Do Was to Develop an
Interagency Coordinating Group in Washington Of the Agencies That Have
Often Highway Vehicle Activity and Begin to at the National Level Look
at What Each Agency Is Doing and Attempt to the Extent We Can Be
Consistent. The Fact Is That These Different Agencies Set Their Own
Rules and Regulations, They May Be Different from Ours. To the Extent as
We Go Back and Revise Those, We Can Make Them More Consistent Is
Certainly Something We Want to Pursue.

R. Schmitt: We Have Been Working Very Closely with Other Agencies in a
Number of Arenas, And this Is One of Them. I Think Jim Talked about
Tread Lightly. We Work Very Closely with Them To Try to Build Some
Consistency In How We Do Management on the Ground. Thanks, Henri. Still
No Phone Calls in the Cue, So I Am Going to Thank John for His Fax and
Move on to Another One from Another John and this John Is from Portland.
Jim, Why Don\'t You Take a Quick Cut at this One. The Question Is,
Recent BLM Literature Used During the Listening Session States That OHV
Recreation Is a Legitimate Use of Public Lands and the Question That
John Poses Is, Granted, That Some OHV Uses Are Legitimate and
Appropriate, for Instance, Use by Native Americans for Subsistence. What
Are the Ground for Asserting than the Recollectational Use of OHVs a
Legitimate Activity on the Public Domain? Doesn\'t this Emphasis on
Mitigation of Negative Impact Suggest That OHV Recreation May Not after
All Be an Appropriate And Legitimate Use of Public Lands?

J. Keeler: I Think It\'s Very Difficult to Tease Apart Recreational Use
of OHVs and Recreational Use or Other Uses Of OHVs. I Don\'t Know What
the Percentage Is, but a Large Amount of the Vehicular Use on Public
Lands Is Not Directly Recreational as a Destination in Itself. So it
Would Be ‑‑ I Don\'t Know How You Could Even Tease Those Two Things
Apart. I Think That Off‑highway Vehicle, Many of the Impacts Can Be
Mitigated. I Think That Our Legislation Is Pretty Clear All the Way from
The Executive Orders That Where We Are Supposed to Manage or Limit
Off‑highway Vehicle Use Is Where There\'s Impacts. So Either We Have to
Be Able to Mitigate the Impacts or Constrict Our Management Farther On
the Use.

H. Bisson: Let Me Jump in a Second. Off‑highway Vehicle Use on Existing
Roads and Trails with Somebody Who Is in Place Where We\'ve Said It\'s
Ok to Go, Complying with Our Rules, Is a Legitimate Activity on Public
Lands. I Don\'t Know What this Person Who Wrote In, What His Vision Is
Of Off‑highway Vehicle Use. It Sounds like His Vision Is of People
Traveling Cross‑country Anywhere They Want to Go out on The Public
Lands, and I Would Agree, That That Activity Across All Public Lands Is
Not Appropriate. There Are Places Where We Have Endangered Species
Habitat and Certainly Within Designated Wilderness. We Have Other Areas,
Some Acecs Where We\'ve Restricted OHV Activity. I Would Anticipate
Going Through The Planning Processes We\'ll Decide Some Roads Are
Necessary And Some Roads Aren\'t. So the Roads That Are Closed Will Not
Be Open to this Activity. So to the Extent That Our Roads Are There,
They\'re Available to The Public to Use, Our Trails Are There, They\'re
Available to Be Used, Unless They Are There Are Resource Impacts
Occurring, To That Extent I Feel this Activity Is Very Much a Legitimate
Use.

R. Fehlau: I Might Jump in There, Too, Quickly and It\'s Not ‑‑ We See
Recreation as a Legitimate Use of Public Lands. Whether It\'s OHV
Recreation or Hiking or Biking or Horseback Riding, and Al Forms of
Recreation Have Some Impact on The Public Lands, Not Just OHVs And Yet
We Do What We Can to Manage All the Different Forms Of Recreation, and
Not ‑‑ It\'s Not Just OHVs That Have the Impacts. So That\'s Something
to Consider.

H. Bisson: the Problem Really Comes with Too Many of Anything.

R. Fehlau: of Anything, Yes.

H. Bisson: Too Many Mountain Bikes or Too Many Off‑highway Vehicles or
Too Many People in a Riparian Area Just Walking and Trampling the
Vegetation That\'s There and the Trick Is to Make Sure We Are Aware of
Where Too Many People Are Going and Put in The Necessary Meshers to
Reduce That Level of Impact to Allow The Vegetation to Do What it Should
Be Doing.

R. Schmitt: like in Any Activity, It\'s Always the Few Who Really Don\'t
Pay Attention To the Legitimate Ethics of Using Off‑highway Vehicles or
in The Case of Hikers, I Mean, We Have Abuse of a Few Hikers When They
Go into Areas as Well. So We Can\'t Discriminate Against Them. This Is a
Legitimate Use and We Have to Try to Manage it as Best As We Can. John,
Thanks for Your Fax. I Am Going to Turn Now to a Call From New Mexico
and Roger in Taos, Good Morning, Are You There?

Caller: Yes, I Am. Thank You.

R. Schmitt: I Think You Have A Question about OHV Coordinator Position.

Caller: I Have Questions Regarding Three Topics That Were Brought Up,
the Off‑highway Vehicle Coordinator, the Public Presence Issue and
Education. Do You See an Off‑highway Vehicle Coordinator Being Someone
with an Affinity for the Sport That Can Lend Credibility To ‑‑ with
Recreationists for The BLM and Talk about Real Issues with Clubs and
Groups Around the State? In the Area of Public Presence, Do You See
Field Presence by Off‑highway Vehicle Coordinators In the Districts
Being on the Trail? An Off‑highway Vehicle Coordinator That Is
Knowledgeable about the Sport And Is Available to Talk about The Issues
out on the Trail and At the Trailheads Where People Are Recreating Seems
to Be an Effective Plan. Have You Considered in the Form Of Education
for Violators a Sentence to a Motorcycle Safety Off‑highway Vehicle
Course as an Alternative to Fines? Those Are My Three Questions.

R. Schmitt: We Do Look for Balance in People That We Hire. We Don\'t
Want Anyone to Be One Side or the Other in Terms of Their Focus, but I
Think Robin May Want to Respond to This.

R. Fehlau: Actually, I\'m Going to Start with Your Last Question First
about the Sentencing. Actually, We Don\'t Have Any Control over the
Sentencings and That Is up to the Judge in the Case. Although, We Can
Encourage Those Types of Sentences in Terms of Either Community Service
or Your Suggestion of Going to a Motorcycle Safety Course, and I Do
Believe That the OHV Coordinators Should Be Knowledgeable in the
Activity, Although, as a Statewide Coordinator I Am Likely to Go From
Kind of One Place to Another and Won\'t Get to Spend Much Time at Any
Particular Place in the Field. I Am Sort of a Liaison Between All the
Field Offices, but We Do ‑‑ We Do Expect That Our Field Office Folks Get
out in the Field and Work with the People That Are on the Trails, and
When I Go out on the Trails, I Definitely Do Visitor Contact, Currently
in My Own Office, Whether It\'s OHVs or Hikers or Rock Climbers or River
Rafters, We Have All of Those Activities Where I Am. So Although I Am
Not Competent In All of Those Activities, You Know, I Work on It. And
Every OHV Coordinator Is Not Likely to Be Competent in All The Different
Types of OHV Uses, Whether It\'s Biking, Motor Cycling, Atvs and Jeeps,
but We Do Believe That Being out in the Field and Field Presence Is
Important. To Get Back to Your Question About Balance and Knowledgeable
Employees, I Might Point out When We Just Recently Hired Jim As Our
National OHV Coordinator, That\'s One of the Things I Looked at in
Reviewing the Applications Is How Qualified Jim Was and Balanced He Was
in His Activities in the OHV Arenas. We Do Look for Balance and People
Who Have Experience and Knowledge of Off‑highway Vehicle Use and
Activities. As Warren Mentioned, Even Though He Is Responsible for
Enforcing Recollect Rations, He Is Also a An Enthusist. I Think Our
Employees Pride Themselves with Being Professional and Being Able to
Look at What Their Responsibilities under a Professional Way. Any Other
Follow‑up, Roger?

Caller: Thank You for Those Comments. I Would Just Emphasize Again That
That\'s Important to Relating to Off‑highway Vehicle Recreationists
Across the Country in Every District in Every Office to Have People
Knowledgeable and Prepared to Deal with These Issues on the Ground.
That\'s ‑‑ to Be Able to Hear Those Comments in Person and to Have the
Recreationists Feel Like That People Understand Their Activity and Share
Their Love for Sit Very Important.

R. Schmitt: We Certainly Agree with That. Jim, Did You Have a Comment?

J. Keeler: I Just Wanted to Mention, I Think, That I Was Astounded at
the Willingness to Participate That Showed Through The Whole Comment
Series That We Got, That the Off‑highway Vehicle Community Almost to a
Person That Commented Offered to Volunteer, Offered to Help Manage ‑‑ or
to Help Any Way They Could to Support and Manage A Better OHV Program.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Jim. Thanks for Your Call, Rog Purpose We Appreciate
It. I Am Going to Turn to Another Fax and We Have a Number of Faxes Left
Here and it Does Appear as Though We Are Going to Go over a Little Bit
from Our Time Frame, So Anyone Who Really Has to Leave, You Know,
Certainly Welcome to Do So, but We Are Going to Stay Beyond the 12:00
Schedule That We Have Here, Beyond the Hour That\'s Coming Up, and Try
to Get to the Rest of These Faxes. I Am Going to Jump to One Now And We
Will Try to Keep Our Responses Relatively Short. I Am Going to Turn to
Jim Again For this One and Other People Feel Free to Jump In. Under
Public Outreach They Want This Commenter ‑‑ It\'s from Tom From the ‑‑
Let\'s See, Southeast Oregon RAC. Under Public Outreach, Include
Language More Specific to Developing a Multiple Use Forum Of Users for
Each Resource Area. He Feels It\'s Needed for Agencies Sounding Board
and Direction as Well as a Source For Better Peer Education.

J. Keeler: I Want to Mention, I Guess, That the Last Two Positions I Had
in the California Desert, Both of Them I Left with a Very Active
Multiple Use Council, So I Guess We\'re Preaching to Each Other Here.
But It\'s Something That I Firmly Believe In. It\'s Something I\'m Going
to Do My Best to Incore Operate into What I Make as Recommendations.

H. Bisson: I Think It\'s Also Important for Field Managers to Engage
Their Communities. Now That We Have RACs, You Know, Some of the RACs Are
Statewide, There\'s Nothing to Prevent Our Managers from Developing and
Working Within the Community to Develop a Network of People They Can
Work with on Various Issues To Seek out Opinions, Differing Opinions, on
Issues That They\'re Facing. So I Think That\'s Something to Be Strongly
Encouraged as Well.

R. Schmitt: Ok. Thanks, Henri. Thanks, Tom, for Your Fax. The next Fax
Is from a BLM Employee and It\'s from Cimarron In the St. George Field
Office. Her Question ‑‑ She Had a Number Of Questions. We\'re Going to
Tackle the Following ‑‑ There Already Exists Excellent BLM Guidelines
for Mountain Bike Planning. Why Waste Government Time on a Nonissue. Who
Wants to Tackle this One? Jim\'s Going to Handle It.

J. Keeler: Thank You, Rodger. I Guess I Get to Admit Publicly That You
Got Me by Surprise Here. I Do Know That We Have Interrelationships and
We Have Been Working Quite a Bit with Imba, International Mountain Bike
Association. It\'s Not My Topic of Expertise, But I Guess Something That
I\'ve Been Wanting to Say about this Whole Bicycle Issue Is That I Think
That We Need to Do Bicycle Management as Part of Our Resource Management
Planning Process and I Think That the Mountain Bikers Really Will Get A
Better Opportunity If They Come in at the Planning Level Rather than
Waiting for Us to Make Responses.

R. Fehlau: I Guess I\'ll Jump In Here and Plead a Little Bit Of
Ignorance That When Cimarron Talks about Excellent Guide Ounce Planning
for Mountain Bikes, I Don\'t Know ‑‑ I\'m Unaware of That. In Terms of
an Actual BLM Manual Or Handbook or Specific Guidance. I Do Believe That
Oftentimes There Is Can‑do Locally Some Very Good Things but I Don\'t
Know of Any Regulatory Type Guidance.

H. Bisson: My Understanding Is There Is No Provision in Our Regulations
to Address Mountain Bikes as a Vehicle So That If We Do Have Enforcement
Issues, We Can Actually Deal with Them Other than Encouraging People to
Leave. I Can Assure You, Cimarron, We\'re Not Going to Waste Anybody\'s
Time or Money. If You\'ve Got Some Ideas, If You\'ve Got Guidance in
Place, Then I Guess Maybe What Rodger Should Do Is Recruit You to Work
With Us on Making Sure Everybody Has That Guidance.

R. Schmitt: I Agree. We\'re Not Talking about a Large Expenditure of
Money. We\'re Going to Be Looking at Regulations and this Would Be
Including What Needs to Be Included to Be More Effective. We Appreciate
Your Question, Though, Cimarron. The next Fax Is from Tom from The
Southeast Oregon RAC and I\'m Going to Go Ahead and Read this One and
Handle it Myself So We Can Move to the next One Because I Think the
Answer Will Be Quick. The Open Designation Is Not Explained with the
Degree of Clarity Necessary. Is Page 3 an Example How 83.40 Would Be
Changed? If So it Needs Reference to 8341 And 83.42. Actually Limb
Nations That Are 83.41 and .42 Should Be Listed Under the Open
Definition. We Will Take a Close Look at That, Tom and Make Sure We
Clarify That in the Final Draft Strategy. We\'re Going to Go Ahead and
Move Onto Another Fax Here and It\'s From Karen, and it Deals with T&e.
It\'s a Little off a Sidebar Issue but We\'re Going to Take It. Let\'s
See ‑‑ It\'s a Fairly Lengthy Question. T&e Species and Critical Habitat
‑‑ It\'s about T&e Species and Critical Habitat. State Directors Are
Given 5 Years to Identify Problem Areas. This Seems Far Too Lengthy. I
Suggest That Your Proposed Actions Be More Proactive by Having Action
Number One Be a Six‑month Period to Identify Problem Areas with the
Subsequent and Immediate Closure Or Limited Designation on a Temporary
Basis. Then Action Number 2 and She Is Referring to the Actions in the
Strategy, Could Be a Five‑year Period to Complete the Land Use Planning
Process to Determine Final Designation of These Problem Areas. Henri,
You Want to Tackle That Quickly?

H. Bisson: Yeah, I Appreciate The Concern about the Length of Time. You
Know, One of the Factors in Giving People the Opportunity to Do this Is
to Have the Resources. It Takes Time to Do this Kind of Work. Right Now
We Don\'t Have That Skill Level Everywhere, and So It\'s Going to Take
Some Time to Build up Our Staff. We\'re Going to Be Liking for
Additional Funding to Bring People on Board to Address These Issues, but
It\'s Just Not There Now. So What We Tried to Do Was to Give the State
Directors Enough Time ‑‑ If We Were to Put a Six‑month Time Frame on
Everybody to Go Through this Process, it Just Isn\'t Feasible.

R. Schmitt: Ok. Thank You, Henri. Thanks, Karen, for Your Fax. The next
Fax Is from Jill, Southeast Oregon RAC, and Her Question Is ‑‑ Many
Conservationists Will Acknowledge OHVs Are Necessary To a Limited Degree
and in Some Locations for Use of BLM. The Main Focus of Concern Is Atv
And Dirt Buys Being Ridden as The Recreational Activity Itself. Why Were
the Comments That Expressed the Need to Make this Distinction Ignored?

J. Keeler: I Think I Tried to Deal with That Issue Initially a Couple
Questions Ago. I Don\'t Believe We Ignored the Comments. I Don\'t Know
of a Feasible Way Of Teasing Apart End Use Recreational Use from Other
Kinds of Uses. I Think That There Are Probably Official, Legitimate Uses
or Nonrecreational Uses That Can Have Just as High an Impact or Higher
Impacts than Recreational Use on a ‑‑ or Within the Context of
Appropriate Use. So I\'ll Look Back Through the Comments Again, but I
Don\'t Think We Ignored Anything.

R. Schmitt: I Think the Basic Thrust of That Is, Jim, That We Can\'t
Ignore or Categorize OHV Use That Way. We Have to Deal with the Use of
The Vehicle Itself, Not What the End Product Is. I Think It\'s
Appropriate We Deal With Everything as One Rather Than Try to
Differentiate. Thanks, Jill, for Your Fax. Have a Fax Now from the
Eastern Washington RAC, and the Question Is ‑‑ How Do You Address
Potential Conflicts with Livestock During the Grazing Season. Is it
Possible to Close Areas to Motorized OHVs While Livestock Are Present?
Many Areas Have Limited Watering Sites and OHVs Are a Conflict If Users
Don\'t Show Good Judgment And I Think this Is Pretty Much A Local Issue
That We Can Deal With. Robin, You Want to Relate this To How We Do
Planning and Closures?

R. Fehlau: Sure. Actually, That Comment, We Can Do That. Just like We Do
Seasonal Closures for Other Types of Wildlife, We Could Do Seasonal
Closures for Livestock If We Thought That That Was a Real Conflict in a
Particular Area, And You Would Have to Work with Your Local Field
Office, Specifically for a Particular Allotment or Part of an Allotment
That You See That Dramatic Conflict Occurring and I Know That
Inappropriate Use of OHVs When People Chase Livestock Is Absolutely
Wrong, and That\'s Where We Need to Be Able to Enforce Some of Our
Violations. Anybody Else?

H. Bisson: I Might Jump in For a Second. One of the Early Issues Related
To OHV Problems We\'re Seeing on The Ground Was the Fact That We Saw
Essentially a Lot of Trespass on Private Lands Adjacent to BLM Lands
That Resulted from Lots of People out There on Weekends and I\'ve Heard
This Concern from the Livestock Community Before. You Know, You\'re
Allowing Too Many People to Come out There, They\'re Damaging My
Facilities, They\'re Trespassing on My Private Lands. What We Hope to Do
Through the Land Use Planning Process Is Work with Private Land Owners
And Work with the Ranching Community to Close Roads That May Be Causing
Problems or Are Inappropriate and to Manage the Situation If We\'ve Got
Too Many People in Specific Areas. So We\'re Open, Absolutely Open,
Working with the Livestock Community.

R. Schmitt: Ok. Thanks, Henri. Thanks, Dave, for Your Fax. We Have a Fax
Here Now from Las Vegas, and it Deals with Air Quality. They Talk about
Las Vegas Already Being out of Attainment With the Air Quality
Standards, And She Says There Needs to Be An You a Appreciate of Urban
Boundaries and That They See High Extreme Levels of OHV Use In Urban
Areas. What I\'m Going to Suggest Is We Get Back in Touch with You
Directly and Deal with this Question. It\'s a Little Too Technical for
Us to Answer Because it Talks About Specific Standards with Epa and I
Don\'t Think We Can Answer it Here but We Will Try To Deal with That
Outside of This Forum. So My Last Fax, We\'ve Done Pretty Well on Most
of Them, This Will Be the Last One, and It\'s from Deb, and It\'s from
Arizona. The Question Is ‑‑ Why Are We Going to Develop New Standards
For OHV Use Versus Only New Guidelines for Management? All Programs
Should Be Using Our Three Rangeland Health Standards. Do We Need More
Standards for This Specific Type of Use? If So, Could We Have an Example
Of the Type We Are Thinking About? Robin?

R. Fehlau: Well, I\'m Curious If Deb Is Concerned about at One Point in
the Document, Specifically about Trail Design And Maintenance. We Talk
about Standards and Guidelines. And Those Standards and Guidelines Are
Not the Same Thing as the RAC Standards and Guidelines for Rangeland
Health Or, in Our State We Have a ‑‑ Our RAC Has Developed Standards And
Guidelines Specifically for Recreation. The Standards and Guidelines
They\'re Talking about Come from The Transportation Side, the
Engineering Side of BLM, Who Are Going to Develop Some ‑‑ It\'s Sort of
like Your ‑‑ How to Build a Road or How to Build a Trail and Those Are
the Standards and Guides That We\'re Specifically Talking about in That
Action under Roads and Trails. I\'m Not Sure If That Answers Her
Question, but I Was Worried That Some People Might Misinterpret That.

H. Bisson: There Definitely Is a Distinction Between the Two.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Robin and Henri and Thanks, Deb, for Your Question.
Deb Is a BLM Employee. So If this Wasn\'t Clarifying for You, Give Us a
Call and We\'ll Try to Answer it Specifically. That Kind of Ends Our
Interaction Through the Fax and The Telephone Lines. We Do Appreciate
All of Your Comments. Before We Close Things out by Again like to
Mention That BLM Will Accept Comments from the Public on the Strategy
until January 3rd, 2001. Comments from BLM\'s Constituents, Government
Agencies and Tribes Are Necessary to Help Us Finalize a Strategy and to
Make it Useful To the Field and the Public as It Is Implemented. Before
We Begin to Sign Off, I Want to Ask Each of Our Guests If They Have Any
Closing Thoughts and Comments, and Warren, I Am Going to Go Ahead And
Start with You.

W. Templeton: Once Again, I Would like to Thank You for Allowing Me to
Participate and I Look Forward to Seeing the Final Product. If Any of
You Have Any Specific Questions as Far as Law Enforcement Issues, You
Should Be Able to Contact Your Local Law Enforcement Officer in the BLM
Office or at the State Office Level and They Should Be Able to Help
Clarify Some Issues Also.

R. Schmitt: Robin, Do You Have Any Thoughts Coming from The Field Most
Recently Perhaps You Can Give Us a Field Perspective on How You Saw this
Go Today.

R. Fehlau: I Think That it Went Well. I Thought it Went Well. I
Appreciate Getting a Chance to Be Here and I\'m Looking Forward To
Taking a Greater Role in the OHV Program in Utah, and I Think We Have a
Big Job Ahead of Us But We Can Do It.

R. Schmitt: Thanks. Appreciate It, Robin. I Didn\'t Mean to Slight You,
Jim. I Know You\'re Still in the Field For Another Week or So. You
Don\'t Officially Come on Until next Week. But Please Give Us Your
Closing Thoughts If You Would.

J. Keeler: Lee from Susanville Brought Back to Me That RAC Meeting and
the Thing I Noticed Within California Is There\'s Four Different Sets of
Problems Just in One State and Four Different Solutions That Are Kind of
Coming up from Inside, and as I Look Around at The National Level, What
We Think Are Problems One Place, There\'s a Solution for Someplace Else.
So There\'s I Think Just in Beginning to Look at Solutions Instead of
Problems and Beginning to Look at Places Where Either We\'ve Had Good
Successes or Good Failures Kind Of with a Group of People at a National
Level We\'re Going to Really Start to Make Some Headway into Developing
a Far Better Management Philosophy ‑‑ Or Practice.

R. Schmitt: I Think That\'s True. And My Personal Feeling Is That This
Is Not an Easy Issue, Obviously. Off‑highway Vehicle Use Is a Very
Difficult Issue, Emotional Issue for a Lot of People, and We Hope to Use
the Comments We Get and We Really ‑‑ I Want to Encourage People to Be
Actively Engaged with Us to Try to Deal With the Management Issues and
To Come up with Solutions. Finally I\'d like to Turn to Henri, If You
Have Any Final Thoughts to Share with Us in Our ‑‑ and Our RAC Members.

H. Bisson: I Would like to Begin by Thanking Everybody Who Was Able to
Participate in the Broadcast Today and Sent in All The Faxes and the
Phone Calls. I Wanted to Mention a Few Things About the Strategy and
What It\'s Intend to Do Accomplish. There Are Five Primary Goals. One Is
to Identify Actions That Can Be Taken at the National Level to Identify,
Review and Clarify Our Policy and If Need To Do Work Toward Revising Our
Regulations. Our Second Goal Is to Provide Guidance to Our BLM State and
Field Offices Regarding Our Existing Regulatory Authorities And
Requirements So That They Can Identify and Address Issues Better on the
Ground. We Also Wanted to Ensure That We\'re Improving the Coordination
And Communication That We Have Between the BLM\'s National and Field
Level Offices Relating to Off‑highway Vehicle Management. We Also Wanted
to Make People Aware of the Financial and Human Resources That We\'re
Going to Need at the BLM\'s State and Local Levels If We\'re Really
Going to Improve Our Overall OHV Management. And the Last Thing I Want
to Say Is What We Want to Do Is Encourage Our BLM Managers to Use Their
Experiences and the Concerns and Comments and Suggestions of the Public
to Find on the Ground Solutions That Will Work. This Can Be Best Be
Accomplished By Working with the Public in Working with the RACs.

R. Schmitt: Thanks, Henri. Thanks to Awful Our Panelists Here Today Who
Joined Us. Again, We\'d like to Thank Everyone Who Helped Put this
Strategy Together So Quickly and We Want to Thank All of Our RAC Members
and Other Viewers Who Joined Us Today, Especially Those Who Called and
Faxed Their Comments to Us. We Appreciate Your Participation. Also Want
on a Personal Note I Want to Thank on Behalf of Everyone Here a Couple
Folks Behind the Scenes, Terry O\'sullivan from Arizona, Who Is Helping
Keep Us in Line and Suzanne Garcia from Utah, Who Is Also Back There
Making Things Flow Smoothly. I Also Want to Thank the National Training
Center Staff And the Contractors Who Are Here Today Running Cameras and
Doing Make‑up for Us. It Was a Great Support We Had From Them. Remember,
You\'ll Find the Draft Off‑highway Vehicle Strategy at www.blm.gov. If
You Would like Your Comments To Be Considered in the Development of the
Final Strategy, They Need to Be Submitted in Writing and Received at the
BLM Washington Office by January 3rd. For E‑mail Comments Please Send
Them to ‑‑ We\'d like to Remind All Satellite Downlink Coordinators to
Let Us Know How Many People from Your Office Watched Our Program and Now
We Did. You Can Use NTC\'s Automated Viewer Reporting and Evaluation
System at www.ntc.blm.gov/satnet. Or You Can Complete the Standard
Broadcast Viewer Roster and Fax It to NTC Immediately Following Our
Show. We Hope Our Program Has Given Our RAC Members a Better
Understanding of How the Final Off‑highway Vehicle Strategy Will Help Us
Improve the Management of Our Public Lands. Thanks for Watching and So
Long From Phoenix. For Me and for the Rest of the Panelists. Thanks,
Gang.

Announcer: to Help Your Office Participate in Future Telecasts, See the
BLM Satellite Downlink Guide and Visit the NTC Homepage on the World
Wide Web. NTC\'s Internet Address Is www.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of
this Program and Other NTC Broadcasts Are Available on the Homepage. For
More Information on Upcoming Distance Learning Events, as Well as
Traditional Courses, Call the Training Center at 602‑906‑5500. Or Visit
the Homepage. This Broadcast Has Been a Production of the BLM National
Training Center.