August 11, 2011 in Outdoors

Landers: Colville National Forest meeting made irrelevant

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Amy Sinisterra photo

Rich Landers, Spokesman-Review outdoors editor
(Full-size photo)

Rudeness has been stifling the Colville National Forest meetings set to inform the public about proposed revisions to the forest’s management plans.

The meeting at Colville two weeks ago was, as one Spokane man put it, “a freak show” of conspiracy theorists who essentially commandeered the evening with insolence.

They twisted the meeting to profess tangent views such as outdated private-property-rights takeover hysteria and misinformation about the Yellowstone-to-Yukon wildlife corridor concept – which is just that:  a concept.

And by the way, what does it have to do with an informational meeting about Colville National Forest plan revisions?

The effort turned out to be a waste of time because of loud people demanding answers to questions not relevant to the meeting and in a forum where no answers could be given.

The meeting hijackers were just as obnoxious but a lot less entertaining than PETA wrapping a naked lady in fake fur to get attention.

The Forest Service staffers conducting the meetings can’t even respond to such tripe. It’s not in their jurisdiction.

The meeting bullies might as well go blow off their mouth’s at the next PTA meeting, where their issues would be similarly irrelevant.

The Colville Forest meetings are about explaining the forest plan, from grazing and timber management to wilderness proposals. Nothing more.

The problem with rude people is that they give the impression they represent a larger portion of the public than they actually do.

They do this by repulsing and repelling decent people who just want to be informed and make constructive criticism.  Many people simply walked out of the Colville meeting, I’m told. 

Let’s insist the Forest Service and elected officials recognize this and pay more attention to the thoughtful comment that will be trickling in. 

Blowhards to blowdowns: A November storm left a nasty surprise for Forest Service trail crews heading out in the Blue Mountains this summer.

“There’s more timber down this year than I’ve seen in the 30 years I’ve been on trails,” said Rich Martin, trails coordinator for the Pomeroy District and a large chunk of the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness. “We were averaging 50 downed trees per mile.

“On the trail from Teepee Trailhead to Oregon Butte, we had to get a fire crew in to help or we’d have never got the three miles cleared to get the lookout (staffer) in there.”

Hikers who think the blowdowns are a hassle can at least be relieved that they weren’t the contractor who sealed a deal with the Forest Service to clear the trails – before the big storm.

“One poor contractor bid the job on the Wenaha River trail last year and came in and couldn’t believe the mess the winter left him,” Martin said. “But he had some strong boys with him and they just pulled out of there this week.”

Martin reported the Wenaha River trail is cleared out and there’s been a lot of other reconstruction work. The river trail, which starts near at the Grande Ronde River near Troy, Ore., is free of snow earlier than most places. It was particularly popular even with Western Washington hikers this year.

“The snowpack kept them from going anywhere else for a long time,” Martin said.

“But we couldn’t ride a horse across the river until late July. The river was high that long, and the water just kept coming and coming.”

Washington waterfowling: Duck and goose hunting in Washington this fall will be roughly the same as last year under the season adopted last week by the state Fish and Wildlife Commission approved.

Statewide duck hunting season will be open Oct. 15-19 and from Oct. 22-Jan. 29.

A special youth hunting weekend is scheduled Sept. 24-25.

Special limits for hen mallard, pintail, redhead, scaup, canvasback, goldeneye, harlequin, scoter and long-tailed duck will remain the same.

Goose hunting seasons vary by management areas across the state, but most open Oct. 15 and run through January 2012.

Details on the waterfowl hunting seasons should be available by today on the WDFW website.

Women on the fly: Wade aside men – more women are likely to be hip deep in your favorite fly-fishing river soon.

Fly-fishing clinics specifically for women ages 12 and older are being organized by the Kelly Creek Fly Casters in Lewiston. The clinics include an evening session followed by an overnight weekend camp and a follow-up on the water.

Details: kellycreekflycasters.org

Contact Rich Landers at (509) 459-5508 or email richl@spokesman.com

Nine comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  RedCedar on August 11 at 5:29 p.m.

  I assume this is an editorial, and I appreciate the frustration with the conspiracy theorists, but I do think they need to be given logical explanations as to why their conspiracy theories are wrong, rather than simply dismissing them as “freaks”. Everybody who uses public lands has seen roads, campgrounds, and trails closed for no obvious reason, or for reasons that make no sense. Even those who try to work within the system find it very hard to discover when the public comment period is for any given administrative action, and to believe that their comments will make any difference.

  For every “kook” who thinks the Forest Service is part of a UN conspiracy to turn this part of the world into a “biosphere preserve” and ban the people who live there from storing more than 2 weeks worth of food (yes I’ve heard that several times), there are at least another dozen who simply think that the USFS, BLM, DNR, USFWS, IDL, and the rest of the alphabet soup are going to do whatever they damn well please regardless of what the public thinks of it. These are the people who do deserve a straightforward explanation of where and when their comments really do matter, what the purpose of this particular hearing or meet-n-greet is, and most importantly WHY the more far-out conspiracy theories are wrong. Nobody is convinced, and their paranoia is only stoked, when they’re told, “you’re a idiot if you believe thus and so”.

  I remember some years ago there was a meeting up in Wauconda to discuss who-knows-what, but along the same lines as it sounds like was going on here. There were the conspiracy theorists talking about biosphere reserves, forcing the local residents out, UN takeovers, food storage restrictions, unmarked black helicopters, etc. I wasn’t at the meeting, but a friend of mine was. The Seattle P-I, which was still actually a newspaper back then, sent a reporter to cover this meeting. He wrote that among other things there were “skinheads” at this meeting. As it turned out “skinheads” consisted of exactly one “skinhead”, my friend, whose hair had fallen out because he was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer which eventually killed him. This is how these stories get out of line.

• 

  gb333 on August 11 at 6:39 p.m.

  Whats worse than a right winger or a liberal?

  A right wing liberal.

• 

  ginniet on August 11 at 8:39 p.m.

  “The meeting bullies might as well go blow off their mouth’s at the next PTA meeting, where their issues would be similarly irrelevant.”

  The plural of mouth is NOT mouth’s! Even spell check should have caught that!

• 

  metaline on August 11 at 8:54 p.m.

  Rich,

  I was not at the meeting and so I cannot comment on “Kooks”. I hope you’re not referring to anyone and everyone who has a different viewpoint that yours.

  As someone who was born and raised in the Colville National Forest let me give my two cents. I know what a lot of the concerns of the people in Northern Pend Oreille County.

  1. Two years ago, PUD and the Forest Service came up with a plan to breach the dam at the Sullivan Creek millpond. That dam has been there for about 100 years. You won’t find more than a handful of locals who agree with the decision. Part of the rational is for bull trout spawning. How do they expect the Bull Trout make it that far “uphill” to the millpond. How do they expect to restore the population in a river now teaming with small mouth bass and northern pike? Another part of the puzzle with the input and agreement with a white water raft group that isn’t even based in Washington?

  2. A large number of roads have been closed to vehicular traffic for either grizzly bear habitat or woodland caribou habitat.
  It’s frustrating to be told that roads we have had access to our whole adult life are now off limits. In the Hall Mountain area roads are closed for Woodland Caribou habitat. The forest service readily admits that there have never been caribou in that area yet they close it off. And now that the gray wolf is taking up residence, do they realistically think the caribou herd won’t be decimated?

  3. Now they come along and are expanding the Wilderness areas that will further hinder our access to the forest.

  4. One big reason for the mistrust is the feeling that the outcome of the meetings are already a foregone conclusion. The public input is never a factor.

  I do not agree with meeting hijackers. I believe in civil discourse. It is time though that the forest service actually listens to the people affected and not so much to outside interests.

  I didn’t even mention the new shoreline regulations that they are going to implement that will double the setback from bodies of waters for private propery owners.

• 

  RedCedar on August 11 at 11:24 p.m.

  Thank you metaline. Now we know what the issues are, what the meetings were about, and what is upsetting even moderate and reasonable people. All of that is information that I would have been good to see included in the original article, instead of focusing on the emotional side of it.

• 

  metaline on August 12 at 8:06 a.m.

  My last point could be unintentionally misleading. The forest service is not part of the new Shoreline plan. When i speak of “they” I am referring to people not immediately affected by the decisions that are made. It is very frustrating.

  It’s a feeling of “fixing what ain’t broke” in order to justify a job position. :)

• 

  richl on August 13 at 8:19 a.m.

  Lots of good comments and indeed, there are many issues … some of which were detailed in my Sunday story the previous week. But the bottomline is that none of them could be addressed in the circus atmosphere that was created at the Colville meeting. That’s my point.

• 

  metaline on August 13 at 9:39 p.m.

  I didn’t read your Sunday column so I’m not sure where you stand on the issue. It would be nice if you could come up here and talk to the people most immediately affected by decisions made by the forest service. We would love to have our voices heard.

• 

  Edwame on August 16 at 4:48 p.m.

  What is unclear to me is if Rich was at the meeting he wrote about? If it is second hand information it loses its objectivity in many cases.

  Good, constructive comments by metaline and RedCedar.