Terry
With more than due respect, your memory is as bad as your math. I don't know what the heck you are talking about. You and I have never spoken by PM by phone or in person. The T&T group has never had the funding staff or pull to stop the BLM from doing what they darn well pleased. Nor have I ever been a successful financial consultant or an unsuccessful one for that matter. If the present manager is a female and has been there 8 years then the manager I speak of was clearly before her. Again Barstow BLM presented the Sperry Wash trailhead plan in 2000. (Now that I have returned home from the death in my family my notes clearly show it was posted west of the grade in first in 2000, 20001 and 2002. You do keep notes of your conversations with those that have never done you wrong don't you?) It’s still posted there to the best of my knowledge which was last season. Again please ask those who have never done you wrong by what Act of Congress was that done? Apparently the female manager wasn't there yet. I'll expect you to eat your own words publicly on this forum.
I could give a crap if there was ever funding for the trail head at Sperry. I give a crap that Bartstow BLM has felt and continues to feel (apparently including those have never done you wrong) free to post as wilderness west of the grade. Frankly it scares the heck out of me that you don’t know anything about where the wilderness is or by what Act of Congress it got there. If you expect people to stay out of wilderness GET IT POSTED RIGHT. Keep the fences from destroying what I enjoy most and that's the grade. Sperry Wash looks like a LA parking lot with all the posts and cable. BTW I also dune but am most active with the T&T group that I started apparently long before your time.
I'm sorry you feel that the only do'ers are those in YOUR group. You are very sadly mistaken but that's the one reason the greenies are so successful. It sickens me to see the trash that's left at Comp Hill and I have picked up a bit and towed a duner or two back to camp including a young child in Sperry Wash with a broken down quad that never should have been there alone and without water in the first place. Exactly how much trash have you picked up on the T&T grade? You won't see many railfans east or for that matter west of the grade as they are there to follow the Tonopah & Tidewater. If you choose to pick nicks it's duners that's are outside of the approved areas not railfans. Perhaps that’s a position you would prefer I take on Wednesday.
Previous loses....yes there have been a few:
The Tecopa ACEC
The post and wire 3 miles before you even get to that ACEC
Valjean Wilderness cutting the grade to Riggs
Wilderness posting on the grade south of the North Pole
The wilderness posting west of the Dumont Wye.
Yet even more post and in Sperry Wash
Wilderness posting west of the grade at Sperry
Wilderness postings west of cuts and north of the filled bridge.
But never mind Terry it will never happen to you and next time you attack someone please get your facts right. I stand corrected, your head is clearly not in the sand at the top of comp hill.
Eli
Eli, I will apoligize right here right now if that wasn't you that I had those conversations with. Negative people all seem to run together in my mind and no I don't keep notes on BS conversations that do no good for anybody.
As far as you being more involved in the T&T, I am sorrry but I am not and have no plans to be. i have enough on my plate at this time. However you came on a Dumont Dunes web site and told us to expect to get screwed. The truth is it sounds like you have been extremelly unsuccessful in your battles on the T&T and other areas of your interest. Maybe you should have asked the duners for help long ago and we could have all come together under one banner. I was not involved in the fight to keep Dumont open until about 7-8 years ago. Before that I was just like most and that is I just wanted to go duning and hang out with friends and have a good time. Fortunely I was asked to help in the operation of a fledgling group called Friends of Dumont Dunes. My focus has been there ever since. Keeping the CBD from closing the area due to a lizard and other BS attempts have been our focus.
I was also very lucky to be asked to join the TRT for Dumont and BLM as a OHV representive for the state of Nevada. Might have been because I was the only one who applied but then again where were you and why did you not jump on the chance to get closer to BLM and to try to right all the injustices you say hapened on your watch?
The BLM is going to continue to post signage and post and cable the area west of the T&T as directed by federal law. Not much you can do after the law is passed. Our best fight is before the law is passed by congress and signed by the president. That's why we are willing to work with the BLM and the surronding area iinterests to keep the balance of their interests and ours. Do I trust them, nope I learned a long time ago upon realizing how much politics are involved in a non political position. Will BLM screw us over, I doubt it as Barstow BLM needs Dumont to survive to keep that office open and operating. You see Dumont is the only well run fee demo operation of any of the Ca. OHV area's. We are used as a model for other dune/fee areas on how to retain the majority of the fee money instead of losing 37% to the vendors as they do in Glamis.
The encroachment west of the TRT and in the surronding areas including Sperry wash is a mix of duners, railheads as you call them and other people who either don't know or don't care about staying out of those areas and that is what brings us to battles like this.
It almost sounds like we are on the same team but totally on different coasts. I am sorry that you were unable to stop the Federal Goverment from closing out areas you didn't want closed but blaming BLM is like blaming the fire department for not saving the pad after the fire, BLM is a arm of the Federal goverment but it IS DIRECTED by Washington on what areas of concern they must close, manage and otherwise care for.
The Barstow area manager is a very reasonable person and in the long period of time I have had dealings with her she has always kept her word and has always had an open mind on things we brought before her. But you canot blame her for posting signs and cabling off closed areas that have been closed due to the Endangered Species act and other Wilderness actions that the CBD and others have successfully gotten passed. Maybe if you had reached out to CORVA, Blue ribbon Colition and other various land advocates you all may have been more successful.
And just so you know Randy Banis who is the chair of the DAC is a huge fan of the T&T and that whole area. I can tell you that he is extremelly well informed about what has happened out there for a very long time, well before I got involved. If you would like an introduction I would be glad to do that for you, he may be able to clear up some misconceptions that I believe you may have about the BLM and their role in all this. I am not a BLM lover but I am a fan of working with someone who has all the power instead of trying to hit them in the head with a hammer everytime I talk to them. Just a different approach I guess?
Again I think we may be closer on some issues then it looks like and I have no ill feelings towards you but again you came on a duners web site and tried to blame duners for the issues you have had in the past before most of us became aware of the issues and became involved in keeping DUMONT open.
I appreciate you picking up trash and helping out a child in the wash(something I hope we would all do) and I invite you to attend the 10th annual FoDD clean-up in March 2012 to see duners working hand in hand with BLM and each other. Just so you know it's the only free weekend of the year. I think that shows how much appreciation of BLM to our attempts to help them.
I closing I have read the Wild river Wilderness bill and am well aware of the 3 designations of the Armagossa river. You need to know that the 5 mile section starting 100 feet east of the Dumont dune crossing starts the "recreation " designation and it continues for 5 miles west of that crossing towards SR127. This again was specifically written into this law by Congressmen McKeon to protect that crossing.
If you want to try to blame duners as the cause of the intrusions into the closed areas on Wed. your more than welcome to however be very aware that your tactics may backfire and it will leave both groups, railfans and duners looking poorly. We need to come together in front of the people in Tecopa as a unified group of concerned OFF_ROADERS. Placing blame on one side or the other just does exactly what they want and have been successful in doing over the last many years when all this land was lost. We have to become one and stay that way to win against the true bastards of this issue not the duners and not the BLM but the Eco-Terroists that have to be stopped.
Again my apoligies to you if it was not you in those old conversations. Again it has been many years and many computers ago, so not all e mails and other notes have been saved or kept from unfotunetly being lost. A computer whiz i am not.
Just to make one last point many of my friends have names for me but be very aware i don't think anyone of them think I have my head anywhere but on my shoulders and my eyes/vision on the horizon of keeping Dumont and as much land open as I can.
Terry
PS. My condolences on the loss in your family. Having been thriugh that more than I care to think about.Ii know the pain and feel for you and yours. My best to your family in these difficult times.
TA