6 replies to this topic

[windy]

Just trying to spread the word and bring to light some of what is at stake. This movie does a great job of getting that point across....

Ignorance is no excuse.

https://youtu.be/OGjnIG7puzY

[Happyjax]

Very distressing......

[LuckyDan]

It, as others on the Patagonia YouTube Channel are interesting, and I think well done for sure. Regardless of your stance on the issues brought up by this or other productions, the key is to keep an eye on what’s going on with whatever or wherever is important to you, learn something about the issue at hand and importantly, participate in the process and make your voice/viewpoint/thoughts known. One way IMO to efficiently do this, is join or support those organizations and associations that you think are like minded and representative of your viewpoints.

I will go out on a limb here suggest in addition to the above, take a minute and and invest a little energy in trying to understand the other side of an issue or proposal. IMO, those that can approach an issue in a collaborative fashion, at least initially, stand the best chance of seeing success with whatever the issue or proposal is.

Specific to the idea of privatization of public lands, don’t think that it’s limited to the Federal Lands. Oregon recently went through an attempt to sell off the Elliott State Forest. Two sales for a portion went through. I don’t know if the sales survived appeal. An attempt to sell the rest was postponed due to overwhelming displeasure from the public at large and pressure from both environmental and civic groups. I say postponed because while the plan was cancelled, no one on the Oregon State Land Board said they would never reconsider it.

Stay vigilant my friends....

Edited by LuckyDan, 22 December 2020 - 07:15 AM.

[Taku]

Thanks for the post and the issue. One other thing that is starting to occur is local governments claiming that they have a larger "right" to influence decisions on public lands projects. once again seeing that we need to "guarantee" a certain level of forest products from a national forest. State lands as was pointed out, are particularly susceptible to being sold off. Some states have sold most of the school trust lands they were given at statehood, and some have tried recently to buy back some realizing that they sold off some very valuable property for pennies. As you say, stay vigilant and stay involved.

[buckland]

It’s the birthday of Norman Maclean, born in Clarinda, Iowa (1902). He was a fisherman, firefighter, scholar, and teacher, but it is as the author of his autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, that he is best known. Just as he described in his book, Maclean grew up at the junction of two great trout rivers in Missoula, Montana, in a family that didn’t draw a clear line between religion and fly-fishing. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and his rowdy younger brother, Paul, like the sibling in the book, was in fact murdered under mysterious circumstances. Maclean did not publish the story of his last summer with his brother until he was in his 70s, but after it appeared in 1976, it very quickly became a classic of American literature.

 

After A River Runs Through It, Maclean wrote about a Montana wildfire that had claimed the lives of 13 firemen and smokejumpers decades before. Part mystery, part investigation, and part autobiography, Young Men and Fire (1992) would be Maclean’s final book, posthumously published two years after his death in 1990.

 

A River Runs Through It begins: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”

Edited by buckland, 23 December 2020 - 12:36 PM.

[AWG_Pics]

Taking a small step back, and keeping in mind the recent demolition of the coal fired Navajo Generating station, along with the soon closure of Valmy, we may be comforted by the irresistible and implacable working of nature in the Western USA. Too little water, expansive deserts and rough terrain will doom the fantasies of huge profits from western lands, public or not. With a few notable exceptions, very few of the investments in schemes to profit off of western lands are sustainable. The western frontier was declared to be closed around 1950.Since then it has been a 'rob peter to pay paul' economy, for the most part, while steadily drawing down the capital of natural resources. The Puebloan peoples eked out a few hundred years of civilization. It remains to be seen how long our constructs will last. But I have confidence that nature will roll right over us sooner or later.

 

It does not make me any less mad when I see another destructive development squatting on the corpse of what was a vibrant natural landscape.

[windy]

Those that are trying to “privatize” the land are only in it for short term profits and don’t really care about the destruction they cause in the name of it. They, as a whole, have no respect for the land believing that the land is there for whoever can get at whatever resources it has to offer