October 13th, 2009

Audio: Discussion of Mt. Hood Off Highway Vehicle Plan

In this ten minute audio file, Bark Hike Leader Mark Des Marets discusses the two Alternatives of the Mt. Hood OHV Plan for the Mt. Hood National Forest.

Discussion of Mt. Hood OHV Plan

Alternative 3 proposes 8 areas, with 325 miles of routes, and 69 miles of new construction. These 8 areas will be adjacent to the Salmon-Huckleberry, Roaring River, Badger Creek and Mt. Hood Wilderness Areas.

Alternative 4 proposes 3 areas with 100 miles of roads and only 9 miles of new construction. This Proposal is adjacent to no Wilderness areas.

Mark encourages people to get out into the forest and assist Bark in groundtruthing these areas in order to compile a better idea of the possible consequences of heavy OHV traffic.

"Bark in the last year has been gong out to all these spots and groundtruthing them and checking out what resources are there, what forests are there, what the ecosystems are like, the water, and how much damage is already there." If anyone wants to get involved in that, (groundtruthing) just contact Bark and we can train you how to do that.....you can go out with people who have already done it for a while and teach you how to do this kind of work. And that is how Bark works; the majority of Bark's labor comes from you, people who are concerned about the Mt. Hood National Forest....and want to get involved to help make the Forest Service make the right decisions."

Mark also discusses the power of those organizations lobbying for wider access to our public lands for these Off Highway Vehicles, also known as All Terrain Vehicles, or ATVs.

Given this power of the Wise Use Movement, Mark encourages citizens to take advantage of an opportunity to comment on this Plan through October 28th, 2009.

To facilitate this, Bark will be holding OHV Plan Writing Workshops on October 19th and October 20th in the Bark office.


More about Mt. Hood Off-Highway Vehicle Plan...