Dear Editor:
Ivan Messingers commentary in the Aug. 23 Journal brought to light some of the images the public has of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the new Colorado Parks and Wildlife. They are the are the ones running the Forest Service/BLM on the Dolores public lands. I remember sitting through Forest Service meetings in the 1980s and being told the goals was to close 10 percent of all the forest roads each year until there were road densities of no more than one road per square mile.
The San Juan has over 777,000 acres designated as wilderness and roadless areas. With more than 30,000 new roadless acres designated in the new state plan, this will put over 1,000,000 acres closed to roads, mineral extraction or exploration, fwood cutting etc.
Since the studies that you quote from the 1980s, you have closed all these roads. So that makes the gospel 25 year-old-studies obsolete.
Do you think it possible that the elk are stressed because the hunts start mid-August and they are hunted until mid-November? Do you think when the elk are hunted in one hunt unit and move to another unit, that they feel any safer, getting hunted in another unit? Do you feel bicycles interrupt the breeding habits of deer during the rut? Have you looked at the bicycle trail densities in Phils World bicycle area. I can assure you bicycles scare the deer out of Phils area during the rut in fact all the time.
Spend a little time in the field, doing some PR work , talking directly to the hunters and forest users. You could even build some confidence with the public and not have to take all those law enforcement officers to public meeting with you.
Mike Hopkins
Cortez
Via e-mail
