Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

General discussions on hiking in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest
chrisca
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by chrisca » March 11th, 2018, 7:00 pm

justpeachy wrote:Thanks to the costs of all the wildfires it doesn't seem like the Forest Service has extra resources to put towards trails. They spent more than $2 billion on fighting wildfires in 2017.
Yes. There is no "Service" in the Forest Service. If they keep going with fire management the way they are now, pretty soon there will be no "Forest" either.

Webfoot
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by Webfoot » March 11th, 2018, 8:26 pm

chrisca wrote:There is no "Service" in the Forest Service.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/jokes/the-tr ... /81594671/ ;)

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Guy
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by Guy » March 11th, 2018, 8:46 pm

justpeachy wrote:Thanks to the costs of all the wildfires it doesn't seem like the Forest Service has extra resources to put towards trails. They spent more than $2 billion on fighting wildfires in 2017.
True that, yet the budget for paying people to sit in cars all day at trail heads and state parks seems to be unlimited!

I called up USFS Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area the week before last asking for some information on what they had spent so far on this and what was the projected budget going forward. They were a bit surprised by the question but promised to get back to me with the numbers. I'm still waiting!!
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Water
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by Water » March 11th, 2018, 9:47 pm

to set the table, i don't mind what so ever helping towards a collective. And I never expect to see such data, but I would love to know what the +/- is on amounts spent keeping fires from buring homes/businesses located on national forest/near national forest.. and the average value of those homes vs amount spend on any individual fire.

Sometimes it seems like the FS is absolutely under the gun to keep fires from hitting folk's homes in places that should have all expectations of being engulfed in a forest fire..

I suppose one could analyze the costs for a huge grassland fire like in 2015(?) in SE oregon with about zero population density. A wilderness fire in difficult terrain with zero population density, and fires in wilderness/NF that border homes and businesses.

Only a hunch, i will concede if i'm way off base on the line of thought. And to reiterate, I'm more than willing to help/be ok with resources spent in a 'socialist' sense for the help/protection/betterment of all, but by the same token I would want stringent regulation about development in fire risk areas. Willing to be corrected, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot of fire regs if you want to build your dream cabin in the middle of the NF on some private parcel, just going off perception, haven't had the oppo to do so myself ;)

Bosterson, yeah at this point I'm ready for a group like Bark is for FS logging dev, and Wilderness Watch is for wilderness preservation, for a non-profit org to be the Access/privatization/outsource police for NF/BLM/NP lands.
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justpeachy
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by justpeachy » March 12th, 2018, 5:55 am

Water wrote: I never expect to see such data, but I would love to know what the +/- is on amounts spent keeping fires from buring homes/businesses located on national forest/near national forest.. and the average value of those homes vs amount spend on any individual fire.
I don't know their collective value, but 33% of all homes are in the urban wildland interface.

I managed to find an article I remember reading about this last year:

Why fighting wildfires often fails -- and what to do about it
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-fighti ... -about-it/

According to the article more than a 100 million Americans now live in -- or near -- forests and grasslands that can erupt in flames.

This is interesting:

Robert Bonnie: The federal government isn't in the business of land use. That's really done at the local county or municipal level. And the decisions that are made there have huge consequences for the American taxpayer, because we will spend more money, and today are spending more money firefighting, because of where those houses are on the landscape.

Steve Inskeep: Private property owner buys land, gets permission from the county or whoever to build a house, and the federal government ends up getting the bill to try to protect that house?

Robert Bonnie: There's no question that we're spending more on the federal-government side firefighting today because of houses in the landscape that we had nothing to do with approving.

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Water
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by Water » March 12th, 2018, 12:48 pm

sigh.. thanks for that Cheryl, that kind of confirms my thoughts/fears. I wasn't trying to place blame on FS or on people who live in the wildland interface, but that makes more sense how the situation evolved. Would still need to know more details to really know if that's a large part of the driver behind the FS expenditures, but more than once I've read inciweb reports about allowing something to burn, or not worrying about turning a fire back on itself if it's in a wilderness, etc. But protecting property/structures pulls out all the stops, and I imagine the costs escalate quickly. Like the difference between preventative medicine and keeping a 90 year old with multiple chronic/terminal issues alive on life support for a few months.
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retired jerry
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by retired jerry » March 12th, 2018, 12:53 pm

that's no fun

better to blame it on incompetent FS employees, if they just use common sense all problems would be easily solved :)

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Water
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by Water » March 12th, 2018, 3:36 pm

The FS can burden plenty of due criticism without needing to be blamed for anything, they're more than capable of being responsible for mismanagement.
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retired jerry
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by retired jerry » March 13th, 2018, 5:31 am

The higher you go in the FS, and above, the more criticism can be made of management

The highest level to criticize is the people that vote for congress and president :)

chrisca
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Re: Dog Mtn. Permit System Public Participation?

Post by chrisca » March 13th, 2018, 12:24 pm

Bosterson wrote:Thank you, I've been trying to make this case about TKO for a few years. Per the "public participation" angle, it does seem like we're about due to have someone found an access based advocacy group that would aim not to do work for the FS, but rather to get the FS to actually do the work it's supposed to be doing, as well as preserving access to public lands without (unnecessary) fees or quotas. Obviously the NWFP is BS; this Dog permit system is also BS inasmuch as they apparently have instituted it without consulting local stakeholders (thanks for speaking up, WTA!) and they're not solving the "problem" they claim (why not just crack down on illegal parking on SR 14?), nor are they addressing the issue of opening other closed areas that could be used to disperse crowds.
I agree wholeheartedly. Groups that organize volunteers and partner with the FS are pressured to cave to the agency when it overreaches in order to keep tensions down and have a good working relationship. We need a group that represents hiker needs and isn't put in a compromising position as is happening with our existing set of nonprofits. We are here precisely because we haven't focused on access. We've instead tried to "be helpful" and in the process enable the ongoing excuse-making from the agency.

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