Public business should be done in public

Editor’s Note: This letter was addressed to Dennis Jaeger, Forest Supervisor, Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest in Laramie. The Saratoga Sun requested permission from the author to print the letter.

Mr. Jaeger:

I am disappointed by your blatant effort to minimize public input into this plan. Your local ranger has stated there will be no open public meetings and it is her intent to issue a decision by June 1st with implementation this summer. There has been no effort to contact those citizens in Laramie and Cheyenne who are also affected.

You are public servants and the public’s business should be done in public. Placing a 30-day comment period in the middle of winter does not allow any public inspection of the roads and conditions which might warrant closure of 221 miles of road and the effective loss of another 23 miles.

Due to your imposed time constraints, I must stand opposed to implementation of any portion of this proposal until such time as I have the opportunity to personally view the proposed roads and intelligently comment on the specific effects of this closure. Specific area of concern is the closure of 261. Your document only count the closure of 2.5 miles. This closure effectively removes an additional 23 miles of road. This road is of critical access for the west side of Kennedy Peak for search and rescue as well as fire protection. This will increase the response time from Saratoga by an estimated 1.5 hours.

I stand firmly opposed to the creation of ORV use only roads. The USFS catch phrase this year is “user-created roads”. The proliferation of these in the past 15 years has been a direct result of the increased use of “ORV” type vehicles. Specific examples of this is the north and west side of Pennock Mountain, Barrett Ridge and Ryan Park.

The stated reason for those new roads is to allow under-age drivers to have a place to play. This will create a dramatic increase in injuries as well as greater impact to the resource and encourage use of these machines by non-licensed children.

I have not seen any of these roads which were created by 4-WD trucks or “jeeps”. My research has found no resource advantages to allowing ORV type vehicles in lieu of jeeps and 4-WD vehicles.

This document does not address the greatly increased impacts to those remaining areas which may still be available for use by the general public.

When the Hayden District closed the roads along the Hog Park and Blackhall Mountain Road, usage of the remaining roads was dramatically increased and forced more people to concentrate into the much smaller areas. I have witnessed as many as nine (9) camps located at the end of the remaining roads.

In closing, I would request the withdrawal of this plan and delaying any decision-making until the following provisions are met.

First - Open public meetings to be held in those communities most affected, specifically Saratoga, Encampment, Elk Mountain and Laramie.

Second – Sufficient time allowed for actual on-site inspection by members of the public.

Third – Re-open the 30-day comment period after this time to allow for any additional public input.

Respectfully,

Bradford C. Cary

Saratoga