Tellico
Meeting in Asheville
November 19, 2007
We attended a meeting in Asheville, North Carolina with the Forest Service. Originally, this meeting was billed as the meeting they would tell us what their upcoming decisions would be regarding the Forest Supervisor orders that were published on September 17. In summary, these proposed orders are:
- Prohibiting motorized vehicles on Lower Trail # 2, Trail # 7, and Trail # 9
- Prohibiting winter-time motorized vehicle use on the Upper Tellico OHV Trail System from January 1 to March 31 each year
In short, according to the Forest Service, no decision has been made. They may announce a decision by December 1, but they may be delayed beyond that.
These actions would be in the form of a Forest Supervisor order that is "temporarily" in effect for one year. None of this is acceptable to us - hard experience with the Forest Service in other southern forests has shown us that most (if not all) "temporary" closures are forever. Whatever repairs or maintenance that they intend to do during the closure period will usually not get done due to one reason or another. We remain in close consultation with our lawyer on these issues.
For SFWDA, the attendees were Jay Bird (President), Gunnar Byrd, Rob Theurer, and Roger Theurer. For Blue Ribbon Coalition, the attendee was Greg Mumm. There were several Trout Unlimited (TU) attendees including Michael "Squeak" Smith and George Lane and DJ Gerkin for Southern Environmental Law Center. Deborah Walker was the facilitator for the Forest Service. Marisue Hilliard is the Forest Supervisor in North Carolina and she will be making the final decisions.
The Forest Service did not announce any decisions regarding trails lower 2, 7, and 9 or the winter closure. Furthermore, the participants did not agree on a statement of principles that the Forest Service had developed. We felt that the pre-written "statement" assumed problems exist that have never been proven (or even satisfactorily shown) to exist. TU would also not agree to any statement.
Note on Trail 8: Three bridges on trail 8 are closed due to sagging. Two bridges can be replaced with culverts and one bridge needs to be rebuilt. A section of trail 8 is closed from the bottom of the intersection with trail 9 to approximate where the old skidder (near turn to #10) is resting next to the trail. This means you cannot complete the loop on trail 8. We volunteered to do the work, but the Forest Service engineer seemed in no hurry to get the work done - maybe by next summer. Argh.
The rest of the meeting was similar to the previous Stakeholder meetings we have attended, where the Forest Service updated us on actions taken on their list of Tellico options:
Summary of status as of |
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| Short Term:
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| Longer Term:
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