What mechanism would possibly make it otherwise?
Their not going to say "OK! Gigs up, you found us dangit!" and all walk out of the woods.

I like the mystery of it and hope they never find a BF. Some of the shows on tv I worry are overly researching him. Like how some recent shows have pretty much made the Loch Ness stories into jokes. And it seems nobody believes Nessie might exist after a few expeditions on the lake with sonar turned up nothing. I think what if BF is real and there a lots of them. Are they apes? Are they neanderthral types? Are they half ape half human? It would be sad if they were fully discovered then killed off after existing for so long especially if they were something special and not some escaped orangatan. I fear man would kill them all just like they tend to kill everything else off.

OK, and this is USFS land? If so, then there is a written document that justifies their management decision. If you can't easily get it with a phone call to your local ranger district headquarters, then you certainly can with a Freedom of Information Act request.

You accuse the biologists of wanting a private playground, but isn't that what you're after too? You hike the area and maybe you are extra careful to stay on trails or whatever, but maybe the 100s of other folks who hike there aren't so cautious. Maybe all that foot traffic causes erosion in the stream, and that's been shown to be a serious detriment to the toads. One good apple can't unspoil a bushel of rotten ones. Sometimes our professional land managers are forced into unpopular decisions because it is their only option to protect the resource they are mandated to protect. Cut them some slack instead of jumping to conspiracy theories or cynically assuming that government employees are willfully at odds with the public.

Of course, this is a general message for the board - your toad example is just a good illustration.

From the "environmentalists" I've met in Washington, they'd like to put cages up around cities, and keep the humans in them. Save the world from humans all together. With all that self-guilt eating at them, I wonder that they bother getting up in the morning, seeing as they are human too.

Just a suggestion to Bob Z.(or anyone really). You seem like a pretty well informed naturalist and know the area really well and probably are as interested in its being managed properly. Why not give the naturalists a call and see if you could volunteer to help? It might turn out that for some reason they aren't interested but I've worked in wilderness in a volunteer capacity and if qualified naturalists are interested in working with the biologists there they are sometimes willing to get folks involved and in many instances it's part of their policy to do that. The qualifications are not necessarily confined to formal training in the subject but trust and a willingness to learn is. It can sometimes be a lot of fun too. Anyhow, just a thought. Cheers.

They better exist.

I have 125,000 BF slippers made in Thailand on order, size 18.

I'm sorry Saskeptic, but I could write a book on this subject using first hand experiences only and most of it would agree with what Bob Z. posted. I've seen everything from active Spotted Owl nests torn out of trees to meet the USFSs' desired study results to streams that were once logging skid trails being labeled critical "pristine" spawning habitat. I could go on and on. And it frequently comes from pretty high up the totem pole as in Forest Supervisor.

Yes, there is a written document concerning their management decision but more often than not it rationalizes that decision rather than justify it. I have fought them on more than one occasion and have always won. I even beat the BLM in federal court.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all Federal Land decisions are bad, in fact, I think the majority are good but there definately is an underlying agenda and that agenda is "keep people out".

When you know they're wrong (I do have a degree in forestry), you can fight through the established legal channels and win but I also know of people that take the law into their own hands.

Personally, I think the Federal Land managers need to be under greater scrutiny, maybe an elected board of directors or something along those lines.

Right now though, my only concern with the USFS is getting them to pay me- they're a month behind on my current contract payments and nobody cares. They get their paycheck whether their contractors are being paid properly or not. But that's my problem.

Have fun, Norcal

A perfect world to them is a world without all of us.

I don't think so....I think they like their "peekies" and have demonstrated curiosity about us. In lots of reports we would never see them if they weren't trying so hard to see us! Many "encounters" (if not most) are initiated by them and not us.....

I think for the Big Guy a world without hikers to freak out and campers to mess with would be no fun at all....


Edit to add...oops...I re read and realized you are talking about the environmentalists and not the bigfeets...oh well...I still stand by my statement...

I for one would love that BF is finally officially found, tagged and classified so it can be given whatever protections reserves, etc it may require, the same goes for all similar cryptids, so no I do not think that the Mistery being solved would be a bad thing. Besides there is plenty of mysteries yet to be found around the next corner if not in this planet in the far reaches of the cosmos to keep us busy for generations to come...

Hey norcal, sorry I missed this one from a week or so ago . . .





I guess what I'm having trouble digesting - and this from the perspective of someone who used to work in state conservation back in the day - what is the source of the "keep people out" agenda? If it's rabid environmentalism, then why knock owls out of trees? Certainly during the Bush Administration the enviros did not have the upper hand on Forest policy decisions, shouldn't that have opened them up more than locked them up?

I don't doubt that there are lousy, illogical, and hurtful decisions made from time to time. I'm just trying to grasp some pattern recognition here.

Having spent considerable time working in regions where spotted owls, logging, wilderness land use and federal land management are big issues, I'd add that the sociological landscape is at least if not more complex than the ecosystems that exist within our diverse wild lands. I know wilderness devotees who are totally imbued with the "people are a curse on the earth" ethic and beyond that do what they can to advance that even when it comes to doing what might seem totally contradictory, even to destroying a USFS study plot so that no more feds come in under the misguided notion that it's best left "unknown". Totally crazy, agreed, but it does exists. It is also a distinct minority. Just as the "pave the earth" crowd are fringe sentimentalists for all their bluster about freedoms or the constitution, a bare minimum of which they claim to have some allegiance. I also know that some biologists will tear down nests of Barred Owls which are becoming a problem for the Northern Spotted Owls. I'm not sure I could tell the difference,and have heard that even the biologists have to observe over time to make sure and they are concerned they could be seeing hybridization between the two closely related species. Barred owls have been known, if I recall, to kill and take over nests from Spotted Owls. What Norcal Logger saw, I don't doubt, but it's reality is subject to some speculation. I'd want a far more detailed knowledge of the specific situation before making any wide judgement on just what each specific incident means.
As to the use of the word "pristine", there's no reason an old skid road created over a small spawning stream might be considered pristine again once it has had old chokers and cables and empty jerry cans pulled from withing its drainage, functionally recovered. Pristine does not mean it's never been altered except in the jargon of those who are looking for an issue to argue over. Pristine means it is in its unmodified natural state, which, depending on the feature to which one is referring, is not that hard to return to once the silt levels, shade cover and large woody debris is returned to what is required to function. Of course if one is referring to the entire forest, well old growth climax forests as they exist cannot be hurried but are a far cry from small scale spawning streams which can come and go as the forests shed branches or have natural landslides. Some people define pristine as "untouched by the hand of man"...and then add "ever"..but those who are in that school are becoming aware of the role that disturbance plays particularly out west and few hold on to the old notion of everything is best only when in climax stage and eternally unchanging. Again, I also know that managers using strategies for their own desired outcomes will interpret features such that they achieve those goals. It's human nature and expected. Increasing the land managers ability to double check and do more indepth study could alleviate that but budgetary cuts and other cuts don't ususally allow for much of it.
For all the concern over the last administration's percieved threat to the health of and access to the public lands, the last 10 years have seen the federal land agencies become more responsive to public demands including increase wilderness protections and increased access for lots of other activities, recreational and extractive, which puts a lot of pressure on the resource managers, many of whom got into the environmental field precisely because they don't like the pressure of office work and admin....ironic, ain't it? The rhetoric that goes with the public discussion seems to be bleed over from the sad spectacle of our press as it's being framed and mangled by the media and you can take your pick as to which side of the melee you wish. The media has one intention only: to get you so frothy over any issue that you simply have to stay tuned, as they sell your eyeballs to their advetisers. Fortunately there's a cure; they're called books, read as many as you can and as widely diverse in subject matter as you can tolerate and you'll find you have a far better and more rational grip on issues that the eyeball rolling clowns on cable or down at the coffe shop.
The instances where public lands are withdrawn from public access exist, but there's no single explanation or cause one can blame, are typically for good reasons (not all of which all will agree upon), and can hardly be said in any honesty to be anything like an attempt to create personal wilderness paradises for beaurocrats. Having been a wild lands beaurocrat from time time to time, I can only say "I wish".