Alex, you've made great summary points.
Option A is ideally the best solution for the OHV-ers, including mtn bikers. However, the Sierra Club, SUWA, Wilderness Society and all other anti-OHV groups are lobbying for Option B, which places the maximum restriction on OHV access......which also sets the stage for the next phase of their diabolical plan of locking up 9.4 Million Acres in Utah and calling it wilderness.
Option C is the enviro-extremists "compromise"
Option D is the OHV-er's "compromise."
Need more proof that they are never satisfied with enough?
The original legislation introduced in 1989 called for the Federal Government to designate 5.7 Million acres of Utah public land as Wilderness. This number is up to 9.5 Million acres under the current 2007 legislation, yet on SUWA and UWC websites, they're now calling for
11 Million acres to be declared Wilderness.
http://www.suwa.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6355&news_iv_ctrl=1162
By their own definition, land that has been used by man is not wilderness, yet their contradictory goal is to restrict existing access to these public lands, already in use by man (but only the Man with the OHV) and full of roads and trails so that it will someday.......perhaps in our grandkids grandkids lifetime, resemble wilderness once again.
http://www.uwcoalition.org/about/history.html
On another interesting note: look into the elected officials currently driving more OHV-restrictive legislation in the State of Utah, and note which states they are from and which Party they represent.
Here's a few you might recognize.......Dick Durbin, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Charles Shumer, Hillary Clinton.
Hmmm.....not 1 from Utah?
The full lists linked below.
http://www.suwa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=work_arwaCosponsors
http://www.suwa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=KempthorneLetter_Signers
http://www.wilderness.org/NewsRoom/Release/20070418c.cfm
Perhaps I could get one of Utah's Senators to sponsor a bill that declares all public land in Illinois and New York, Wilderness Study Areas.......so that 500 years from now, it will look like it did, 500 hundred years ago.:twak:
SUWA's view on the Moab RMP
http://www.suwa.org/site/DocServer/RMP_Final_2Pager.pdf?docID=2121
The BLM has also left enough verbage unclear in this RMP that it will beg attorneys (which SUWA and Sierra Club employ full-time) to challenge the definition in the future and sway toward more closures, as they have in the past.
When the BLM is sued, public tax dollars are used to fight the enviro-litigators to keep public land access open, yet these enviro-extremists cannot be sued for leveraging the BLM to restrict equal public land access, because they are "non-profit." This law needs to change, and their ability and motivation to leverage policy through the Judicial system would end.
I don't feel guilty for being human and using the Earth, that God created for the use of man, in a respectful manner. Tread Lightly.......