PUBLIC LANDS: Subcommittee to showcase government, recreational business partnerships
Kate Jacobs, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, June 24, 2013
A House Natural Resources subcommittee is slated to showcase successful public lands partnerships between governments and outdoor recreationists in a hearing this week that follows the Senate's recent public lands push.
The Public Lands and Environmental Regulation Subcommittee hearing on "Outdoor Recreation Opportunities on State, Local and Federal Land" will hinge on testimony from relevant business owners. Thursday's hearing will likely touch on some of the issues addressed in more than a dozen public lands measures the Senate passed last week and sent to the lower chamber (E&E Daily, June 20).
Subcommittee members will hear from Alexis Nelson, executive director of the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, which offers snowmobile activities and works with local groups to maintain Vermont's extensive trail network.
Management of snowmobiles and over-snow vehicles in federal parks and forests has in many cases been a difficult balancing act. At Yellowstone National Park, for example, it took more than a decade of lawsuits and multiple winter travel plans for the National Park Service to resolve disputes between environmentalists and snowmobile users (Greenwire, Feb. 22).
Conservationists have argued that these vehicles can harm the environment, foul mountain air, damage soils and plants and disturb wildlife, skiers and snowshoers.
Also scheduled to testify are Ron Potter, a retired recreation systems manager at Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources; two cycling industry executives, Ashley Korenblat, president of Utah's Western Spirit Cycling Adventures, and Greg Martin, director of Idaho's Wood River Bike Coalition; and Lynn Jackson, vice chairman of Utah's Grand County Council.
