The True Story of the NibblersA Historical Commentary on Land Use
By Del Albright, Sustainable Motorized Recreation Advocate
By Del Albright
The "nibblers" are after your freedoms the same
way you eat an elephant – one bite at a time. "They" want to nibble
away at everything you hold precious if it doesn't fit in with their radical
liberal agenda. They have many names, but more importantly, they have influence
and are instituting daily changes in your life – that you may not like at all.
Check it out.
Let's take landuse and access to our motorized trails as an
example. If "they" don't like a trail we're doing, they will find an
endangered species, an invasive species, or some archeological site to use
against us. And they nibble. One bite
at a time is all it takes.
It's easy to succumb to the one-bite approach. It doesn't
seem like much if we give up a section of trail or re-route a trail over just
one itty bitty endangered frog. Right? Nibble. Then comes the arch site—another
nibble.
Anyway, you get the picture. There is always some nibbling
going on around our sports that include motors. So what do organizations and
groups do? Well, let's form a committee and study it. For sure, that is
government. But let's get into what happens with committees.
In this day and age, most resource-oriented efforts strive
to attain long-lasting results. Currently, "sustainable" is America's
most significant buzzword (especially with government and anti-access groups).
And who can argue with that – if we can't sustain it, we'll for sure lose it.
And the nibblers love that word. It's easy to throw up a
roadblock to show that something may not be sustainable. Then we have to study
it in committees – more.
Now to complicate things more, let's bring in organizational
turf battles and who's boots are filling with liquid. Sure, we can form a
committee and study it, but we go into it "walls up" and are ready to
fight to defend our turf, sometimes to the detriment of getting something
positive done. Personalities and egos set in.
Ok, no worries. Let's find cool names that sound very
important and problem-solving-like and keep studying them. But doesn't it look
like we're doing something if it's "in committee?"
California came to land use life on October 31, 1994, with
the loss of 8 million acres to the Desert Protection Act. Immediately we
started to form committees and groups to fix stuff.
1994: Land Use Network (LUN), the first significant land use
email and internet group.
1996: North American Motorized Recreation Council (NAMRC), a
national multiple-use motorized group.
1997: Resource Education Network (REN), CA's first multiple-use
group.
1997: Multiple Use Shared Trails Workshop (MUST), CA's first
hands-on multiple-use land use workshop.
1997: BLITZ 1997, a massive marketing effort to engage
motorized users nationwide under the umbrella of the LUN.
1999: Sierra Nevada Framework, CA forest plan amendment
efforts (stemmed from same folks in REN).
2003: Multiple Use Summit, CA's first organized gathering of
all aspects of recreational leaders in backcountry uses.
And I'm sure I left out a few. But my involvement started in
1981 when I completed a Master's Thesis in Coordinated Resource Management and
Planning (CRMP), trying to bring diverse interests together for a common goal.
CRMP was part of the founding principles for the start of the REN and NAMRC.
Now we have names like Cross-Jurisdictional Collaboration to Advance
Sustainable Recreation, Sustainable & Accessible Recreation, Responsible
Recreation, and so on. For example, in California, we implemented the
California Motorized Recreation Council (CMRC), a direct and state-specific
spin-off of NAMRC. But, while always hopeful, it never ends.
We
keep finding new names for the same idea with similar
slants/missions. SO WHAT??? Follow-ups and actions that accomplish
something are more important than having more meetings (and committees).
Committees produce reports. Reports get passed around and filed. But not enough
gets done to save trails or keep our sports alive. We MUST change that and ensure
whatever committees and groups we have working for us have the ability to get something done!
The
nibblers are winning, bite by bite. And it's all because we aren't doing enough
– we aren't engaged enough. We don't insist on more actions and less talk.
Further, we don't support our organized recreation groups enough to fight
back. Worse, we don't feel the gate closing on our butt – yet.
It is my humble opinion that, yes, we have more than enough
committees, and yes, we need to be part of them – to ensure we get ACTION out
of these cool-named entities that leave open doors for the nibblers. But we
need to bolster our organized recreation groups (who make up the committees) to
the point that our fight-back is strong, solid, and sustainable.
Allow me to say that again; we need to ensure our
fight-back is sustainable.
Join, donate, and volunteer your time to those organizations and groups you believe in to help keep the nibblers away from our dinner table.
This book gives you the whole story in shortcut form on how to save trails and keep our sports alive and well.
Get it here.HELPFUL LINKS:
DEL'S BOOKS (LAND USE, WILDFIRE, DEATH VALLEY, COWBOY POETRY, AND MORE)
WEBSITE (HOME PAGE)
PINTEREST (BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND MORE)
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
DEL'S ARTICLES (LAND USE, LIFE, WILDFIRE, VOLUNTEERISM, AND MORE)
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