President Obama may declare San Gabriel Mountains a national monument

http://www.sgvtribune.com/environme...are-san-gabriel-mountains-a-national-monument

What do y'all think? Good or bad news for MTB?

 

According to this article on Modern Hiker, US Chief Forester Tom Tidwell stated that all motorized and non-motorized recreation would still be allowed. That's about as specific as it gets though.

 

The government can't manage what they already have.
Their typical plan is to develop wilderness and restrict visitors.
This cannot bode well for those of us who currently enjoy the freedom of hiking and biking in the hills.

 

Probably neutral to mtb as a practical matter.

The wilderness areas are already at the highest level of restriction and the monument designation mostly restricts things like mining or collecting.

I thinK this is mostly just civic boosterism. I don't think the park service would support the full park designation and the restrictions that come with it, and that's something that requires congress anyway. And there are interdepartmental rivalries to consider--transferring the land from usfs to nps would get testy.

 

trail building up there is now elevated to the level of a felony. not that illegal trail building isnt already, uh, illegal

 

I'm thinking it to be neutral as well. Fort Ord is a national monument and there's biking there.

Plus, there isn't a real issue with transfer as national monuments can be managed by other agencies like BLM or the USFS

 

Lots of other monuments allow biking. The concern I have, as I understand this process is that designating a National Monument would trigger a requirement to develop a new management plan for the monument within a certain number of years. There is always a risk during that process that we would lose access to more trails. The frustrating thing is we have just gone through such a process as the four SoCal National Forests were forced to revise their management plans after environmental groups won a lawsuit a couple years ago. That process has resulted in a lot more recommended wilderness, and also change from backcountry classification to backcountry non-motorized for significant areas. Every new effort to "protect" national forests seems to restrict use. In some areas the forests are getting loved to death (or outright abused) so the protection is warranted. But in reality what would go a lot further to protecting the forests is for funding to be restored to the Forest Service so they can actually do their jobs.

 

The County Board of Supervisors held a meeting regarding the National Monument/Rec area issue on Monday evening. Casey at Modern Hiker did a write up of the event, it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.

http://www.modernhiker.com/2014/09/...do-homework-on-san-gabriel-national-monument/