If you go to ONF you have to become involved now!!!!!!

I just received this e-mail from a good friend. Please get involved...

I had a good meeting at the festival today. The Florida Black Bear Scenic By-way is working to become a National Highway. They are not hiding this fact. They also want to take over/work with the ONF to shut it down to all but "acceptable" forms of recreation.

The making of trailheads off of SR40 makes the areas those trails are in part of the Scenic Highway; this could potentially mean the whole of the ONF. Especially if the ONF dangles the expansion of trails to the ORV/OHV crowd! If one trail has a trailhead off of SR40, and it connects to several other trails, all those other trails that connect off of that one are "linked" to the SR40 trailhead, and therefore part of the Scenic Highway.

This is the stuff the Wildlands Project is all about. I know that you might not have the time to read about the Wildlands Project. In a nutshell, the Wildlands Project is the baby of Dr. Reed Noss, professor of Environment issues at UofF. The main objective is to have core areas of animal populations where no human activity occurs. Then outer cores where limited human activity occurs, then areas where humans live. The radical extreme is to flip that, and make humans live in core areas only and the animals have the rest of the lands.

Florida is fast becoming that testing ground. This Scenic highway would definately give the WP people their first step towards aquiring a core area preserve for animal, pushing people out. The fact that they are not really hiding their intent makes me believe they are secure in their knowledge that not many folks have stopped other Scenic highways being designated in Florida and feel confident (arrogant) that they will have no real opposition to this.

I am sending this to a couple of folks that need to understand, this is much more serious than ONF closing a few trails. This will effect the whole of recreation in the ONF forever. If we do not stop this Scenic Highway now, we will lose ONF for good, and give the rest of the country a blueprint on how to shut down all forms of public recreation in all National and State Parks and Forests.

It is up to us folks. This will make or break the history of recreation in ways those in California can only dream about! Rusty, George, I am counting on you guys to help me. I knew there would be fights to keep public access open throughout the state, but I never thought it would be this big, or this important! The ramifications of what this will do to public access/recreation throughout our nation and world boggles the mind! While our boys are fighting for freedom overseas, we are fighting to keep it here at home as well. I can't/won't let them come home and find all the National and State Parks and Forests closed to them! They, we, deserve better than that!

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