Thank You, President Carter
THANK YOU, PRESIDENT CARTER
ROUND-UP
No victory celebration yet: Off-road motorcycles are involved in an undeclared war, one that will continue for at least the forseeable future. We can’t celebrate winning because it’s a long way from being won.
We can report a major battle and a major victory.
This is a political war, involving public use of public, or maybe government owned, land. Like anything else political, the struggle took place in a murky flow of words, hints, evasions and denials.
It began last March. A man who works in the snowmobile industry has a friend who works in the government industry. The friend told the snowmobiler that there was then circulating among the various federal energy and conservation people a draft of an amendment to an earlier Presidential order.
In basic terms, the original executive order said that where and if there was proof of permanent damage to public lands, recreational vehicles would be banned from those lands. Few could quarrel with that.
The amendment would declare public lands closed unless and until somebody could prove that use of vehicles on that land would not result in permanent damage.
In other words, Yes would be amended to No.
The problems would be virtually insurmountable. Off-road people would have to have a complete legal network just to be able to arrange for the hearings, the proof, etc. And how can you prove a negative? How can one show that something won’t happen?
Mind, this was a leak. Nasty things, leaks. When the government wants to test the public pulse, so they’ll know what they can get away with, they allow soft news to seep into public.
They got a firm reaction. The snowmobile man knows people in the motorcycle business. He passed the leak along and the motorcycle people shared it with each other. The manufacturers called each other, the motorcycle press told each other, there was a cross-over from industry to press to and from dealer organizations. The response was instant and immense.
Cycle News published letter forms and addresses. The American Motorcyclist Association did an emergency mass mailing, to tell all AMA members what was afoot and how and where to register their feelings. The employees at Yamaha’s U.S. headquarters sat down and wrote letters, 600 of them, in one session.
There still was no official word of anything in the works. All the press could learn was that there was a draft, part of President Carter’s energy plan. We heard there was a draft, then that there were several drafts.
Then, thanks to officeholders in states with large areas of public lands, and thus large numbers of voters involved in offroad biking, trucks, Jeeps, snowmobiles, etc., we were allowed to see a draft.
Turned out just like what we’d heard. Sen. James A. McClure (R-Idaho) called the proposal “ ridiculous,” and added that the proposal “betrays a lack of understanding of the use of public lands.”
His comments were echoed by other elected officials.
The leak worked. There’s no official tally of the number of letters, telegrams, tele-
phone calls and such generated by the offroad enthusiasts.
We do know the White House has said they can’t cut down on the size of the staff there because of all the mail that needs to be logged and divided and answered.
And we know the leak worked.
Off-road riding was threatened. Everybody involved acted. We acted properly and we acted together.
Quoting from a news release issued in behalf of Cecil D. Andrus, Secretary of the Interior, “We will continue to exercise our present authority to close some public lands to use by off-road vehicles—from those public lands where they are causing harm to soil, terrain, wildlife resources and and other public values.
“This should not be construed as banning off-road vehicles from all public lands.
“Public lands are federally owned and managed for the benefit of the people, and although all lands cannot be used for all purposes, we recognize recreational vehicle travel as a legitimate use.”
Killer point: When President Carter announced his energy program, there was no mention at all of off-road use or of land closures.
The people have spoken and the government (for now, anyway,) has nothing to say.
It was a small and silent battle and we won.
Don’t relax. We’ll go through this again, and again, until the land-closure people either decide we’re too strong or prove we’re too weak.
