http://www.asahi.com/english/nyt/nyt.html#nyt_256
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>DISPUTE OVER ROAD IN NEVADA RALLIES ANTI-GOVERNMENT FORCES
By EVELYN NIEVES
c.2000 N.Y. Times News Service
ELKO, Nev. - It is a narrow dead-end dirt road, ribbing along a narrow canyon for barely more than a mile before it hits wilderness. Snow puts it out of commission for half the year, rains can do it in entirely, and even then, only hikers and campers really miss it, as a means to a favorite trail head.
But South Canyon Road in Jarbidge (population: 20) has become much more than the sum of its snowed-in, washed-out parts. A tussle between people here in Elko County and the U.S. Forest Service over the rebuilding of the road has become a cause for anyone anywhere who is fed up with the federal government.
This all started after the Jarbidge road, which sits at the northern tip of Elko County, only a few miles from Idaho, washed away for the umpteenth time in 1995. The Forest Service offered to rebuild the road, then backtracked after studies determined that reconstruction would create silt and pollution runoff that would harm rare bull trout in the Jarbidge River.
That reignited the always-simmering battle in the West for local control over land, much of it owned by the federal government. Last fall, a group of Nevadans calling themselves the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade tried rebuilding the road. They were issued a restraining order and stopped. Then they declared war.
Casualties so far include the director of the Forest Service for the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest (which includes Jarbidge), who resigned this month, saying that the harassment and intimidation by the "anti-feds" had reached a dangerous pitch, not to mention the always uneasy peace between federal employees and the ranchers, miners and loggers who live off the land.
"I think people are saying, Enough is enough, and this Jarbidge road is where we have to make a stand," said Mike Nannini, an Elko County commissioner who has been one of the most relentless critics of federal departments like the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife.
From talk shows to newspaper editorials to meetings and forums and supermarket checkout lines, Shovel Brigaders have inundated the public with warnings of what might lie ahead if the government was allowed to do what it wished.
As a result, the Shovel Brigade is growing with a fervor throughout the West and at least half a dozen states elsewhere. This weekend, just in time for the annual Cowboy Poetry Festival, which attracts tourists and reporters to Elko from all over the country, a convoy of semitrucks carrying 10,000 shovels is scheduled to arrive here from Montana, Utah, Idaho, northern California, Oregon and South Dakota.
The shovels, symbolizing support for the locals who plan to rebuild the road on the Fourth of July, will be placed around town during a parade that begins in front of the local office of the Bureau of Land Management.
Rallying points include the Elko County Courthouse, where a 30-foot shovel paid for by the Shovel Brigade stands on the lawn like a monument.
Jim Hurst, a Eureka, Mont., logger who organized the shovel collection, said he hoped it was the beginning of a political movement that would force presidential and Congressional candidates to take notice this election year.
"This is not about 1,400 feet of road that washed out in Jarbidge, Nev.," Hurst said.
For Hurst, the issue is personal. As the federal government protects more plant and animal species under the Endangered Species Act, he said, people who have made their livelihoods off the land are left to wither away.
"I am in danger of having to shut down because of lack of access to timber in our national forest," he said. "I am currently hauling logs, burnt fire-killed logs, from Alberta, 500 miles away, when 15 miles from my plant trees are lying on their side, dead and rotting, and we do not have access to those trees, largely because of the Endangered Species Act."
One of the most controversial aspects of the federal government's decision to close the Jarbidge road was a Department of Interior emergency declaration designating the bull trout as threatened after Elko County bulldozed 300 feet of the road in 1998.
"The listing of that bull trout is one of the phoniest things they came up with," said state Assemblyman John Carpenter, who helped organize the Shovel Brigade. "These fish are doing fine; the population is stable."
Indeed, the Nevada Division of Wildlife opposed the listing of the bull trout as threatened. "They are very secure in their habitat," said Gene Weller, the head of fisheries for the state division. "Numbers are low; there's not a lot of them. But they are in numbers that are commensurate with their habitat."
Still, Weller said, the division opposes rebuilding the road. "Roads in stream bottoms are not good for fish," he said.
He added: "Even though the road should not be built, we believe the fish should not be used as a pretext." [/quote]
------
I wonder what effect a nationwide harrassing, badgering, ignoring, and refusing service to unconstitutional government employees would have upon our unconstitutional government...
I remember reading of something like that happening in the southern Utah area over the "Escalate Staircase" national monument.
------------------
John/az
"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>DISPUTE OVER ROAD IN NEVADA RALLIES ANTI-GOVERNMENT FORCES
By EVELYN NIEVES
c.2000 N.Y. Times News Service
ELKO, Nev. - It is a narrow dead-end dirt road, ribbing along a narrow canyon for barely more than a mile before it hits wilderness. Snow puts it out of commission for half the year, rains can do it in entirely, and even then, only hikers and campers really miss it, as a means to a favorite trail head.
But South Canyon Road in Jarbidge (population: 20) has become much more than the sum of its snowed-in, washed-out parts. A tussle between people here in Elko County and the U.S. Forest Service over the rebuilding of the road has become a cause for anyone anywhere who is fed up with the federal government.
This all started after the Jarbidge road, which sits at the northern tip of Elko County, only a few miles from Idaho, washed away for the umpteenth time in 1995. The Forest Service offered to rebuild the road, then backtracked after studies determined that reconstruction would create silt and pollution runoff that would harm rare bull trout in the Jarbidge River.
That reignited the always-simmering battle in the West for local control over land, much of it owned by the federal government. Last fall, a group of Nevadans calling themselves the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade tried rebuilding the road. They were issued a restraining order and stopped. Then they declared war.
Casualties so far include the director of the Forest Service for the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest (which includes Jarbidge), who resigned this month, saying that the harassment and intimidation by the "anti-feds" had reached a dangerous pitch, not to mention the always uneasy peace between federal employees and the ranchers, miners and loggers who live off the land.
"I think people are saying, Enough is enough, and this Jarbidge road is where we have to make a stand," said Mike Nannini, an Elko County commissioner who has been one of the most relentless critics of federal departments like the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife.
From talk shows to newspaper editorials to meetings and forums and supermarket checkout lines, Shovel Brigaders have inundated the public with warnings of what might lie ahead if the government was allowed to do what it wished.
As a result, the Shovel Brigade is growing with a fervor throughout the West and at least half a dozen states elsewhere. This weekend, just in time for the annual Cowboy Poetry Festival, which attracts tourists and reporters to Elko from all over the country, a convoy of semitrucks carrying 10,000 shovels is scheduled to arrive here from Montana, Utah, Idaho, northern California, Oregon and South Dakota.
The shovels, symbolizing support for the locals who plan to rebuild the road on the Fourth of July, will be placed around town during a parade that begins in front of the local office of the Bureau of Land Management.
Rallying points include the Elko County Courthouse, where a 30-foot shovel paid for by the Shovel Brigade stands on the lawn like a monument.
Jim Hurst, a Eureka, Mont., logger who organized the shovel collection, said he hoped it was the beginning of a political movement that would force presidential and Congressional candidates to take notice this election year.
"This is not about 1,400 feet of road that washed out in Jarbidge, Nev.," Hurst said.
For Hurst, the issue is personal. As the federal government protects more plant and animal species under the Endangered Species Act, he said, people who have made their livelihoods off the land are left to wither away.
"I am in danger of having to shut down because of lack of access to timber in our national forest," he said. "I am currently hauling logs, burnt fire-killed logs, from Alberta, 500 miles away, when 15 miles from my plant trees are lying on their side, dead and rotting, and we do not have access to those trees, largely because of the Endangered Species Act."
One of the most controversial aspects of the federal government's decision to close the Jarbidge road was a Department of Interior emergency declaration designating the bull trout as threatened after Elko County bulldozed 300 feet of the road in 1998.
"The listing of that bull trout is one of the phoniest things they came up with," said state Assemblyman John Carpenter, who helped organize the Shovel Brigade. "These fish are doing fine; the population is stable."
Indeed, the Nevada Division of Wildlife opposed the listing of the bull trout as threatened. "They are very secure in their habitat," said Gene Weller, the head of fisheries for the state division. "Numbers are low; there's not a lot of them. But they are in numbers that are commensurate with their habitat."
Still, Weller said, the division opposes rebuilding the road. "Roads in stream bottoms are not good for fish," he said.
He added: "Even though the road should not be built, we believe the fish should not be used as a pretext." [/quote]
------
I wonder what effect a nationwide harrassing, badgering, ignoring, and refusing service to unconstitutional government employees would have upon our unconstitutional government...
I remember reading of something like that happening in the southern Utah area over the "Escalate Staircase" national monument.
------------------
John/az
"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!