-From your favorite Small Business Friendly Socialist...

A few miscellaneous thoughts on 'access' impacts of various desert users that look for a middle ground between wilderness preservation and respectful human use - in areas that are historically multiple use.

Knee jerk preservation efforts are counter-productive and divisive to human society - perhaps intentionally so. Respectful use of wilderness is as important to healthy human communities as it is to wilderness ecosystems. Making all outdoor areas the exclusive domain of the uber-fit yuppie is not a good thing, and politically may well create a justified response that in the long run is counter productive.

Make no doubt, I'm not a wilderness opponent, but we do have lots of it already in the West - if anything there is marginally too much public land. I'm not opposed to creating additional wilderness areas on a case by case basis either - but you've gotta make that case, in a full, public, and accessible debate over an appropriate amount of deliberative time.