[JXG]

"The Trump administration is quietly trying to strip public input from the decision-making process used by the U.S. Forest Service. Doing so would mean that logging companies could clear-cut at many as 4,200 acres at a time, and you wouldn't know about it until you turned up at your favorite spot to find it decimated. But you have one last chance to stop that from happening.

"This is a speak-now-or-forever-lose-your-ability-to-have-input situation," says Sam Evans, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). The organization has put together an easy tool that will enable you to participate in what's potentially the last public-comment period about the vast majority of decisions affecting national forests. If the public doesn't speak up now and stop this proposed logging rule from going forward, it won't have a chance to weigh in when logging, roads, or even pipelines threaten the lands where they recreate."

https://www.outsideonline.com/2400593/us-forest-service-public-commenting

 

[AlienTrees]

The Carson National Forest has been using the cagetorical exclusion clause to rampantly to allow Taos Ski Valley, Inc. to move forward with several projects - not that I'm against them building a downhill park (athough resort management cringes at calling it that), or the gazex installation to improve the resort's avalanche control, lots of us Taos locals aren't happy that the Forest Service began using categorical exclusions to seemingly keep these projects off the radar until they had commenced. Public comment periods are necessary, and are part of the foundation of Public Land management protocols - which are not meant to speed up projects to create profit for particular industries, the process is meant to protect lands from overdevelopment. If a company wants to develop any public lands for their own gain, being able to do so is supposed to be a granted privelage, not an undeniable right. The trend has been shifting to developers, particularly ski areas in the west acting is if they should be able to do anything they want with the lands on which they're permitted to operate their business. With so many billionaires investing in the ski resort real estate industry there's been too much influence on how Public Lands are managed. Mountain biking used to be seperate, now it's all one and the same.

This might literally start a war if it continues.

 

[AlienTrees]

After submitting my comment this popped up;

"Your comment may be viewable on Regulations.gov once the agency has reviewed it. This process is dependent on agency public submission policies/procedures and processing times. Use your tracking number to find out the status of your comment."

Go figure, they only publish comments they want to.