![]() The point was to see if we could get a strong union of outdoor recreation advocates to join forces and challenge this decision in strength. Her involvement was so extensive, a union of BRC and ASA4WDC would have been sufficient to appeal the decision.īut simply appealing the decision wasn’t the point. As we reviewed the plan details in the NAMRC meeting, it was clear that Rebecca had been extensively involved in the Black Canyon Corridor Plan. Rebecca Antle is a BRC board member who is also affiliated with NAMRC, but her labor of love is reflected in her years of dedicated service to the Arizona State Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs. I raised my hand and offered to use this recently released plan as a case study for how we could work together to challenge a bad decision from the BLM. They had picked an alternative that would be devastating for all forms of recreation access, and it was clear in an instant we would need to challenge this decision. I said to Mark, “Instead of talking about unity, let’s do unity.”Ī quick overview of the plan showed that the BLM was planning to close 57% of the routes in the area, which would result in 298 miles of closures. I was sitting next to BRC board member and West Virginia State Senator Mark Maynard, who is one of the nation’s strongest supporters of off-road recreation. Of all things, we were discussing how off-road recreation organizations could be more unified in fighting for our access. In fact, I was attending the annual meeting of the North American Motorized Recreation Council (NAMRC) held during the SEMA Show in Las Vegas on November 1 when news of the decision started breaking on my social media feeds. I learned about the BLM’s final decision for their travel plan while attending the annual board meeting for BlueRibbon Coalition. It is also an internationally recognized area for world-class rock crawling. Horseback riding and hiking are popular in the area. ![]() There are numerous dispersed camping sites. The area is used extensively for off-road recreation. The Black Canyon Corridor is an area of land managed by the Hassayampa Field Office of the BLM that is located north of Phoenix near Black Canyon City. This was the final sprint to the finish line in a fight we had to win. Although this sounds on the surface like the last minute scrambling of procrastination, in reality it was the fruition of almost a month of work spent assembling the right team to appeal this decision. rolled around, I had clocked close to 14 hours in one day of deep-focus work preparing an appeal of the Bureau of Land Management’s final travel plan for the Black Canyon Corridor in Arizona. I had spent a marathon session of reviewing previous appeals of Bureau of Land Management Travel Plans, public comments, route reports, portions of the administrative record, BLM regulations, BLM handbooks, and by the time 2:00 a.m. when I finally crashed on Tuesday, November 23.
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