BLM Price Field Office Resource Management Plan

[Dennis Udink]

I've been looking at the newly-approved Resource Management Plan for BLM lands under the Price field office, and I'm pretty surprised by how many roads they've effectively closed in their route designation process. If you go to the link below and click on the Maps link (warning, it's a 23MB PDF file), look at page 18 and you can see the new route designations.

http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/price/pl ... _rmp0.html

They've closed half of all existing routes in their inventory, and who knows how many others that weren't even in the inventory to begin with! I've noticed a lot of routes missing altogether, and a few well-traveled and historic routes are shown in gray, indicating that they're closed. I think it's a shame that the BLM has done such a poor job in designating routes, and frankly I don't have any intentions of following their travel plan until they at least put some signs on the ground and release a decent travel map.

I also wish they'd have left a couple of areas open to cross-country travel. I can see the benefit of not allowing it in certain areas, especially in Emery County, but Carbon County has way fewer scenic areas to protect and in my opinion doesn't need such a strict travel plan.

Ok, I'm done venting (for now). I'm sure I'll have more to say on the matter if/when they ever get around to enforcing the new travel plan, but at the moment it doesn't seem that they're taking any action on it.