Bad Science Abounds: Reasons for Tellico OHV Closure Seem Earily Similar to Unfair PMV Closures at the ISDRA
Last week the United States Forest Service (USFS) released a document saying they would permanently close the Tellico Trail system despite the results of an independent study discounting the reasons for the proposed closure.
Caliber Engineering demonstrated that an effective management strategy for the Tellico Trail System would work and even provided examples on how to achieve the management goal.
The Forest Service has used extreme scenarios and peek conditions to make it's case about the water quality issue with the Tellico River. The same tactics have been used in the past with the Piersons' Milk Vetch (PMV) in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area to close areas of Glamis.
Even though independent study by a well known botanist proved that the PMV was not in danger from OHV activity in the dunes with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in which over half of the previously listed animals put on the endangered species list were removed due to errant data collected and reported by The Center For Biological Diversity (CBD) and The Sierra Club.
According to UTV Weekly, Chairman of the Rescue Tellico Committee, Jay Bird said "The Tellico River is in excellent shape and complies with all legal requirements. Only through blatant modification of proper methodology, such as measuring turbidity levels during peak runoff, can the Forest Service claim there is legal basis to take any action, let alone closure."
The USFS appears to have taken a page from the radical eco-terrorist groups CBD and Sierra Club and used fake science to justify their thievery of public land and lawsuits. The Caliber Engineering firm had to be hired because the USFS was not interested in looking at both sides of the issue. They were not interested in the facts, just as the CBD and Sierra Club.
They used the most extreme examples they could find and portrayed them as the norm. Almost as bad as when the eco-terrorists planted brine shrimp in puddles and ponds to get them listed as endangered and close the areas.
The Caliber study cherry-picked the most favorable data to “prove” that ORVs were perfectly okay. (What would you expect, when Caliber Engineering was paid to do it by ORV groups?) The Forest Service study was based on extensive field data, and it concluded there is a serious problem of erosion and sediment being washed into the river at more than 600 places along the ORV trails.