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Public Comments Crucial for Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument Take action online! Write a letter! The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwestern Oregon was the nation's first monument to be designated in recognition of the area's rich biological diversity. Pilot Rock, the remnant of an ancient volcano, is one of its geologic features. The Bureau of Land Management has issued a draft management plan for the monument, and the deadline for public comment on the plan is December 19, 2002. It's more than crucial that all monument supporters send the BLM at least a short comment note. Show your support! The BLM's draft plan lays out four "alternatives" from "Hands-Off" to "Intensive Management" for possible monument management. Conservationists are not supporting any single BLM alternative as written, each of which contain "poison pills." Instead, the BLM should blend elements from each of its draft plan alternatives. Here's what the BLM should do: Put all public lands in the monument off-limits to commodity use and extraction. Remove as many non-residential public roads and jeep-trails in the monument as possible. Publicly acquire private lands, private rights-of-way and cattle grazing permits within monument boundaries from willing sellers. Permit but do not promote all forms of non-mechanized, off-road recreation on public lands throughout the entire monument year round. (Some alternatives close areas in the monument to hikers, but not to cows!) Keep monument boundaries as they are. (If monument boundaries are changed at all, they should be expanded.) Build "improvements" only where they are clearly needed to reduce resource damage. Be careful, conservative and cautiously incremental in ground-disturbing efforts to "actively manage" for good. Base such actions only on extensively peer-reviewed science. Do nothing that will diminish the suitability of the 23,000 acre Soda Mountain Wilderness proposal (in the southern part of the 53,000 acre monument) for congressional Wilderness designation. Continuing solid public support for real protection of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is crucial for it to become more than just a pretty name on a map, and to prevent damage the Bush administration would still like to inflict. Take action online! Write a letter using the background above and send it, by December 19, 2002, to: Bureau of Land Management Ted Hass, CSNM Team Lead 3040 Biddle Road Medford, OR 97504 You may also e-mail comments to: Ted_Hass@or.blm.gov. Read about the monument in The Planet. Get your own copy of the 834 page draft plan from the BLM by calling them at (541) 618-2200. Or you can ask for their 24-page "Summary." You may also download the plan online. For more information contact Jessica Hodge of the Sierra Club's Wildlands Campaign at jessica.hodge@sierraclub.org. Visit the BLM website: http://www.or.blm.gov/csnm/index.htm. Up to Top