Wyoming

By Nicholas DeMarino

Freeze frame.

“What’s wrong?” asked Chris McNeil, off-road vehicle safety and education coordinator, gesturing toward the television screen.

“He’s not wearing a helmet,” said one Rawlins Middle School sixth-grader.

“He should’ve jumped off,” said another.

They’re both right, but there’s something more fundamental.

Eryn Gable

The Bureau of Land Management has identified nearly a quarter-million acres in northwest Wyoming that may have wilderness characteristics and should be studied for possible protection as "wild lands" under the agency's upcoming revision of its Bighorn Basin resource management plan (RMP).

The areas include more than 50,000 acres of unprotected land just east of Cody, Wyo., known as the Whistle Creek and Rough Gulch units, that border the 11,350-acre McCullough Peaks Wilderness Study Area, which BLM protected after an earlier wilderness inventory in 1980. If protected, the two proposed additions would require BLM to manage all of the McCullough Peaks badlands to protect their wilderness character.

Green River - After a busy weekend for elk hunters in southwest Wyoming, wildlife officers with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department are troubled by the number and people using their off road vehicles (ORVs) in closed areas.

Cokeville Game Warden Neil Hymas says people using ORV’s have been reported for violating Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service travel restrictions.

Craig Mead, "No reason to designate Rock Creek as wilderness," (Nov. 29) sets up the Wyoming Wilderness Association for fault in its observations on the encroachment of off-road vehicles on the wilderness acres inventoried in the 1984 Rock Creek area, yet fails to present any contrary facts. I personally have witnessed the advance of user-created trails and other impacts from off-road vehicles.

DeeDee Correll

Reporting from Denver - As a boy, Terry Reach used to traipse the land around his Pinedale, Wyo., home, searching for antlers shed by deer and elk.

It was a solitary pastime; he never saw anyone else, and he always found plenty of antlers, which he'd drag home and pile in the yard.

Mead Gruve

Cheyenne, Wyo. » The chance to find an enormous and valuable set of antlers shed by a mighty bull elk or mule deer has been drawing ever-larger crowds of people from around the region to western Wyoming each spring.

Some look for antlers on foot. Others ride snowmobiles or all-terrain vehicles. Many are so eager to go home with antlers -- sometimes stacks of them -- they often get too close to the areas where elk and deer congregate, and spook the herds into running.

For animals weakened by months of wallowing in deep snow and nibbling on scarce forage, running can be deadly.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Wyoming reminds hunters and other recreationists to limit their off highway vehicle and truck use to existing roads and trails to protect important wildlife habitat and provide better hunting and recreational experiences for all public land users.

BLM's land use plans limit motorized vehicle traffic to existing roads and trails, except in Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs). Motorized travel in WSAs is generally restricted and varies from area to area. Current BLM land status maps show WSA boundaries and are available at BLM offices.

GREEN RIVER -- Rather than close roads and access, a proposed draft travel plan for the Flaming Gorge reservoir in southwest Wyoming will actually designate more motorized routes for the popular recreation area, Ashley National Forest officials contend.

The new plan will update the existing motorized travel plan last revised in 1995, officials said during a public meeting in Green River on Tuesday night.