Carbon County Commissioners, Casey Hopes and Jake Mellor would like community members to join in the process of revising the Forest Plan for the Manti-La Sal National Forest. Written in 1986, the current Forest Plan is outdated and needs to be revised to reflect the current uses and needs. A public meeting will be held on Monday, July 11 2016 beginning at 5:00 pm till 7:00 pm at the Carbon County Event Center located at 450 South Fairgrounds Way in Price.
Hopes spoke about the importance of the public’s participation, “The thing that is so important about it is everything that we do on the mountain hunting, fishing, grazing, mining it’s all going to be looked at and that’s why it’s so important that we as a community show up and voice our opinions, so that they know what we want to see as far as recreation, the ability to mine, logging so we don’t have catastrophic fires all these things come into play when we are talking about this forest revision.”
Public outreach and participation is of utmost importance in the three phase process. “The government’s already have, we as a county have a cooperating agency status with the Forest Service, which means we already have a seat at the table. But the more people we can have from our local community the better our voice sounds, it echoes what we are trying tell them when we visit with the Forest Service,” stated Hopes. The plan could affect our energy and mineral extractions which is our livelihood in Carbon County.
The Forest Service will use the public meeting to gather and analyze data to identify components of the current Forest Plan that need to change due to significant scientific advances and changes in recreational uses. “We need to take a moment and all of us who do enjoy the mountains that have an interest whether it would be that we would like to see the beetle kill taken care of or if we are tired of all the mud slides and flooding and erosion caused because of the let it burn policy or if we have concerns about the actual plan and how things are managed, if we wonder why it is that way? We should show up to these meetings. We should ask those questions and voice our comments so they get written down and recorded,” stated Mellor.
The public meetings will be held in six different communities that neighbor the Forest and are intended to provide an overview of the Plan Revision process and introduce the public to the Plan Revision Team. All of meeting will run from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm and the public can drop by during the two-hour time frame at the following locations:
July 11 in Price at the Carbon County Event Center
July 12 in Moab at the Grand Center
July 13 in Monticello at the canyon Country Discover Center
July 14 in Blanding at the Public Library
July 19 in Castle Dale at the Emery County Courthouse
July 21 in Manti at the Sanpete County Courthouse
Mellor encouraged the public by saying, “We would like everybody out there who has any interest in timber, wilderness, and fish and wildlife, grazing, recreation, mineral exploration development, water, soils, any type of cultural or historical resources, any people interested in any of those areas, please come out and join us.”
To learn more about the revision plan, visit the website at http://www.fs.usda.gov/mantilasal.com or call the price office at (435) 636-3508