Just a quick summary of tonights meeting in ABQ for stakeholders who were not able to be present.
They said we were the bestest group they had met so far ;) There will be a sort of meeting summary coming out on all the meetings combined, if anyone has comments to make that they forgot to do during the meeting, send them to [email protected]. These meetings were stakeholder meetings and not public meetings, though Ch 13 news was not barred from being outside in ABQ if they chose to (they did not). I thought there were to be three topics, but I only got two down: We are here to listen to cavers and let you know of our interagency discussions going on: 1. What are your thoughts on how we should do a closure. 2. How do we educate the general public with caver help. There was some discussion of facts and theories that we might have heard about before, and some possibly new ideas that should all be in the official summary. They stated that no decisions have been made yet with closures. They are wanting to find a solution that is best for the resources and the users. They are hoping to coordinate a WNS response with multiple agencies within the state. They want to show that cavers are their partners. I have to admit I had some Utah Phillips quotes going through my head, "You're about to be told one more time that you're America's most valuable natural resource… They're gonna clear-cut your best thoughts... Make a break for it kids!" I did have some mining of my own to be doing, so I stuck around. It is a good sign that it sounded like this set of meetings is something that is going to be duplicated in other states out west. The meetings will hopefully include all stakeholders within that state: cavers, bat biologists, USFS, BLM, NPS, USFWS, state land agencies, DOD, Tribal, etc. An even better thing: they may have quarterly update meetings. Oher interesting thing heard was that emergency closures may be limited in term and further extensions require NEPA studies. _______________________________________________ NMCAVER mailing list [email protected] http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
