Dept of Interior Brags About "Stealing" Land.

What you are about to see is everything wrong about the Forest Service, National Park Service and BLM detailed in one video.

At what appears to be a video of a Forest Service or National Park Service convention, high level officials joke and brag about "stealing" money from taxpayers to "steal" land from two elderly miners and WWII veterans, for 1/20th of the assessed value.

This is a very common and very predatory practice the Forest Service often uses against the sick and elderly, but it isn't often that you find them BRAGGING about it in public forums. Or BRAGGING about "stealing" taxpayer money.

I will let you watch the video and decide for yourself if this is conduct or language becoming of "public servants". Warning: I recommend having a barf bag handy, and only watching it from the seated position.

https://youtu.be/7jeLi14p-KU

This video reportedly is of the retirement party for Mary Martin, a high level federal employee.

Persons identified in the video and their positions within the federal government have been chronicled here:



https://2ndfor1st.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/identified-federal-employees-bragging-of-stealing-land/



Scott Amos 

Yellow Pine Forests, 1950s Style.

Here is a photo of Yellow Pine from the 1950s, when hundreds of loggers and miners thinned the forests and made livings off of the land. Back when timber sales were the norm, loggers and Forest Service rangers lived in the same towns, ate at the same restaurants, and listened to one another concerning how best to manage healthy forests for maximum public benefit. Especially funding public schools through timber sales and mining claim tax revenues to the county and state.

It sure was nice to come across an old historic photo and see green trees, free of bark beetles, that hadn't been incinerated by megafires and failed forest "watch it all die off and burn" management policies that are being practiced by the US Forest Service and other federal agencies today.

 Today, it's very hard to find healthy trees in the Yellow Pine vicinity which aren't already infected or growing so close to other trees that they are starving for groundwater, sunlight and nutrients. The end result being a forest which will undoubtedly be devastated by the next megafire the Forest Service will be paid megamillions to sit idly by and NOT put out.

When I moved to Yellow Pine in 1983, this is the forest which I grew up in. One in which it was very hard to find dead trees.

Since the Forest Service has discovered the agency can make more money by lighting fires than putting them out, and by "sick and dying" forests than by actively managed and healthy forests....
And since the Forest Service wastes all its time and precious resources obliterating roads and locking the public out of the forests......

The new norm is a forest which will never look like this again....so long as the forest management policies come from Washington DC and sue happy environmental organizations that care more about getting rich via the Equal Access to Justice Act, than they do about having healthy forests.

Scott Amos
208.297.0634

Letter to Congressman Raul Labrador

I highly recommend writing letters to Congressman Raul Labrador who is on the Resources Oversight Committee which oversees the Forest Service and BLM.

Here is a copy of the letter I wrote to Congressman Raul Labrador via his contact link here:

https://labrador.house.gov/contact-me/

Or here:

https://labrador.house.gov/email-me/

To: Congressman Raul Labrador

From: Scott Amos, a concerned citizen.

The US Forest Service has closed Sugar Creek Road to Cinnabar, a historical Idaho ghost town.

Cinnabar happens to be private land. That did not stop the Forest Service from unlawfully burning cabins listed on the National Register of Historical Places at Cinnabar, Stibnite, Roosevelt, Cabin Creek, Chamberlain Basin and hundreds of other places. Which is a clear violation of private property rights in addition to Section 106 of the 1966 National Historical Preservation Act.

The manner in which the Forest Service has closed roads, including my driveway was done in violation of federal law, and without due process to include skipping public comment periods required by NEPA, the 2001 Roadless Rule, Forest Plan, etc.

For nine years, the Forest Service also closed the only viable access road to the town of Yellow Pine which I grew up in. The Forest Service at that time proposed using eminent domain to force private property owners in Yellow Pine to sell their lands to the Forest Service for the purpose of turning Yellow Pine into a "wolf and nature preserve".

At the same time, the Forest Service began driving rural gold miners and loggers off their claims in the Boise and Payette National Forests.

Forest rangers would arbitrarily call legitimate mining claims "invalid" in violation of the 1872 Mining Law, violating the rights of miners who had paid fees and worked and made livings from claims for over three generations, in the case of Bill Darling and his family. The Forest Service gave Bill Darling's family 30 days to vacate the premises before burning down the home that the Darling family built in 1926. Nevermind the fact that Bill Darling's cabin was historical and the Forest Service burning it also violated the 1966 National Historical Preservation Act Act.

Jim and Gerri Adkins home of 40 years was on private property at Stibnite, Idaho which has 850 acres of deeded patented land. That also didn't stop the Forest Service from burning it and dozens of other cabins listed on the National Register of Historical Places located on private property, which I have began documenting here:

http://usfspayettenationalforest.blogspot.com/?m=1


The Forest Service has become an out of control and overly abusive agency which has no regard for public input or the American people and their wishes for how Americans would like to see our forests managed.

There was a time when the local forest ranger and district managers were friends of the local community and attentive to the needs of people who actually live and work in the forests.

Sadly, that time has passed. Now the Forest Service's main agenda is to lock people out of the forests, or lock them behind iron gates, like Patti Stieger was ordered to do by District Ranger Anthony Botello in the case of Three Mile Road, stranding five hikers 20 miles in the middle of nowhere and purposefully endangering their lives.

Or locking the entire town of Yellow Pine behind iron gates for more than nine years until residents of Yellow Pine filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the Forest Service and prevailed in court (at much cost to the federal government).

I have documented the above mentioned atrocities and dozens more online here:

http://usfspayettenationalforest.blogspot.com/?m=1

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I fully support your proposal for reigning in abusive agencies like the Forest Service and BLM which have become an enemy of the American people and a public nuisance, in my opinion.


Scott Amos
208.297.0634

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Forest Service Admits Arbitrarily Closing Sugar Creek Road

In the email below, Anthony Botello, Krassel District Ranger admits that the Forest Service removed Sugar Creek Road from the public domain, without following due process of law.

 

Click for larger view

Lyin' Anthony Botello claims that Valley County has never asserted RS-2477 jurisdiction over Sugar Creek Road. 

Click here to see Valley County Commissioners asserting RS-2477 jurisdiction over Sugar Creek Road. 

Anthony Botello also blames the property owners for denying public access. Something the owners of the ghost town of Cinnabar say absolutely is not true.

In fact, every email(obtained through FOIA) from the property owners addressed to Anthony Botello to date say the exact opposite, and expressa grave concern about the Forest Service denying ANY access via Sugar Creek Road, including to the landowners.

It would appear that the Forest Service, especially Anthony Botello, invents alternative facts when facts from the real world don't suit his agenda.



Regardless of the current spin forest rangers like Botello keep selling the public, required Maps for travel showed Sugar Creek Road "open to travel" up until 2008. In stark contrast to his emails above claiming that "the road was closed in 1996/1997" and "the property owners don't want the public there".