Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Alabama Hills federal designation update

Hi Thanks Harvey for posting the link , we now have had three more reports in the paper.

This has been a long slow effort to get some kind of designation for the Alabama Hills that would protect all the existing user groups and stakeholders, and have the boundary established by the groups and ajoining landowners ,we held many public meeting and met with all the user groups and key stakeholders. Our role on the project was to act as scribes and report to the Alabama Hills stewardship group with our findings and make a reports to any group that requested information.


Since the start of the process we have received two awards one from the ,U.S. Dept of Interior "for outstanding conservation achievements attained through collaboration and partnership with others", We then went back East and had two days of training with 20 groups from around the Country. The second award for our work was from the Sierra Buisness Council.
Using this same process we received the Forest Supervisor's award in 2009 for work on the Travel Management "CAT" (collaborative action team) project , this was a group of people that worked to reach a common ground on roads in the Inyo National Forest, what would stay open and what would be restored , very hard for all the different user groups to sit down at the same table and join together for the best outcome for everyone. At the end of our work we reported the findings to the Forest Supervisor that was used to create another alternative that was adopted. Thanks Doug

Wow, Doug. That is very impressive.

I find that there is so much tugging of different groups in different directions that it is virtually impossible to get anyone to agree on anything, much less sit down with anyone else.
No one will give even a little, in the interests of the whole.

There must have been some real leadership demonstrated, that got everyone to band together and make it happen. Extraordinary. I sure don't see that in my community.

Normally, I'm all for various designations, wilderness, etc.

However, the Eastern Sierra has been so massively abused by various gov't entities, and is so precarious in terms of existence, I am very skeptical in terms of most anything being imposed upon the Eastside. And I'd want to see very, very careful study, and very thorough input and approval of the residents. This seems to be passing that test, I'm happy to hear.

Bravo.

In the last few yrs they have built some modern luxury homes along the portal rd just before or after the Hills...Ugly and sad.
Maybe designation will be good.I have always car camped in the Hills so i dont know if that would be outlawed.I have always been stealthy and no fires and zero impact.