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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2018)
Wednesday, November 21, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 11 Commentary... Oregon urges Tread lightly and be neighborly Court to public lands that belong to fire danger, within a mile of Jim Cornelius all of us. At the same time, Sisters.” we recognize that the wilder- Zimmerman Butte is as uphold 112- There are a lot of people ness experience isn’t exactly safe an area for shooting as out in the woods these days. enhanced by sharing it with it is possible to designate in are hiking; some are the multitudes, particularly a National Forest. The deep year sentence Some riding mountain bikes; some when too many in the mad- cinder pit features mas- Editor in Chief P O RT L A N D ( A P ) _ Oregon is urging the U.S. Supreme court to uphold the 112-year sentence given to a man who killed his parents before fatally shooting two students and wounding two dozen others at a high school 20 years ago. The Oregonian/ OregonLive reports 36-year- old Kipland Kinkel filed a petition in early August to the nation’s highest court for a review of his sentence in the May 1998 shootings in Springfield, Oregon. Oregon solicitor general Benjamin Gutman filed a brief in response, saying the sen- tence shouldn’t be overturned because the Oregon Supreme Court found it reflected his “irreparable corruption rather than the transience of youth.” Attorneys Thaddeus Betz and Marsha Levick have argued their client never got the chance to demonstrate that he’s not “permanently incorrigible.” are riding horseback; some are running off-road vehicles; some are target-shooting. In winter, some are cross-coun- try skiing; others are snow- shoeing or simply playing in the snow; some are riding snowmobiles. With recreation on the Deschutes National Forest increasing 15 to 20 percent over the past three years, the traffic is getting heavy — and the potential for conflict rises. Sheer numbers have an impact all by themselves. Our most beautiful areas are also our most popular, and they are in very real danger of being “loved to death.” The Forest Service announced last week a draft decision on limiting access and creating a permitting system for wilder- ness areas that are seeing the highest volume of traffic, and the heaviest human impact. There’s something in Americans that bristles at being told we can’t go some- where, at whatever time we choose, particularly on dening crowd don’t respect the grandeur — and fragility — of what to them is a giant playground. The Forest Service seems to have done a pretty good job of balancing competing val- ues — access and experience — in their plan. They listened to local input regarding the desire to retain some sponta- neity in our plans, holding out some same-day and next-day permits. We may not like it that such a permitting system is necessary, but hopefully it will have the desired effect of enhancing the wilderness experience and easing the burden on the land. Conflicts also arise in the forest closer to Sisters. Last week, a letter to the edi- tor urged the Forest Service to more aggressively man- age the shooting area at Zimmerman Butte, argu- ing that “corralling shooting into one location for hours a day causes noise pollution, physical harm for people with PTSD and potential sive backstops, easy vehicle access and a wide open area free of brush. The fire dan- ger cited in the letter came not from shooting activity but apparently from a care- less fire — a problem any- where and everywhere in our forests. Corralling the activity at Zimmerman is precisely the right management choice — even though those of us who used to have the place more- or-less to ourselves most of the time now have to account for more shooters on our range. Shooting is allowed anywhere in the National Forest where it is not spe- cifically prohibited. Closing or restricting safe shooting areas would only disperse that activity out into the for- est where it might be consid- erably less safe. Most of us engage in one or more recreational activi- ties in our forests. Most of us appreciate some of those activities more than others. As more and more people come to Central Oregon to “get away from it all,” we’re going to run up against each other more frequently in the forest and on the trail. We all have to be tolerant and coex- ist. We all have to be mindful of others and of the land and clean up after ourselves. Tread lightly and be neighborly. We’re all in this together. ’05 Chevrolet Silverado 4x4 Loaded, leather LT, crew cab, BFG tires, 5.3L Vortec, 120K miles. p nice! Super BUY OR SELL YOUR CAR with locally owned ... (Low miles • newer than 2005) $ 16 , 900 Best Price! No Hassles! CARFAX Certifi ed! 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