Tanya, I have not made any allegations about Mikes actions concerning vandalism and violence since I have not been witness to Mike doing any of these things. Also I have said it before a number of times that Mike has the right to let who he wishes cross his property and have never questioned that. In the post that I have done in this thread I have discussed basically three points, that there should be a strictly public access to DCHS from off the Bowen Ranch Road that does not depend on a private land owner, that the springs should be open to all people and not a select group, and that we will be seeing increasing visitation of the springs and that eventually access policies will have to be changed to control the situation down there. On the first topic you have not expressed your veiws about the open public routes around the ranch so I would not know your opinion on this. On the second topic of these three you also feel that the springs should be open to all people as long as they show respect for the place so I would say we are in agreement on that issue. On the third topic I would say that what do you see will control the actions of the negative element of folks who go down to the springs. It will have to be policies and enforcement. If policies exist and they are not enforced then they will be ignored by certain people. As time goes by there will be more of these type of people at the springs. They do the things we complain about. They will be a continual problem. Hopefully between this group of concerned DCHS visitors and the USFS we can find various ways to keep these unconsiderate visitors under some kind of control. Of course our group will not have the authority of the USFS so we should be careful about telling people what to do or we might see a bunch of fights down there. Its a complex situation trying to bring about a better atmosphere down there. I feel this group we are starting should be for everyone who wants to help and of course that means you and Kevin too. I think it would be better if we get together as one group. I think it would make us as many people together a stronger entity to work on these problems at the springs. I know how much you care about the springs and hope you will attend our first meeting. I think these meetings are a good way for us to make contact and through them hopefully we can find ourselves to be closer together in our vision of how to help DCHS.
