Letter: Bureaucracy is keeping us from nature

Friday, June 30, 2000 | 9:38 a.m.

So, the Valley of Fire State Park's automated fee collecting machines are a "huge bust"?

This time it's state employees wanting MORE money, but it could have been the Bureau of Land Management or any other public land management entity pleading for more money and/or land.

I use the word "public" advisedly because many of these gun-toting bureaucrats treat the public as interlopers.

I believe they're ignoring their mandate under the Historic Sites Act "to operate and manage historic and archaeologic sites, ... to accommodate the public."

Some of them drive Humvees, others fly private planes and still others live in housing paid for by us, but there's no such thing as "enough" for these civil servants, is there?

Why do state and federal land managers shoehorn us into a few parks and then gripe about overuse? Why are they barricading roads that have been used for decades, labeling millions of acres "wilderness areas?"

This is not legal according to the Wilderness Act. (I've read it.) Now, much of our public land is off-limits to anyone incapable of carrying gallons of water for miles.

I recently noticed that among approximately 300 people present in a casino restaurant, only about 2 percent were fit enough to hike any distance into a designated "wilderness area." Is this any way to treat tourists? Isn't it also blatant discrimination against people in wheelchairs, the elderly, the infirm and the very young?

What use is a legacy -- a heritage that's accessible only to athletes and authorized bureaucrats?

MARTI LINDER Pahrump