Overview:

Double digit growth has brought with it to the public lands of Western Colorado an increase in uses, a decrease in awareness and environmental sensibility of the average user and the out-of-control damages of off road recreational vehicles....along with escalation in extractive industries impacts on public lands to keep up with the growth...increased timber sales, gravel pits, mining and the oil and gas exploitation.

Our law enforcement agencies find themselves in a tripple-jawed vice as a result. Increased urbanization has diverted their attention to domestic violence, traffic and accidents and crime...away from what little enforcement we used to have against abuse of our public lands...dumping, off-road vehicle damages, poaching, shooting debris and offenses, illegal access and uses. Funding per capita continuously decreases. The marketing images portrayed by off road vehicle manufacturers courting the goon-level motorhead market continually instill imagry that public lands abuse is the way to go.

A regional public increasingly unfamiliar with or disrespectful of the welfare and appropriate uses of public lands escalates public lands damages exponentially in relation to growth...the same principle community planners report with traffic impacts. The deterioration is not linearly proportional, but geometrically proportional to growth...placing destruction at the rates of crisis increase we are now seeing on these lands. Once the seed of destruction is impregnated, the unaware...seeing the dump piles of horse manure and the renegade dirt bike tracks slicing the pinion/ juniper forests assume that's condoned behavior and follow suit.

A Land Steward presence (especially targeted to impacted areas) deters abuse automatically, peacefully and cheaply. The continuous presence allows the Steward to analyze dump sites and tire tracks for patterns and to witness return vehicle patterns...and as occasion permits, video or photograph the culprits in process as evidence for prosecution...to be turned over to authorities. A reward system augmenting this procedure and extended to the general public already has precedence elsewhere with success and is discussed below.

Ironically, this...the worst of the problems...may also bring with it the best of the solutions for cure. In other areas of development in Systems of Transcendent Governance we see one of the most enlightened formulas for success in a movement within the regional criminal justice system...especially regarding prosecution and sentencing of juveniles...called "Restorative Justice" (referred to in the Smart Shelter treatise on Transcendent Governance as Systems of Charmic Justice)...the principles are identical. Restorative Justice recognizes that our privatized (big corporate money) prisons are not doing anything except hardening criminals (many of whom did not enter as criminals at all). Instead, with systems of Restorative Justice, the convicted person is placed in a program requiring public admission of wrong, extensive remediative labor to restore damages and education/counciling to identify and correct the belief/behavior dilemma that created the problem in the first place.

Assuming increases in effective identification and prosecution of land damaging persons, addition of a Restorative Justice program could serve several purposes: correction of the attitude, restoration of their damages and that of others, spreading of the image of proper land care and use, and as a ramp up for the environmental technologies utilized in restorations...all of which are directly applicable to community, neighborhood and home use...materials recycling and reuse, composting, permaculture, non-chemical invasive species control, etc. This carries at least the possibility of solving the monumental workforce problem facing public lands restoration in the process of spreading environmental training and community awareness.

Protection of the Land Steward is critical. Interface needs with the authorized civil and public lands law enforcement staff is obvious. But not only could the Steward increase surveillance, sleuthing and prosecution, they could also be trained to supervise remediation and education...thus witnessing the abuse and the cure. All this needs for implementation is a program development with the land management and enforcement entities, the cooperation of the courts and a pilot program to test fly it...there is certainly no lack of culprits or damage to work with.

Systems for "Snitches" Vigilantes and Rewards

It may be time for the era of the Bounty Hunter to return. The sparseness of population, remoteness of crime and lack of support funding for law enforcement in the early west lead to solicitation of the general public and specialized trackers in augmenting marshals and sheriffs in the apprehension of criminals. We have exactly that condition today regarding escalation of criminal destruction and abuse of public lands....too many wide open spaces (for atv abusers), too many trees to hide behind (for crystal meth labs) and too few "Lone Rangers" to go get them. Sometimes "bounties" or rewards in the old days were offered for specific, hard to find criminals. Sometimes they were offered to the general public for a general class of felon...$500 for anyone caught cattle rustling...$1000 for anyone caught dumping...no difference.

There definitely exists an informed, responsible and caring public dismayed and outraged at the deterioration and abuse of our lands legacy...especially those of us with longevity here sufficient to have witnessed these lands when they were pristine...which wasn't that long ago. We can empower and encourage that responsible public element to take effective action to have it that way again.

Similar impacts have been dealt with by agencies such as the Colorado Division of Wildlife regarding their enforcement of poaching ordinances. They reasoned, and successfully so, that the responsible citizens and hunters out on the land in numbers were their best enlistment assets in enforcement against trophy hunters and poachers. Their Project Game Thief offers sizable rewards (often in the $1,000 range) to private citizens who turn in poachers if they are successfully prosecuted...saving the division untold millions of dollars in these budget crunch years, generating income for the division from fines they would not otherwise enjoy, increasing dramatically the number of poachers caught and making every citizen in the vicinity a potential law enforcement presence (a huge deterrent to poaching in the first place) and a welcomed source of effective empowerment to those of us who hold public lands and wildlife in high regard and insist on their care and respect for ourselves and for future generations...as they were, indeed, intended.

One of the most successful snitch/reporting operations regionally has been the one with the Colorado State Patrol in the valley corridor outside Telluride, which sees it's huge snake of gridlocked construction workers (up to 250 cars daily) on their way back to Montrose...often in varying states of inebriation. Simple cell phone numbers and coaxing the driving public threatened daily by drunk drivers into calling in violators has brought dangerous traffic encounters in that corridor down to virtually zero. The key to enforcement viability is to empower the responsible and affected public. It is so easy to do...reporting systems, reward systems, public awareness, cooperation of the courts and officers...the rest takes care of itself.

A Responsible, Vigilant Presence and the E.I.Land Steward....

Growth has imported a vast populace of urbanites to this region who have for the most part been raised in city parks, concrete sidewalks, traffic and the built environment. Many choose to flee urban stresses, arriving here loaded with "Urban Psychosis", a dose of commercial television adds which promote tearing up the natural environment because it is the enemy or challenge a real man needs to dominate, and no ethic or understanding of the fragility of this terrain. These are coupled with irresponsible "natives" who grew up with abundant, unused and unimpacted public lands they concluded were theirs to dump on or burn at will.

As a result, the public lands of Western Colorado have been hideously lacerated with snowmobile, jet ski, atv and dirt bike noise, air pollution, dumping and tracking...at an alarming and now epidemic rate with no current indication or promise of abatement. For 15 years, ostensibly responsible off-road vehicle users and organizations (is there any such thing as the responsible use of an irresponsible vehicle) have attempted to tone down or curtail irresponsible uses...all to no avail. Instead of decreasing as a result of their efforts, the destruction has escalated...redically escalated.

The single most powerful tool is prevention and the most effective weapon of prevention is to have a watchful, conscious presence on the public land...just like Operation Game Thief...an ominous knowledge that around any rock may be a responsible citizen ready without warning or hesitation to cell phone the sheriff, video record the damages, vehicles and operators (along with their license plates) and pocket a sizable bounty for their efforts and showing up in court.

The extended time frames of Short and Medium Term Productive Occupancies of the Land Steward Program add a level of law enforcement roving rangers cannot produce. They have vast reaches of land to cover with myriad hot spots to monitor and very little time to do it. They cannot afford to remain on a site, examine dumps for clues of repetitive dumpers, record tire track patterns and they are not present in duration on one site sufficiently to observe the comings and goings of offenders. The Land Steward accomplishes all that automatically by their extended presence and in the execution of the rest of their functions.

One of the first undertakings for the Steward, once a prospective pilot project site is selected is to arrange a short term occupancy reconnaissance, mapping, damage assessment and prescription for remediation...usually in a two week time frame. During that time, detailed observation of locations, access and types of damages are observed, recorded, often video documented, mapped and presented. Invariably, as is currently becoming very obvious in preliminary reconnaissance at site SVK 32 in Shavano Valley, the repetitive appearance of horse manure and bedding straw along with other ranch type debris begins to single out a horse based stable or ranching operation, probably in the vicinity, with a distinctive type of feed and a very definite set of tire tracks. Once this is recorded, it is probably not long until the same pickup truck is witnessed during weekdays going to similar sites...until the culprit can be videoed in the act...along with their full face photo (thank god for telephoto lenses), vehicle profile and license plate...as well as accurate pictures of the dump...which, of course, is right where the BLM law enforcement officer can begin. This kind of augmentation and onsite, continuous surveillance and analysis...not to mention the increased possibility of documentation simply cannot be afforded or provided under the guise of current management funding and staff.

It is, however...especially if a sizable reward is added to the process...a quite simple and effective function the Land Steward can provide automatically with their other functions.

Protection of the Land Steward in this process is tantamount. These surveillances can be carried out at distance and without detection by the culprit. It is not the intention of this program that the Steward become involved with confrontation, arrest or contact with abusers. They serve only...exactly parallel to the successful Operation Game Thief Reward System...as a witness and reporter...but they must furnish convicting evidence to provide effective function.

"Micros" and the Visable Deterrent....

Discussion of the Off-Grid, mobile, "Micro" living environments...their functions, their systems, their necessity as safe housing for E.I.'s (those with chemically damaged immune systems...environmental illnesses)...is discussed elsewhere. In terms of effective law enforcement, any officer or official will tell you that the best enforcement is a good deterent...bright lighting in dark alleys, a night watchman in an all-night parking lot. The Land Steward's "Micro" strategically located on sites specifically selected (see our criterion for site selection discussion) can provide an automatic 24 hour visible deterrent for sexual offenders, meth lab operators, atv hordes bent of freewheeling, illegal dumpers and booze parties with out of control bonfires. They simply drive on.

Much of the research and development Smart Shelter and other entities undertake in sustainability and energy independence issues is enhanced due to the challenges of Land Steward Sites and procedures...furthering those developments automatically as a side-benifit of the program. Water efficiency, roof water capture, automobile based DC power supplies, high efficiency heating systems, solar orientation and design, Baseline Solar systems development for laundry, dishwashing, bathing, etc are furthered and strengthened by these challenging locales.

Optimally, it may be wise to consider official signage to be posted on Micros in Land Steward Service giving them BLM, Forest Service, etc. status as an added level of protection and official surveillance recognition. This possibility needs further examination.

Signage already posted and in development on the pilot study sites explains to the casual passerby or to invited guests the Land Steward Program, liter gathering, recycling and reuse technologies, composting, Baseline Solar Living systems and off grid energy supplies. They form an entertaining self-guided tour even when the Steward is absent. They also place the "Micro" in more than just a tourist or recreationist perception.

Cooperation of the Courts and Law Enforcement Officials

Smart Shelter is initiating discussion with the proper law enforcement entities, district attorneys, law makers, public lands managers and other agencies a structure and funding for rewards to further the effectiveness of this program, with the expected eventuality that all Colorado citizens insisting on public lands protection are empowered with effective law enforcement which they themselves can effectively initiate in the event they witness destruction.

...Toward a Workable System of Restorative Justice and the Land Steward's Role..

Court sentencing of a convicted atv abuser to an afternoon of weed pulling and a financial slap on the wrist is not going to make it. Again, just as in the recommending prescident of the successful "Game Thief" operation with DOW, formulas for systems already proven workable elsewhere in this regard exist.

Many of us can remember 30 years ago when drunk driver fatalities on Colorado Highways were epidemic. Escalation of the severity of penalties, revocation of licenses, mandatory alcohol counciling, etc have turned that around...amazingly so, if you go back and remember or compare statistics.

Alcoholics Anonymous caught the brunt end of court mandated sentencing attempts to remediate problem drinkers by sentencing them to documented attendance at AA meetings...not a happy prospect for the AA organization, its willing participants or the offender....but necessary just the same.

What was observed on the other end...beginning in California and instigated here (for instance in 1993 in Montrose County Courts)...was that the "wrist slap" 3 or 4 meetings an unwilling alcoholic was court-ordered to attend did nothing but build the offenders animosity regarding sobriety and disrupt the already rough recovery process for those attending AA voluntarily. The solution, that ironically worked for all, was to up the ante significantly. It had already become widespread knowledge (and court policy) in California that a one year, three meeting per week sentence was the minimum effective program in turning these problem drinkers around. Saturation.

Surviving 150 hours of other people's stories about why they drank and how much better things were now that they didn't was an obviously more effective educational medium than 3 or 4 hours of ignoring the jabber and erecting more excuses. This policy also had a direct positive effect on the AA meetings (although there are still members who won't agree) because in about one third to one half the cases, sobriety was achieved by the offender and a relationship formed with the group that contributed to the lifeblood of the organization...to such a point that currently in those meetings even a nomenclature for people entering sobriety through legal sentencing has developed..."Oh, ya, I was Court Ordered." Well, however the order gets placed, its the result that counts. Restorative Justice Programs on public lands is no exception.

The penalties for off-road vehicle abuse (at least until we implement the State Wide Ban on these vehicles and see this travesty gone forever...the travesty that never should have been allowed to get started in the first place) need to be steep. One year minimum...public publication of admission of wrong...definatly no jail time (its counterproductive to immerse someone teachable who made a bad choice in an educational institution for hardened criminals)..major education...and a lot of hard work fixing the damage they created and that of a lot of their fellow offenders.

This in itself is probably one of the only viable keys to providing the labor force necessary to remediate the already vast damages to public lands already extant...and in the mean time provide the immersion and duration necessary to educate and change beliefs and attitudes...which will spread to other offenders by automatic association. Invariably, ORV offenders travel in hordes. Whack one good and the others will take notice. Whack two and you'll change the group.

It may be well advised to create a Restorative Program in which the offender is sentenced to one half day per week labor for a minimum of one year under the direct supervision of the Land Steward themselves. The reason for that is that half the objective of the Restorative Program is education and change of awareness and belief. The Land Steward is obviously the one with the most detailed site damage awareness and also the expert in remediative technologies. They are also prone to be the most discriminating task master at hand. It is recommended that the offender not be signed off on required service time completion unless the Land Steward certifies that the time was spent diligently and effectively...time alone is not the point...effective remediative action and attitude change are the objective.

A basic formula of requiring the offender to remediate their own damages and that of ten other offenders seems recommendable.

It would not be surprising, given immersion in land care, biology, geology, erosion, sustainable living, Micro environments, Environmental Illness...that the loss of hope and meaningfulness that underlies so much of the low self esteem that generates the "Urban Psychosis" which fuels the feeling of need for letting off steam, venting hostility and inflicting violence and damage might be replaced with new ideologies and career possibilities (which abound) with the sustainable/ natural building components and the off-grid technologies sector...both of which have some of the most lucrative and long term viability futures of any job sector in Western Colorado. This may be optimistic, but sufficient case evidence in other sectors of Smart Shelter's education and public contact background substantiate recommending that, although this should not be incorporated as an unattainable objective or expectation of the Land Steward Program, we should, none the less, prepare to accommodate it when it occurs...because it will, indeed, occur. Anyone connected with criminal justice (as well as alcoholism recovery) will tell you there is no more effective educational or belief system changer than a previous offender talking to a group of newcomers about why they did it, what it felt like and how much better life can get. And that's what we need here.

What we need from public lands managers and enforcement personnel is cooperation and endorsement of the Land Steward Pilot Programs. What we need from the courts is prescriptive Restorative Justice programs incorporating these parameters. What we need from the abusing public is a few successful prosecutions and sentencing. What we need from Smart Shelter is continuation of the pilot study investigations and program development. Smart Shelter's pilot studies and development are already underway and continuing.

Protection and Support of the Land Steward...

The average E.I. has already demonstrated that they are a valiant soul, just by virtue of surviving a disease consistently denigrated by society, overtly disdained by the chemical/ corporate industry that produced it, discounted by the medical community that should be diagnosing and treating it (but instead is chiefly in the pockets of the chemical corporations who create both the toxins and the prescriptions) and the puzzled and frustrated mates, families and friends completely at a loss for understanding or living with it and its maddening debilitation and psychotropic swings...paranoia, anger, depression, fatigue.

There is irony in the fact that key locations on our public lands are the only spaces left with air breathable by the E.I. and at least the hope of securing regions free of chemical herbicides and pesticides along with other urban sources of chemo-pollution that allow them any semblance of livability. This places an E.I. participating in something like the Land Steward Program in the place of fleeing to lands where they will encounter another kind of danger...and all on their own.

It is factual, though ironic again, that those who survive E.I. and insist on proactive recovery and community work in education and preventing others from self-toxifying via the chemical soup, that we are probably the only ones visible on the horizon willing and fitted for undertaking the radical changes and limits delineated by the Land Steward Program.

There is danger in living alone on isolated tracts...especially those deliberately chosen on the basis of their having been targeted by abusers for their pranks. There is danger in the possibilities of encounter with the criminally innedbriated or insane. There is real danger in threatening the clandestine operations of crystal meth labs and the psychosis meth users experience producing a self dillusion of invincibility and omnipotence. There is increased possibility of attack by bears. There are delusional personas with arms insistent on their rights to destroy anything they want and willing to push limits with anyone they perceive as threatening or curtailing that.

All progress has its costs. These threats are real. These fears are not unfounded. Every progress has its price. This (at this writing...early April, 2004) is going into month three of "Micro" pilot projects on various locations on both public and private lands in the region developing the Land Steward Program not out of conjecture, but out of observation, relevant known parallels and experience. All of those fears have been encountered. None have proven real...but that doesn't mean they won't. What the current author and E.I. has experienced in those same three months has also been the only time in 12 years he has been able to breathe, had a consistently clear place to escape asthma attack from crop burning, not suffered the intestinal and respiratory/ brain function impairment of urban pesticide, solvent and fragrance exposures...and enjoyed since time immemorable a full night's sleep...all because of the realtively (as yet) uncontaminated environments available on public lands (and nowhere else).

What follows here are current recommendations for the protection and safety of participants in the E.I. Land Steward Program developed during those experiences and work:

training...people serving as Land Stewards need to be given not only the training necessary to the program...mapping, reconnaissance, prescriptive remediation...but also information from other Land Stewards and law enforcement personnel about identifying, documenting, reporting and dealing with abusers...this is especially relevant in the instances of drug use and firearms.

signage...it is provisionally recommended that part of the approval process for pilot studies and Productive Occupancies include large, official, visible signage from the governmental agency in jurisdiction, extending the protection of official presence as a veil of deterrent for the Land Steward. Beyond that, explanatory and educational signage onsite as discussed elsewhere will serve to solicit and solidify support and awareness of the responsible public.

communication..cell phone or radio communication devices connecting to the appropriate dispatch and law enforcement entities are problematically necessary...problematical because of the inadvisability of their use by an E.I. already known to react to fields from these devices, but necessary for protection. These might be supplied by the land management or law enforcement entity...along with their conditions of use.

documentation...law enforcement work by the E.I. beyond the deterrent value of their visible presence should be limited to reconnaissance, sleuthing identification of offenders, photographing or videoing abuses in progress in a manner enabling identification, apprehension and prosecution. Thanks to telephoto video capabilities and the like, these can usually be done with no contact or recognition with the offender. Evidence is then presented to enforcement personnel for arrest and prosecution. The Land Steward may be required to testify, in which case it is imperative at the outset that they agree to provide that service...otherwise prosecution may fall apart.

non-contact...as indicated above, it is not the function of the Land Steward to engage in any unsolicited contact with the public...especially those engaged in abuses.

legal underwriting...specific legislation would be advisable making harassment or abusive actions toward a Land Steward or their property a stiff criminal felony offense and to make that knowledge public.

land management/enforcement coordination...coordination with land management and enforcement personnel on initiation of pilot studies, etc. is an obvious necessity. Further awareness of peripheral law enforcement entities...state patrol dispatch, county sheriff's department, adjacent municipal marshals and city police, CBI, etc is recommended.

other area law enforcement awareness and contact..see above

arms...there are the usual two sides to this one...more specific discussion needs to happen with the relevant entities involved...management and law enforcement.

"micro" , vehicle and site security...the original fears concerning personal property safety from vandalism have so far not proven substantiated. The isolation of a Land Steward Micro (especially if it carries official signage) creates a level of risk for an abuser simultaneous with the vulnerability of the Steward. Precautions of leaving lights or low level sound devices on when absent are deterrent. The best deterent is probably placing a second vehicle at the site and rotating uses of vehicles, making it very difficult to determine the Steward's presence or not. Standard locking procedures are applicable. Keeping the area broom swept provides fresh, untracked soil surfaces for footprint identification if needed...besides keeping the site soil conditions pristine.

restorative programs administration...to be discussed later

site education & awareness...placing the site in an official or educational status with signage is an effective deterrent. Most vandals are undecided at contact. Small deterrents will often change their minds.