Definitions: for the sake of discussion here the following definitions of occupancy terms are used: Short Term Occupancy- up to 14 days (two weeks) in duration, coincident with current BLM policy allowing any citizen a two week "camping" permission without approval or review. Medium Term Occupancy- covers durations from 15 to 120 days in duration...a timeframe known to be feasible and productive in performance of adequate field reconnaissance and remediation work in invasive species control and damage/debris cleanup. Long Term Occupancy-covers durations from 121 days to 4 years...a duration appropriate probably only to areas of extreme need, consistent law enforcement problems or demanding project definitions...seen as a distinctly different timeframe content than medium term occupancies. Permanent Occupancy- is defined as occupancy with no termination timeframe or intent...not relevant to any discussions presented in this current program.

Camping vs. Productive Occupancy...current provision on BLM land allows a two week camping authorization (here termed "short term occupancy") for anyone who can prove they have a permanent home somewhere else. This is a recreational right identifying the purpose of our public lands as a source of recreation open to the public. As a result of this extension, many damaging and negative factors are drawn to these lands...drug parties, vandalism, poachers, alcohol consumption, target practice, sexual abuse (including rape) illegal resource extractions, damaging off road vehicle uses, fire-setters (sometimes intentional), noise polluters, illegal dumpers, litterers and invasion of adjoining private property through public property access....and probably the singularly most prolific and universal damaging effect of public use of public lands...the introduction and spread of invasive species (brought in on tires, boots, horse manure, atv's, etc.)

We need to develop and encourage productive presences on these lands in effective remediative proportion to those forces that degrade the public asset. We would be wise to provision these productive occupancies for longer duration and support them to the point that they outweigh the effects of the destructive impacts and turn the current deterioration trend on our public lands around. These can be augmented at great public benefit, little or no cost to government and in unobtrusive ways that will quietly discourage and remediate the negative forces now consuming our pristine common asset at speeds astounding and unimaginable only 10 years ago...especially those of the hideous personalized off-road vehicle industry advertising forces which feeds the starving minds of low-IQ zombies with the quest to destroy nature and prove their manhood by carving "donuts" in meadows and desert soils with their dirt bikes and atv's as what passes in that crowd for a demonstration of their "freedom"...apparently, in their eyes, the right to destroy anything they want with impunity and in complete disregard for others and posterity...not to mention the public asset on which they stand.

These destructive forces are beyond any hope that current law enforcement strategy, policy and staff can ever control. The proof is simple...the destruction escalates in geometric proportion to population growth (which will be verified by any professional transportation planner as a well known phenomenon of growth mathematics) and the state of law enforcement is frozen in budget, numbers, policy and time. Year to year witness of any given parcel of popular terrain will verify the destruction.

The solution may well be a program for "Productive Occupancy". What is defined here is a function completely separate from camping. A Productive Occupancy...such as the location of a "Micro" for seasonal area cleanup and invasive species irradication by someone with a chemically compromised immune system in exchange for safeguards preserving that area of public lands as an EI accessible "Chemical Free Zone" is obviously well beyond the scope of what anyone would call camping.

Productive Occupancies are presences which facilitate the daily diligence leading to effective watchful presence discouraging misuse of lands and make the work/services contributed by the service provider an easy and effective extension of their presence in the vicinity on a daily basis. The occupancy is not for recreational purposes...it is a contract for services defining work to be done in the improvement of public lands in exchange for safe locations for, for instance, the "Micro Habitat" of an EI....many of whom now find the pollution and air quality problems of urban areas, small towns, suburbs and agricultural properties health and life threatening...leaving only the cleaner and more isolated public lands as the only viable location in which they can breathe and walk without suffering health effects. There are several thousand persons of this level of Environmental Illness in Western Colorado...the majority of whom are either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in terms of the causes of their allergies (asthma, chronic fatigue, attention deficit disorder, fibro-myalgia, epstein barr, multiple sclerosis, etc.).

The further advantage to a system of productive occupancy is that by encompassing the greater picture, understanding the origins and needs of disenfranchised or disabled classes of citizens, tradeoffs such as short, medium or long term safe occupancies can solve part of the EI's living needs and provide productive, positive forces, presences and services to public lands without budget drains or expenditures by land management entities.

Productive Occupancies are a basic, simple contract for services and are classed in exactly the same provisional categories as staff and employee housing for parks and forest service employees, construction of facilities on public lands, privatization contracts for food and retail services in parks, campground host residences in state and federal parks systems, short term accommodation of construction employees engaged in public lands projects, archaeological and other scientific research endeavors necessitating short or medium term residencies on public lands in conjunction with their authorized work.

Productive Occupancies, in the scope presented here, however, go well beyond the effect of the uses described in the paragraph above. They provide the land-health-conscious citizen an effective personal tool to turn the tide of public lands deterioration we presently witness. The effect of these productive stays goes well beyond the benefits of more law enforcement or retail services on public domain.

Because an EI (or any other service provider engaged in such a program) is in immediate contact with a locale for a significant period of time, they provide automatically a deterrent to the wild parties and witnessable offensive behaviors damaging portions of the public run to these lands to release...just with their visible presence.

Beyond that, their immediacy to the locale for a time allows a level of reconnaissance and discovery of illegal dump sites, liter, lands damage, illegal resource extraction and invasive species incubation that current land management staff is not capable of providing...especially not in the detail these programs would instigate. It should be noted here that the single most effective tool in non-chemical invasive species prevention and irradication is the early identification and remediation of new infestations. To paint a painful and real example of just exactly this principle and how pathetically inadequate our present policies are in this regard......a recent productive stay on BLM land intended to survey, map and present an invasives and trash remediation proposal....which should have qualified automatically for a two week camping right, extended to any citizen without permitting process....was greeted in the 5th day with a BLM law enforcement notice of illegal use. During that stay there was developed (and presented) a map of the Huff/Escalante vicinity indicating discovered dump sites and three incubating invasive species infestations of tamarisk and russian knappweed and a no-cost proposal to clean the debris and remove the invasives (under BLM supervision. Apparent policy impairing that activity was a law enforcement criterion which usurped my right even to presence on that land because the "micro" in which I live (by necessity of environmental illnesses) did not qualify as a legitimate piece of camping equipment because it was also my primary residence..and therefore defined my stay as an "illegal occupancy".

This should serve as example enough of the need for reform of occupancy policies in the light of our obvious need to develop programs stemming and repairing public lands deterioration...not condoning it through archaic policy.

In the bureaucratic quagmire which contrived to discourage rather than support a productive presence on BLM land, those infestations...unbeknownst to BLM staff...will, by this time next year (certainly by the year after) have grown to expansive proportion and another drainage basin will be lost to invasion (then nearly impossible to curtail)....a real crime given that the proposal to be given a provisional 90 day pilot project presence (a test program medium term productive occupancy) on the terrain would have resulted in the complete cleanup of two dump sites and supervised irradication of these infestations well in advance of their spreading and at a stage where they are easily controlled. These were not the shortfalls of BLM staff, they are the extensions of an outdate policy in serious need of updating and expansion to deal with current problems and the assets which can remedy them.

If we let our systems lapse into dormant research, stunted innovation, and stale ingenuity they will eventually eat themselves or waste into oblivion. These are not situations we should continue to empower in the administration of our public lands.

Instead, carefully discussed pilot projects for Short and Medium Term Productive Occupancy as contracts for services for land damage and infestation remediation need to be test flown with the intent that if successful (and only experience...not current policy...will teach us that) programs can be derived, these are certainly worth the effort...especially in the light of the huge population pool and work force the EI community (and others) could provide. This is the only significant and realistic energy resource in view with anything close to the power to offset the hideous destruction on our public lands. Here in the middle of the sage desert yesterday I picked up a plastic canoe paddle riddled with high powered rifle bullet holes...a canoe paddle blown to bits and left on the land. Down in the bottom of Huff draw is a steel hide-a-bed frame and mattress springs set...thrown off the road and wedged between boulders in the draw. Only someone who loves and haunts the land the way this site has been perused this past two weeks can identify and cure these kinds of abuse. Volunteers won't and BLM staff can't. We are here and ready...the crime is that current policy thwarts...even prevents...us from that function.

Volunteer programs scheduling participants to go out with BLM staff for an afternoon of clean up or weed pull have a discouraging level of ineffectiveness and demise. Zeal wanes quickly, excuses for not showing up escalate as the date draws near. This is not a good resource pool...."do gooder mentality" historically vanishes quickly in the face of real work.

Someone whose right to occupancy in an unsprayed area far from urban pollution and herbicides which make them sick is well and effectively motivated to provide real and measurable services in exchange for their right to stay. Their immediate and intimate presence on the sites under remediation invests them and empowers their effectiveness to provide these services as easy...an hour or two a day...parts of their daily routine...incidentally necessitating no commute with its lost time, fuel consumption and contribution to traffic. They are already there, they witness the offending trash, they clean it up easily with every morning hike, they breathe clean air and in time the land and the welfare of the public asset thrive and the deterrent to inappropriate and erosive forces just dwindles into discouragement.

At least at this level of development "Short Term Productive Occupancies" seem to provide an immediate start to this program, allowing an approved 14 day stay with, provision of a volunteer work permit (in the case of BLM) which specifies work to be done, provides necessary terms, locations and safeguards and leaves land manager approval and knowledge well in place. The problem with the Short Term time frame is that it does not allow the timeframe or energy expenditure to deliver the consistency and thoroughness these problems demand for effective, long-term solutions.

"Medium Term Occupancies" (currently advisable on a limited Pilot Study basis) are the focus of initiation for the Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program. They would seem to fit best into a 90-120 day time frame...they are not permanent, they are scheduled to rotate with season and location of need, they do not constitute anything like permanent residency. They provide a reasonable and effective timeframe in terms of similar work already carried out by Smart Shelter on private lands. They interface well with the seasonal nature of early growth and seeding cycles of invasives. They do not appear as permanent residencies to the public, but they do provide the safeguard of making offenders aware that a watchful eye observant of misuses may be anywhere present. They also do not mandate the repetitive waste of the service provider's time and energy in relocation, travel and set up/ take down of the site. It is considered that in the testing and evaluation of the viability of these Medium Term Occupancies that realistically effective and maximized impact of the Land Steward Program...parrallel to the minimization of change and demands for administration on the part of participating and supportive land managers will be found....the maximum bang for the buck is in the 90-120 day seasonal timeframe.

Effectiveness can only happen with careful selection of service providers, inauguration of project procedure and policy carefully hammered out with time...which can only come out of pilot project experience and careful launching of occupancies....thinking and communicating on a theoretical and policy level are necessary to an extent, but basically valueless in terms of the real viability of an innovative program of this nature. Smart Shelter is provisionally funded, reasonably experienced, competently equipped, certainly motivated and definitely ready to participate in such pilot projects...the most likely source visible to launch a pilot program. Now, with the off-grid independence of the Nomad "Micro" the viability of a pilot program seems a shoe-in.

What we stand to gain in the future from such changes in our public lands administration is immense...and seem to provide one of the only reasonable and likely tools visible on an otherwise very troubled horizon.