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New BCP Public Access Land Management Plan Released


cxagent

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The Balcones Canyonlands Preserve has released a new draft of the Public Access chapter of their Land Management Plan. I put a copy of the draft on my Dropbox Public folder for people to see - https://www.dropbox.com/s/wfvbwo9gfui8ht0/20181008update%20Public%20Access.pdf?dl=0

 

The previously adopted version (1999) is also on my Dropbox folder at https://www.dropbox.com/s/7atz72l352mxk3u/1999%20Tier%20IIA%20Public%20Access%20Chapter.pdf?dl=0

 

I will be reviewing it and making a list of comments. I don’t want to say anything about it until I have had a chance to digest it and make sure I fully understand it. I hope other can take the time to plow thru it.

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Some potentially dangerous language: "Redefined public access may be proposed for hiking, hiking with dogs on leash, running, and mountain biking as provided for in the COA BCP Trail Master Plan"

Also, under 3.1.4: "Existing approved trails (*see maps in Tier III plans for locations) exhibiting significant erosion must be closed or renovated and restored to habitat. All 
non-approved trails are subject to closure and restoration." Need to go find these Tier III plans …

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7 hours ago, TAF said:

Some potentially dangerous language: "Redefined public access may be proposed for hiking, hiking with dogs on leash, running, and mountain biking as provided for in the COA BCP Trail Master Plan"

Also, under 3.1.4: "Existing approved trails (*see maps in Tier III plans for locations) exhibiting significant erosion must be closed or renovated and restored to habitat. All 
non-approved trails are subject to closure and restoration." Need to go find these Tier III plans …

Most of them can be found by Googling "balcones canyonlands preserve tier III" Make sure you include the word "preserve" or most of what comes up is related to the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge not the preserve.

The most controversial Tier III Land Management Plan (City Park) can be found at -  https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlh06thmux088gi/Tier III City of Austin Emma Long 2007.pdf?dl=0 That one has moved and changed at inopportune times so I keep a stable version of it. 

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There is a meeting Thursday afternoon (10/11/2018) for them to "explain it to us". I have not looked any farther ahead than that. There will be at least 2 public meetings I know of and chances for public comment. The actual approval by the Coordinating Committee will in December, I think the afternoon of 12/5/2018 at City Hall. Those will be posted later.

I am trying to keep an open mind about this revision. OHHHMMMMMMM

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Met with the BCP staff today. It was the most productive meeting so far. The meeting was dominated by the Emma Long motorcycle guys. We didn't get a lot of discussion of mountain biking or other areas. Staff appeared to want to work with us but also wanted to be clear that there were limits to what they could change. Obviously they can't allow the public to run wild on the Preserve. But we users can't allow the existing park lands that were put in the BCP to be closed. There is a lot of room to work between those extremes.

The draft document is in the link above and also posted on the Travis County BCCP web site at https://www.traviscountytx.gov/tnr/bccp  (I verified that URL took me right to it.)

There is public review meeting from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM on 10/24/2018. The location will be announced later. (They are trying to figure how large a space they need.) My best guess is the location will be at 1183 Chestnut Ave.

October 30 there will be a Citizens Advisory Committee at Reicher Ranch (near Lakeway Home Depot). You can provide comments during the Citizens Communications but comments are limited to 3 minutes.

Between now and 11/7/2018 at 5:00 PM you can email comments to BCCPSecretary@austintexas.gov  I heard they would set up a Survey Monkey to collect comments but I don't find that link anywhere.

Mid November, they will post an updated draft to include comments. This draft will be submitted to the BCCP Coordinating Committee

December 7 2018 from 1 to 3 PM the BCCP Coordinating Committee will meet at City Hall (165 Guadalupe). Citizen Communication will allow comments also limited to 3 minutes each. The idea is to approve the draft at this meeting. So comments at that time will only be request to approve or request to reject.

There is a lot of review and comment work to be done if we want to make any improvements. 

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8 hours ago, crazyt said:

Is ARR helping out? Are you representing ARR?

It sounds like he is representing Austin-area mountain bikers, as we all should be. I'm not sure what voice you think ARR can provide, that we cannot provide ourselves.

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8 hours ago, crazyt said:

Is ARR helping out? Are you representing ARR?

Yes and Yes Both myself and ARRPrez were at the meeting.

Because any government does not want to deal with each and every person/voter individually, they will try to deal with "groups". ARR is the only group they (or I) know of that represents mountain bikers in Austin / Travis County. That is not to say that another group could not exist or a new one form. But ARR is the mountain biking group that is recognized right now.

Note that the BCP staff is trying to work with "groups" in hopes of actually getting issues resolved before throwing it open to the 'free for all" that open public meetings can turn into. My experience with open public meetings on some topics is they can turn into yelling matches where nothing is accomplished. I suspect that is the BCP staff reasoning also.

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3 minutes ago, June Bug said:

Thanks for your continuing hard work on this, cxagent.  You're the right person at the right time to be a bulwark against BCP encroachment and exclusion policies re: mountain bikers and trials riders, especially at Emma Long, but other riding venues as well. 

I agree.  The work can be tedious and often thankless.  Thanks for representing.

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7 hours ago, cxagent said:

Note that the BCP staff is trying to work with "groups" in hopes of actually getting issues resolved before throwing it open to the 'free for all" that open public meetings can turn into. My experience with open public meetings on some topics is they can turn into yelling matches where nothing is accomplished. I suspect that is the BCP staff reasoning also.

Do you sense that the new leadership is taking a more 'open-minded' approach?

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21 hours ago, TAF said:

Do you sense that the new leadership is taking a more 'open-minded' approach?

I am hopeful. But I have been hopeful before. Many years ago we thought we had provided documentation and worked out issues. The "someone behind the curtain" changed everything that was worked out. Similar on the 2017 draft rewrite. I will withhold my opinion until I see actual results. There may still be "someone behind the curtain" who changes everything.

Edited by cxagent
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I have finished my review of the BCP public access land management plan. It is ugly. This "new" draft is a copy of the 2017 version with more "fluff" added. The 2017 draft removed 16 different statements that grandfathered use of parklands that were allowed to be placed in to the BCP with one statement that said [... Grandfathered uses allow continued public access at the same level as were occurring in 1996. However, as stated in USFWS (1996) "management plans for existing parks and preserves which will be included in the BCCP preserve system will need to conform with BCCP management guidelines, goals and policies."] (Square brackets used to indicate a quote itself since the quote included quotation marks) I am getting myself armed with lots of data, information and history. This looks like a repeat of the 2007 attempt by the BCP that was rejected. Then repeated in 2017 when the draft was so bad it never even went to a vote of the Coordinating Committee.

There is a meeting next week with BCP staff to try to work out some of the issues and get corrections made. I will not release my comments to the public until after that meeting so the BCP staff has a chance to make improvements. If they do not agree to major improvements we will need anyone who wants to keep existing public access to dedicated parklands that were allowed to be put into the BCP to make their comments known. Those parklands include Emma Long, Barton Creek, Bull Creek, St Edwards and more.

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37 minutes ago, cxagent said:

If they do not agree to major improvements we will need anyone who wants to keep existing public access to dedicated parklands that were allowed to be put into the BCP to make their comments known. Those parklands include Emma Long, Barton Creek, Bull Creek, St Edwards and more.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas...

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2 hours ago, Teamsloan said:

Have you ever asked them point blank WHY those sentences keep getting left out?

Yes - repeatedly. And the answer is that "there are no changes, they just cleaned it up and made it clearer" and that they only quoted the Habitat Conservation Plan (founding document for the BCCP).

Pam LeBlanc wrote a really good summary in the December 4,  2017 Statesman article. It highlights the differences in what staff said and what the public saw.

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By Pam LeBlanc 

Posted Nov 30, 2017 at 12:01 AMUpdated Sep 25, 2018 at 12:40 PM

  

Head to New Wall on the Barton Creek greenbelt any warm afternoon and you’ll find climbers inching their way up the 50-foot limestone escarpment, using rocks shaped like chicken heads, elephant ears and cookies for handholds.

Climbers have been scaling these grayish-green cliffs for decades, even after the city parkland was incorporated into the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve in 1996. But now, as the preserve’s staff retools its public access rules, some climbers are worried that they could be pushed out.

They’re not alone. Motorcyclists who ride designated trails at Emma Long Metropolitan Park, climbers who scramble up chunky boulders at Bull Creek District Park, mountain bikers who pedal through the Barton Creek greenbelt — all uses barred in most sections of the preserve, but permitted in areas that already operated as city parks when it was created — say that the reworded guidelines could squeeze them out eventually.

That’s not the goal, according to staff members and the two voting members of the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Planning Organization Coordinating Committee, who say they’re simply consolidating information already contained in a series of land management plans.

“The intent is not to change any grandfathered uses or close down any uses of those parks,” said Sherri Kuhl, the Wildland Conservation Division manager at the city of Austin.

The coordinating committee will meet 10 a.m. Friday at City Hall, 301 W. Second St., to discuss the issue, and many park users say they’ll attend.

“They say explicitly, ‘We’re not trying to change public access to parks,’” said Brian Tickle, an Austin climber and Texas director of Access Fund, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for climbing access. “Maybe the intent is not to change public access, but you’re changing the language and it kind of opens the door for increased restrictions. ... They’re at the very least creating a lot of uncertainty about the intent. Is this an underhanded way to increase access restrictions? We need assurances.”

The Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan was created in the mid-1990s to ease rapid development in western Travis County amid concerns about harming the environment — particularly the habitat of endangered invertebrates, salamanders and songbirds. Federal and local officials struck a compromise. The city and county governments agreed to set aside land for preservation, creating the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve, and development proceeded on a smaller scale.

Today, the public can visit most of the preserve, a noncontiguous collection of properties, only through guided hikes led by volunteers.But under an agreement struck at the time of the creation of the preserve, certain uses — including rock climbing and mountain biking on the Barton Creek greenbelt, climbing at Bull Creek District Park and motorcycling in a small section of Emma Long Metropolitan Park — could continue.

Then, in fall 2014, city of Austin officials said federal rules obligated them to close some of the motorcycle trails that ran through a creek bed at Emma Long because the motorcycles were causing erosion. That reignited a long-running dispute about what people should be allowed to do within the 31,780-acre preserve.

The motorcyclists, including advocate Tomás Pantin, 66, who has been riding at Emma Long since 2011, said they were causing no harm and that the city closed the park’s most challenging and desirable trails. He’s now leading a campaign to get park users to submit letters in support of keeping access at all the grandfathered parks open.

The Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan is administered by a coordinating committee made up of two voting members — one representing Travis County, another from the city of Austin — along with a representative of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a secretary. Today, county Commissioner Gerald Daugherty and Austin City Council Member Leslie Pool are the voting members, although county Commissioner Brigid Shea, who has long championed environmental causes, will take over Daugherty’s role in January.

The committee’s acting secretary, Kimberlee Harvey, was at a conference this week and unavailable for comment.But Kuhl, who served as the interim secretary on the coordinating committee before Harvey, said the park users are misinterpreting the proposed rewrite of the access rules.

“The most glaring piece of misinformation that we have seen was that the BCCP Coordinating Committee secretary is attempting to seize the power to close parks unilaterally. There is absolutely no truth to this assertion,” Kuhl said.

A section of the draft rules states that “any existing trails not approved by the Coordinating Committee Secretary will be closed.” That language was copied and pasted from another part of the management plan and refers only to trails created by the public without approval, Kuhl said.

“The intent there is to close social trails, and if we are going to put in new trails, to put in more sustainable trails,” Kuhl said. Still, officials must responsibly manage the land, she said, “so there may be an instance where an area is suffering from too much use or erosion or overuse, and our goal as a responsible landowner would be to close that trail and build a more sustainable one.”

Kuhl said staff members are looking at comments and are willing to edit the language of the rewritten rules so that’s clearer.

Pool, one of two voting members of the committee, said she does not intend to bar rock climbers or mountain bikers from the Barton Creek greenbelt or Bull Creek, as long as they don’t cause damage.

“I’m certainly not moving to change (the grandfathered uses) — I don’t see that they’re doing the level of damage that motorized bikes have,” Pool said. “We’re simply asking communities who want to use the preserve to do it within agreed upon parameters.

“No public access guidelines have been changed. We’re not planning to tighten them. We’re also not planning to loosen them. (Restrictions) could happen at any time if incursions into the preserve get to a point where we have a crisis and the preserve is damaged.”

Daugherty, the other voting member on the committee, said he understands why park users are leery.

He described Balcones Canyonlands Preserve supporters as “hard-core environmentally minded people,” and said, “If they could do it all themselves, they would have very, very, very limited access to the public because they are concerned about the fragile nature of the habitat.” He said that, although the original contract states that certain uses in parks were grandfathered, “they would like to try to change that, in my opinion.”

Daugherty said he has never supported restricting public use in the preserve, except in certain environmentally fragile areas.

“If anybody is trying to alter the original intent of it — which had very specifically stated that there were grandfathered uses in certain parks — I would not be supportive of altering that language at all,” he said.

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The public meeting location for today (10/24) has been announced - we’ll be convening at the cottage at Mayfield Park at 3305 W 35th St., Austin, TX 78703.

Quoted from above - There is public review meeting from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM on 10/24/2018. The location will be announced later. 

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  • 1 month later...

I am posting to bring this thread back to the front page.

Comments have been submitted by many people. BCP staff have been far better at addressing the comments than I have ever seen. But - and its a big but. I am down to four changes that have not been made that would mean I would NOT support this revision. The basis for the issue is the BCP assumes that any/all public access is harmful to the endangered species. Their own data shows that assumption to be false.

There is a phone call on 12/3/18 to discuss why these changes have not been made. After that phone call I will be posting info so all can make their own decision. Why am I waiting? BCP staff has been much much better at trying to work thru issues and find compromises. I think it is only fair to give them a chance to work these last issues before unleashing the public on them. (I know - I am such a sucker.)

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