With one day left in the official scoping period for the Inyo National Forest’s Proposed Action for Inventory Motorized Travel Management Plan, members of Advocates for Access to Public Lands (Greg Weirick, Dave Mattovich and Dick Noles) hand-delivered a stack of 3,600 written comments to the U.S. Forest Service/Bureau of Land Management Building in Bishop Friday afternoon. The deadline to submit comments on the proposal, which calls for the inclusion of 2,800 miles of roads and track in the INF’s officially designated road system out of about 3,700 that are actually on the ground, was 5 p.m., Dec. 15. The scoping period is the fourth of a five-step process to define transportation systems on each national forest in the country, in order to streamline route systems into sustainable networks that somehow manage to preserve access and recreational opportunities while eliminating roads that lead to environmental degradation. Though the scoping deadline has passed, INF is still accepting input, and the public will have additional time to comment when a draft Environment Impact Statement is released in summer of 2008. Photo by Keith Rainville