The virtual public meeting occurred yesterday, I attended and learned a few things. It was confirmed that this is occurring because of the SUWA lawsuit, which in effect compels the BLM to "justify" the existence of every road in the travel management plan. After receiving public input, the BLM will select on of the proposed alternatives or may do some mixing and matching depending upon the content of the public comments. What is needed to keep these roads open is a comment as to why the road is justified. I.e., it leads to a view point, it's the only access to a given area, etc..
The problem is that this involves hundreds of miles of trails. It's unlikely that any single person has driven all of them. So they are relying upon "route reports" that have been created, which identify any concerns with natural or cultural resource conservation. Some of the things mentioned were bighorn sheep lambing areas, and complaints from river users about noise from ORVs.
RR4W indicates that ALL of the proposed alternatives (except Alternative A, the "take no action" alternative) impact at least one Safari route. The BLM personnel at the public meeting claimed the exact opposite, which is disturbing. One would think they would know the location of all the Safari routes.
In a nutshell, BLM is certain to close roads or it will invite yet another lawsuit from SUWA for "not doing its job". The BLM seems to think that if a road is lightly traveled, that means it's not very important and is therefore subject to closure even if it doesn't present any resource conservation issues. That is troubling to me, as those are precisely the roads that I will seek out if I'm looking for solitude, which is a very limited resource these days.
Unfortunately I don't have time to drive all of these trails or to even read all of the route reports which identify any conservation issues. I do think that the RR4W has identified those specific areas that they are concerned about, so I'll probably include those in my e-planning comment to the BLM.
Btw, the process has already been completed in the Canyon Rims travel management area in San Juan county, and they lost only about 53 miles of roads. This one is more contentious because of the popularity of the routes included in the proposed closures.