Why weren’t the full range of public interests represented in the stakeholder negotiations?
The stakeholder negotiations were intended to find consensus between conflicting recreation interests, recognizing that there are other public and agency interests that would need to be addressed in the SRMP that followed. If a more comprehensive consensus building process – such as that used for previous Land and Resource Management Plans – had been used, the process would have taken much longer and many participants would have had to participate in extensive discussions that were not central to their interests. In addition, government has heard from past plan participants that a broad consensus process was too onerous in terms of time commitments for stakeholders, including the public. The stakeholder process and subsequent process that was used to develop the SRMP combined focused negotiations and public consultation to more effectively involve different public interests. This was combined with science-based information to create timely, balanced decisions regarding winter recreatio