April, 2004 Press Release from Wildlands CPR on the new National Rule:

Now or Never: Getting a Grip on Off-Road Vehicles

“At one time, we didn’t manage the use of off-highway vehicles . . . . But the number of people who own OHVs has just exploded in recent years. In 2000, it reached almost 36 million. Even a tiny percentage of impact from all those millions of users is still a lot of impact. Each year, we get hundreds of miles of what we euphemistically refer to as ‘unplanned roads and trails.’” That’s how Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth described unmanaged motorized recreation when he deemed the issue one of the four great threats facing national forests during a speech on Earth Day in 2003.

In an effort to protect forests from the damage caused by off-road vehicles, late in 2003 Chief Bosworth chartered an inter-disciplinary team of Forest Service managers to strengthen regulations that govern motorized recreation by overland vehicles. The team is lead by Jack Troyer, Regional Forester for the Intermountain Region (Region 4), based in Ogden, Utah.

The Forest Service hopes to revise regulations governing the use of dirt bikes, ATVs, SUVs, and other overland, off-road vehicles on national forests and grasslands by late 2004. In meetings organized by the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition, Forest Service officials have said they will propose new rules that prohibit cross-country motorized travel except under limited circumstances and that limit off- road vehicles to designated roads and routes. Chief Bosworth recently said, “I don’t have that sense of urgency, myself, regarding snowmobiles.” The Forest Service says they will deal with over-snow motorized recreation separately, which makes little sense in the big picture.

“Dirt bikes, ATVs and other off-road vehicles have been a serious problem for a long time in virtually every national forest,” said former Forest Service Deputy Chief Jim Furnish. “Rarely have agency leaders had the guts to tackle the prob- lems head on, even though they have the tools. While the regulations can and should be strengthened, strong leader- ship is even more important.”

Unfortunately, Forest Service leadership on this issue has been lacking for decades with serious consequences for the environment and the majority of forest users. In his Earth Day speech, Chief Bos­worth recognized that the leadership vacuum has been filled by irre­sponsible motorists: “The Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana has more than a thousand unplanned roads and trails reaching for almost 650 miles. That’s pretty typical for a lot of national forests, and it’s only going to get worse.”

The first off-road vehicle boom was in the 1970s, when three- and four-wheelers became increasingly popular in deserts and forests. Hun­dreds of scientific studies were conducted on their ecological effects, and Presidents Nixon and Carter signed executive orders regulating their use on public lands. As land management agencies implemented new travel plans in response to the executive orders, they largely de­pended on the terrain itself to limit where the vehicles could drive.

The 1980s were a bust for the industry: motorized recreation waned as oil prices rose, the economy faltered, and the consumer products safety commission banned the sale of three-wheeled ATVs. But the boom reignited in the 1990s with the advent of faster, stronger, more powerful four-wheelers that can go nearly anywhere. Strangely, the Forest Service widened rather than narrowed the regulatory gap: the agency rescinded a little known regulation called the “40-inch rule.” This rule stated that no vehicles wider than 40 inches could be used on national forest trails. (At that time forty inches was the standard width of the handlebars of a dirt bike.) With the rescission of that rule, we’ve seen a wholesale change in the attitude and aptitude of the agency to manage off-road vehicles. We’ve also seen the continued conversion of foot and horse trails to motorized use.

Unchecked by reasonable rules and regulations, off-road vehicle use on national forests skyrocketed throughout the 1990s. Nonethe­less, off-road vehicle use still makes up only about 10% of overall recreational use on the national forests.

In 1999, Wildlands CPR and The Wilderness Society spearheaded the development of a rulemaking petition asking the Forest Service to overhaul their off-road vehicle regulations. The petition documented the ecological impacts of off-road vehicles and the Forest Service’s congressional mandate to protect the land, water, air, plant-life, and wildlife in national forests from off-road vehicle abuse. By the time we filed the petition that December, more than 100 organizations had signed on.

As documented in the petition, the failure to effectively manage off-road vehicle use is causing serious damage throughout national forests. In his 2003 Earth Day speech, Chief Bosworth confirmed the environmental destruction and antagonism caused by off-road vehicle use: “We’re seeing more and more erosion, water degradation, and habitat destruction. We’re seeing more and more conflicts between users. We’re seeing more damage to cultural sites and more violation of sites sacred to American Indians. And those are just some of the impacts.”

“Renegade routes” — unauthorized routes cut by irresponsible motorized riders — infect most forests like cancer. Travel on renegade routes is more destructive than other motorized recreation because these routes usually cut through areas where roads just don’t belong, such as riparian areas, steep slopes, and fragile ecosystems. As a result, public lands fractured by renegade routes are marked by eroded soils, polluted rivers, lakes and streams, and decimated wildlife habitat.

Destructive, unmanaged motorized recreation has escalated to the point of assaulting the rights of others, resulting in new non-traditional conservation alliances. The roar of motors and seizure of traditional foot and horse trails displaces hikers, cross-country skiers and hunters; ranchers with forest grazing allotments and homeowners adjacent to forests suffer trespass and vandalism by brazen motorists. As more riders take to the forests, opportunities for others to enjoy unspoiled habitat and quiet of nature disappear.

“Traditional hunters want a quality experience, but they are faced with ever-increasing negative impacts brought about by unmanaged ATV use on our public lands,” said Stan Rauch, a lifelong hunter from Montana. “As ATV use grows unchecked, many hunters are being displaced from their most pristine and productive hunting areas on their national forests and critical wildlife habitat is being sliced into smaller and smaller pieces.”

The Natural Trails and Waters Coalition has been working with traditional and non-traditional conservationists to articulate and promote policies for effective reform. Essential reform would require forest-level land managers to designate a system of motorized routes based on science and balanced public input within a defined time period. True reform will also protect hard-fought bans on motorized vehicles in places like the Hoosier and the White Mountains National Forests. See sidebar.

Vera Smith, Conservation Director of the Colorado Mountain Club, insists that a sense of urgency is essential to making national policy translate into effective management: “If the Forest Service does not set clear deadlines for action, the problem will go from bad to worse, and countless hikers and other quiet recreationists will continue to lose access to their national forests.”

While the pending rule-change may fulfill the obligations com­pelled by the 1999 petition, the Forest Service insists that another impetus for their work is the increasing challenge that their land managers face as they try to deal with off-road vehicle recreation. This does not appear to be just another agency rule change promoted and imposed from the top down. Instead, the process is more organic, coming from within the agency ranks that recognize the need to con­trol off-road vehicle abuse of the land.

For this reason alone, many other conserva­tionists feel there is an opportunity for real, positive, lasting change to come from this process. This isn’t an era of positive change on environmental issues, however, and anyone working to protect public lands must maneuver the potential political and regulatory pitfalls. Opportunities for real change, public and policymaker education, and citizen involvement are too promising not to take the inherent risks. If we want to get a handle on motorized recreation, it’s now or never.”