Off-Road Freewheeling Larks May Hit Barricade

For decades, off-road vehicle enthusiasts have been mostly free to roam federal forests and rangelands. But their freewheeling days could be numbered.

In a move expected to generate controversy, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are developing plans to restrict the vehicles to designated routes and areas.

Federal officials say the proposal is essential to curb environmental damage and ease conflict among users of public lands. Nationally, they cite a sevenfold increase from 1972 to 2000 in the number of off-roaders to 36 million.

“The days of blazing new trails are coming to an end,” said Leo Drumm, off-highway vehicle coordinator for the BLM in Nevada. “Off-highway vehicles are a legitimate use of public land, but there have to be some controls.”

Nowhere would the proposed changes have a bigger effect than Nevada and its open spaces.

The federal government controls 87% of the state, and Nevada is home to the largest national forest outside Alaska: the 6.3-million-acre Humboldt-Toiyabe.

Although the vast majority of Nevada’s backcountry is unrestricted to off-roaders, federal land managers have begun the process to ban travel off designated routes and areas.

While the changes might be most dramatic in Nevada, similar efforts to address off-road travel are under way across the West.

“We’re all recognizing at the same time the need to work on this issue,” said Bob Vaught, Humboldt-Toiyabe supervisor. “There’s widespread agreement that we need to do a better job of managing off-highway vehicle use.”

Even though a national Forest Service off-road policy awaits final action nearly a year after it was unveiled, individual national forests are being encouraged to address the issue because of soaring off-road use.

Federal land managers are taking a cue from Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth, who identified unmanaged recreation as one of the four biggest threats to national forests.

BLM Director Kathleen Clarke shares Bosworth’s concerns.

Environmental and motorized recreation groups praise federal officials for confronting the issue, but they say a battle looms over which roads and trails to close.

Conservationists said they were concerned that not enough roads would be closed to protect wildlife and habitat.

“We need to encourage them to act in a way that will result in real on-the-ground protection,” said Jeremy Garncarz, of the Wilderness Society’s Denver office. “We’re losing wildlife habitat on a daily basis because of these problems.”

Most hunters welcome the push to keep off-road vehicles to designated routes and areas, said Stan Rauch, hunter outreach coordinator of the National Trails and Waters Coalition in Washington, D.C., which seeks better management of the vehicles on public land.

Traditional sportsmen have accused those who use all-terrain vehicles to go off-road of disturbing their hunts and punching out more new roads in remote regions across the West.

“It’s a good positive development for the land and users looking for a quality experience on public land,” said Rauch, a big-game hunter from Victor, Mont.

Vehicle enthusiasts will try to keep as many roads and trails open as possible, said Brian Hawthorne, public lands director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a motorized recreation advocacy group in Pocatello, Idaho.

Environmentalists “are spending millions of dollars to close public land to public uses,” he said. “That’s where the controversy is generated. What we want are managed off-highway trail systems and areas that are sustainable and that we can enjoy for generations to come.”

Gerald Lent of the Nevada Hunters Assn. said most off-roaders were responsible and were being unfairly singled out.

“Out in the middle of the desert, what damage are you doing with an ATV?” he asked. “It doesn’t hurt anything. There’s so much land out there I don’t know how they would harm it.”

Last year, Nevada Wildlife Commission Chairman Tommy Ford got a taste of the intense feelings surrounding the issue when he recommended a plan to prohibit hunters from driving ATVs more than 25 yards off established roads on public land.

Ford, who said the proposal was necessary to protect wildlife and habitat, shelved it after Lent and other hunters circulated petitions calling for his removal and printed bumper stickers that read: “Ban Tommy Ford, Not ATVs.”

“They mislead the public on everything. They made it a personal issue,” Ford said. “But it [off-road restrictions] is going to happen. It’s happening as we stand here.”

Federal land managers said they would work with various groups to identify roads and trails suitable for vehicles.

Each BLM district will update its resource management plan, and each forest district will develop a system of designated routes and areas.

“Every national forest is different and has to evaluate its own needs and abilities to provide for motorized use and recreational use at the local level,” said Jerry Ingersoll, the Forest Service’s Off-Highway Vehicle Program manager in Washington D.C. He said many of them will be evaluating those needs over the next few years.

“The answers they get from doing travel planning are likely to be just as different as the national forests are different from one another,” he said.

Implementation will vary, but some districts are shooting for as early as 2007.

While federal land managers said it was premature to discuss road closures, they wouldn’t rule them out.

“We’re growing up as a state and we can’t handle the unrestricted cross-country travel like we did in the past,” Drumm said. “Every time you go out, you find more new trails. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to rein them [vehicles] in.”