Illegal off-roading seen as threat to nature

THE empty beer cans and spent shotgun shells are strewn along the dirt trails that cut into San Timoteo Canyon on the northeastern end of Riverside County.

Ken Kietzer, an environmental scientist for California’s state parks, kicks at the shells and surveys the illegal dirt trails cutting through the 8,000 acres of public land that park officials hope to one day develop into a state park on the border of Moreno Valley.

Illegal off-roading is responsible for erosion, litter and gunfire in the area, he says. But Kietzer’s biggest worry is that off-roaders are riding without spark arrestors -- devices that by law must be mounted to the end of an off-road vehicle’s exhaust pipe to prevent sparks from shooting out.

Without arrestors, Kietzer fears the off-roaders may cause a brush fire in the parched canyons that are home to mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats, snakes and other wildlife. It is an area that has already been struck twice by brush fires caused by lightning in the last year.

“We can’t handle this short of a fire cycle,” he says.

Nearly three years ago, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Dale N. Bosworth, named illegal off-roading as one of the biggest threats to the national forests. State and local parks officials agree that illegal off-roading is a major source of damage to parks and open space.

Off-roading groups vow to abide by government restrictions on public land, but they say park agencies must acknowledge off-roading’s booming popularity by opening more parkland for the sport.

California, for example, hasn’t opened a new off-road park since 1998. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is in the process of adding new off-roading restrictions to its 261 million acres of wilderness.

“We are being squeezed,” said Ed Waldheim, president of California Off-Road Vehicle Assn.

-- Hugo Martin