ATV use will be limited in forests, on federal land

DENVER – The federal government is stepping up efforts to curb off-road vehicle damage to national forests and other public lands by restricting all-terrain vehicles to assigned routes.

The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are drawing maps of roads, trails and tracks that can be used by off-road vehicles in forests and other federal land area. Off-road travel across open federal land – a popular pursuit for dirt bikers and four-wheelers – will be banned except in tracts set aside for that use, such as sand dunes and other specified motor recreation sites. Any unauthorized trails created by users over previous decades that don’t make the cut also will close.

Decades of largely unregulated use on some public lands have torn up terrain, fouled streams and disrupted wildlife.

“We’re not looking to exclude the (off-road) user group by any means,” says Jaime Gardner of the federal Bureau of Land Management’s Colorado office. “But we are going toward a management style of designated routes.”

The two agencies manage about 705,000 square miles of federal land – about one-fifth of the United States.

Off-road vehicle users are cautious about the travel revisions. “Some areas, we’re seeing a good, balanced system. Others, it’s just a nightmare,” says Brian Hawthorne of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a national off-road group. A prime example, Hawthorne says, is California’s Eldorado National Forest near Lake Tahoe. Its draft plan, under public review, would bar motorized vehicles from about 60 percent of routes where riders are allowed now.

“We’re not insensitive to our impacts,” Hawthorne says. “We want to minimize them as much as possible. But the vast majority of (off-road vehicle) owners, like any recreationists, are law-abiding.”

The Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, among other environmental groups, contend decades of uncontrolled off-road use show otherwise. “This is an opportunity to rein in that abuse,” says Chris Kassar of the center, a Tucson-based alliance.