Public Land Scarred By Irresponsible Users

When the phone call came from my mother-in-law last September, her news hit me like a kick in my stomach. The night before, someone had cruised by her home on a quiet suburban street in Twin Falls and bashed the mailbox.

That box had been pretty special to my in-laws, but also to my wife and me. Just before Christmas last year, she and I had spent a week of six-hour days in our chilly garage, cutting, shaping and painting wood pieces, then fitting them to the box.

We attached wheels, a seat, a steering wheel and an exhaust pipe, then painted it green and yellow. Those are the colors of John Deere, a tractor brand my father-in-law favored over all others during his 50-some years of farming.

We wrapped our present, then drove it south to my in-laws’ retirement home for the 20 years since they sold their farm in Buhl.

At 84 and 82, Ralph and Marjorie Baughman were long past the age that they needed new clothes or stuff that only gathers dust, so the mailbox was a real hit Christmas morning. Right after church, my father-in-law and I popped the old mailbox from its post, then spiked down the new one.

I had misgivings. It was the only different mailbox on their street, and I suggested that it might be prudent to fabricate a rebar frame to protect it. Dad demurred, explaining that vandalism just didn’t happen in their neighborhood.

Obviously, he was wrong.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a photo of a patch of ravaged forest near our home. When I looked at the churned-up mud in the previously pristine clearing just off Hayden Creek, my gut ached like it did the night we received that phone call from Mom and Dad.

At least one but probably a group of off-road vehicle drivers had revved and spun their rigs deep into the forest floor. Several acres were stripped, and the now-frozen and snow-covered dirt lies in rows like open-trench graves.

I admit to a sense of forest ownership. Before my retirement three years ago, I spent most of my 33 years of government service with the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. I helped protect public lands from fire, surveyed them for timber access roads and campgrounds, and explained agency initiatives as a public affairs officer.

But I wonder if my proprietary feelings are much deeper than are those of the millions of people who use our public lands for hiking, fishing, hunting, camping, even off-road vehicle driving.

I’m not a purist. I believe the nation’s public lands should be used for multiple purposes, including mining and logging, and those leave scars. But before commercial users are granted permits to use the land, they must submit detailed plans to reclaim it. If they fail to do so, they’re subject to heavy fines, even banishment from future use.

Not so recreationists. The agencies trust that those who enjoy our wild lands cherish them. Few permits are required of casual users. To the best of my knowledge, those are only to ensure that popular areas are not used past the point of recovery.

So far. A former colleague who still works for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests tells me that, as a result of abuse, some consideration is being given to additional regulations. In the case of off-road vehicles, those might take the form of declaring the forests off-limits to recreational vehicles except in areas specifically designated for their use.

That would reverse the current policy. Now, ORVers can drive anywhere in the forest except areas closed to protect resources, including wildlife habitat and our drinking water.

What a loss that would be, especially to the huge majority of ORV users who enjoy their public lands in a responsible fashion.

Those include a bunch of folks who’ve pledged to the Forest Service that they’ll help reclaim the Hayden Creek damage as soon as weather permits. Thus far, the volunteers comprise members of the Pacific Northwest Four-Wheel-Drive Association, the Coeur d’Alene Snowmobile Club, the North Idaho Trailblazers, plus the North Idaho Flycasters Club.

I appreciate them, just as I appreciate my brother-in-law who’s promised to attempt to repair his parents’ mailbox. I hope that, when they’re done, no one will be able to tell damage occurred.

But I wonder what vicious instinct lurks within some people, just waiting to savage a thing or a place that’s precious, even beautiful, to others.

Thank God it’s not in all of us, or even in most of us.

It isn’t in you, is it?