Off-road-vehicle bans seem to please no one

Nationwide, 34 of 155 national forests have completed new vehicle-use maps with the rest on schedule to finish by 2009. Still, environmentalists worry the Forest Service mapping and restrictions won’t sufficiently protect the 193 million acres of national forest – which are open to commercial logging and mining as well as camping, hiking, and ORV riding.
Between 1999 and 2007, off-road enthusiasts over age 16 rose from 38 million to more than 44 million, surveys show. With many states and counties outlawing ORVs in recreational areas, off-roaders have increasingly looked to federal lands for a good ride.
That pressure led the Forest Service in 2003 to declare that “unmanaged recreation” – referring to off-road vehicles – was among the top four threats to national forests. Two years later, the agency announced a new nationwide “travel management rule,” mandating that each forest develop trail designations and a map showing vehicle restrictions. That same year, environmentalists won a key federal court victory in California forcing an environmental appraisal of Eldorado’s motorized trail network.
Yet as of January, some 64 million acres – about one third – of national Forest Service land was still “completely open” to cross-country motor vehicle use, stated Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System, in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing last month. That may be about to change.
Today, the Forest Service still has 47,000 miles of trail – about one-third of all trails officially available – open to motorized vehicles, Mr. Holtrop said. But that does not include many more “user created” trails, which are on the target list to be eliminated on many new forest maps, observers say.
Even ORV enthusiasts say some regulation needed now

Off-road enthusiast Brian Hawthorne, public lands policy director for the Blue­Ribbon Coalition, a group representing off-road enthusiasts and vehicle retailers, says trail reductions so far have been excessive – especially in Eldorado. But he also acknowledges a need for motorized vehicles to be brought under control in national forests.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he says. “The population of off-highway vehicles is at a level where it needs to managed.”
Environmentalists and former national Forest Service officials agree the US Forest Service deserves credit for taking action, but worry that ongoing damage to forest lands won’t be fixed by steps taken so far.

“What we’re seeing is the Forest Service more or less putting into place the status quo – this is what we’re going to live with,” says Jim Furnish, former US Forest Service deputy chief. “I don’t see this move wrestling the problem to the ground.”

Without more “boots on the ground” and stiffer penalties (including impounding vehicles), rampant violation of trail signs will continue under the new regime as under the old, Mr. Furnish says.

Others worry that the maps are being drawn with little serious evaluation. Despite years spent evaluating Eldorado’s motorized trail system, many miles were designated for ORV use without scientifically evaluating their impact on the environment, says Karen Schambach, California coordinator for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national group that has been critical of ORV impacts on public lands.

“Our concern now is that they still don’t get it,” she says. “Here in Eldorado, they need to do site-specific analysis of each trail they designate to ensure that the environment isn’t damaged. But even where they do have information, like sediment going into a creek, they sometimes ignore that and designate the trail anyway.”

That’s not how Ramiro Vil­lal­vazo, forest supervisor at Eldor­ado, sees it. It was his April decision that led to the new map with fewer user-created trails, a map upheld this month by the regional review team.

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